Americans fight over gaming hardware on Black Friday

Someone died this weekend in a sales-related crush, did they not? A sales clerk, iirc. That’s seriously messed up.

Yeah, poor fucker got crushed in the stampede. =/

Are we sure those are 360s? They’re very ‘long’ boxes.

Its packed with Guitar Hero, thats why the boxes are so long.

Erm – did I miss it? Where is the fighting? Looks like they were quite literally scrabbling about a bit.

Walmart death

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html

That’s horrible.

Greed. It’s so fucking ugly.

Genuinely sad reading, for a multitude of reasons

I’ve actually talked about this (the trampling) at some other places I tend to frequent, and I think it’s disgraceful too. Some days, I’m just happy to be a rural Welshman who lives nowhere near a city or any kind of built-up commercial complexes, and I buy as much as I can online to avoid this nonsense. I’m actually proud that I’ve never been counted as prey for the darker side of capitalism, but then this is the kind of thing I think about.

I’ve said elsewhere that humanity really doesn’t give a damn about what it does, most of the time, and that most people are predisposed to outward violence and malicious acts. They’re unable to keep it to imagination, words, or expression, it has to come out in a very physical way, and it makes worse monsters out of them than the Wolfman, the Thing, or Frankenstein’s monster could ever hope to be. And this is why no one should ever really wonder why I’m sick of the majority of my race.

It isn’t just that the man got trampled to death, it’s worse than that. After those responsible were taken quietly aside by store representatives and asked to leave, some of them got upset — even violently upset — and refused to leave. The staff had to let these people continue to shop out of fear of another outburst.

And last year, one bloke was shot in his car because he was seen putting a PS3 in there, and someone was clearly very desperate for a PS3.

This kind of thing makes me really sick, and one only has to look at the news to see that this isn’t the exception, this is the norm. People are cruel, sometimes they get caught, sometimes they’re too smart to get caught, sometimes it happens in ways that they can’t be punished (corporate culture et al), sometimes they use little children and animals to lessen their chances of being caught. But by and large, humans are pretty vile things.

That’s why the only human I can respect is a helpful person, who’s creative, and one who keeps their malicious urges in check. Unfortunately, I know very few people like that. Very few indeed. I know I have high standards considering the norm, but if we ever want to get anywhere as a race, we should all have high standards.

Our World’s a bloody mess at the moment, and that things like this can evidence it. And if I may segue into a related topic; I’m amazed that anyone can claim that capitalism is the way forward for us, it’s clearly as broken as a societal experiment as any other. I’m not saying that there’s a perfect system out there, but when we look at these… it does make one wonder if there’s a better way, and I shouldn’t be the only one thinking that.

But when you, the reader, takes into consideration what I’ve said in the past, and the opinions I may yet have about people, just keep this at heart: A scene of great shame, where people can trample someone to death, not give a shit, and lack pride so much that they just want to continue shopping as if it never happened. These weren’t people with guns, these weren’t what you may call criminals, soldiers, or people who are accustomed to killing. They were just shoppers, and in the heat of the moment, any one of you may end up perpetrating something like this, however incidental.

Wow!

Esha, how did you get to be so AMAZING!?

LOL.

Seriously. Self righteous lunies like you make me sick!

You’re not perfect, and just because you were probably bullied at some point in your life, making you the strange, small minded individual that you clearly are, it doesn’t mean that you have to spend the entire rest of your life going on about how evil the world is because hardly anyone is as ‘good as you’!

Ouch, take the fight somewhere else!

as sad as this is…i guess this is good for MS right?lol