We’ll start with this:
Shoppers who had come to the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch on Thursday night for the much-advertised Black Friday sale got more than they bargained for when a woman used pepper spray to gain an advantage.
Anna Recalde said her teenage children were hit with the spray. At one point, she said, she smelled her 16-year-old son and asked him, “What is that?”
“Mom,” he replied, “I was just pepper-sprayed.”
And this:
A woman who pepper-sprayed other shoppers Thursday night at the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch had armed herself with the caustic spray to gain an advantage in the fight for merchandise at the Black Friday sale, a fire captain said.
The woman, who is still being sought, used the spray in more than one area of the Wal-Mart “to gain preferred access to a variety of locations in the store,” said Los Angeles Fire Capt. James Carson.
Sadly, this is not all.
There is also this:
Things got out of control at one Wal-Mart near Little Rock, Arkansas on Black Friday as shoppers went wild over a good deal on kitchen appliances.
Screams could be heard as the greedy shoppers struggled to grab one (or five) of the $2 waffle irons.
And there is this:
The second Wal-Mart spraying (so far) was more in line with what we’ve come to expect when it comes to pepper spray and crowds: an off-duty police officer working store security used the weapon in the midst of a mass of unarmed shoppers. This time it was Kinston, N.C., where the painful spray wafted through a Wal-Mart.
“Sgt. Roland Davis of Kinston Public Safety says Walmart hired off-duty police officers to help with security during their Black Friday event today,” reports WITN-TV. “Davis says an officer was trying to quell a disturbance and make an arrest, and used pepper spray.”
[…]
Not all Wal-Mart trips ended in pepper spray, but several others did end in police action. In Rome, N.Y., a man was arrested after “several shoppers at the electronics department were pushed to the ground and several fights broke out,” according to NBC3 in Syracuse. And in Cave Creek, Ariz., the bomb squad took a suspected explosive device out of a Wal-Mart employee break room.Other incidents occurred outside Wal-Mart stores early in the morning of Black Friday. In Myrtle Beach, S.C., a woman was shot in the foot during an armed robbery outside a Wal-Mart at around 1 AM. In San Leandro, Calif., a man was reportedly shot outside a Wal-Mart at about 2 a.m. “after suspects asked the victims for their items and were refused,” leading to a fight.
There’s a temptation with these stories to make jokes, to move into snark and satire.
I’m not up for that today, because what I’m seeing here is actually something that I think of as part of a disintegration of the sense of other people as human beings and I don’t want to contribute to that sense by making jokes about it, parodying it or diminishing it.
I’ve been isolated as of late. While recovering from surgery, I’m avoiding crowds or pretty much any group of people larger than three. I’ll be around people again soon enough, but right now, I’m just getting stronger and to the point where I won’t wince if someone accidentally bumps into me. This is good and healthy for me right now, but it also means I don’t have as strong a sense of what’s going on in the outside world. I’m in my own relatively pleasant bubble right now where I am fortunate enough to have the resources to heal nicely and not be worried about how much I spend on a waffle iron or whether someone else will get the bargain before me.
Intellectually, from my experience with social psychology and history, I understand what I’m seeing. When people are placed in roles in which their choices are limited or they see others as enemy, they more easily dehumanize them. This applies as easily to prisoners and guards as it does to cops and protestors as it does to […please bear with me as I wrap this phrase around my head for a moment…] er… “competitive shoppers.”
It’s easier to deal with these situations by dehumanizing others, by treating people as though they are inferior to you or yourself or your kind.
Intellectually, academically, I get this.
I’m just having trouble with the concept of actually acting on it and behaving as though it is somehow acceptable to pepper spray children.
There is something seriously wrong with this, and I just can’t bring myself to joke about it.
…pepper spray at Walmart?
Sorry, I have to joke because it’s a freaking insane situation and otherwise I’d weep.
Black Friday, and all the spectacle of depravity it provides, is sort of the modern equivalent of the Roman Bread and Circus, reducing what remains of a downgraded middle class to snapping and grovelling at the trough of consumer addiction.
I cannot understand why there isn’t a massive grassroots movement to boycott box chains entirely on the day after Thanksgiving.
I think in future generations, our great-grandchildren may look back on the cultural embarrassment that is Black Friday rather as we have come to regard the spectacle of public hangings and freak shows that defined the appalling ignorance that pervaded much of frontier America a century ago.
setting up a situation where crowds of people(competitive shoppers)are encouraged to scramble like animals, every person for themselves for bargains on cheap junk works to giant corporate retailers advantage.
Just get those shoppers fighting among themselves,divided from each other and stand back and watch.
Imagine what would happen if this tactic were to be transferred to the political world!
Eh…Hey wait a minute!
Oh how I love a good train wreck. It fills me with vitality to know how much it sucks to be them. The freedom of choice can bring us as close together as a soccer riot, or to agree to disagree with Glenn Beck. So many choices so little information. Nothing shows individuality more than joining a pack to show individuality. If there is a truth to human nature, it is that first; we are all the same, and second; we all claim we are different, the second being the result of the first. What separates me from you is that I choose blue. After all, this is why we have an electoral college, to keep us from having to bother with the mundane task of understanding a complex set of laws and regulation, and do what we do best. Shop. Just like when Hilary and Obama were asked about a single payer system during the 2008 election, both stated, “It’s complicated.” When I only have the choice between two candidates, I will always choose The New England Patriots.
And why wouldn’t recreational shopping turn into a blood sport? When it comes to obtaining the most recent version of World of War Craft, the decision is no where near as convoluted, you’re either with me or against me. When you’re kicking ass it’s always advised to take name brands. Being a culture of consumers, it only makes sense we would develop practices akin to Spain’s Running of the Bulls. The only difference being, is that Spain isolates this activity to a sectioned off part of town. Wal mart only locks their employees in the store, the costumers are free to practice their other god given right: the freedom of the road. Not that Wall Mart has a moral obligation to anyone who behaves in this manner, to denied these loyal consumers access to a one and a half ton vehicle after macing someone over the last toaster on the shelf.
Where would we be as a culture if we locked compulsive shoppers away with compulsive heroin addicts? We would have to rethink every taboo we live by. This would never happen because outlawing junk would take on a whole new meaning. No one is willing to make a change whether it is groveling for a spatula or rethinking everything they know about politics, philosophy, or religion. There is to much time and energy vested. Telling someone their vote doesn’t count is no different then telling them they don’t need a blender. It’s to much to comprehend. There for, the only sacrifice I’m willing to make (for change) is from denim to corduroy.
Don’t go. It’s not like there’s a gun at people’s heads.
TV. Not so much on the TV anymore.
Just found this joke which is going around –
Has violence by Black Friday shoppers discredited the whole shopping movement?
How dainty of the L.A. Fire Captain to put it that way! And how unlike the descriptive language being hurled by officials in the general direction of #OWS these days.
Yeah, have these f’n’ killer sales and sit in the Boardroom and watch American shoppers go nuts. Why? Because the Corporations want them to. How’s come ‘reasonable’ prices on goods only come around at these ‘killer’ sales? If profit weren’t so lopsided, we wouldn’t go ape-shit on the rare occasions the Corporations offer deals. Yes, here’s the deal, folks–50% off, and survival of the fittest (or nastiest). Kind of like how we treat the Third World. Jeez, what’s gonna happen the day these shoppers turn their rage on the Company Store?