The Wal-Mart pepper spray incidence is symbolic of how sick consumerism has become.

[Odin2005]

Seriously, people hurting other people so they can get a gadget made in China by near-slave labor for even cheaper. It's sick, seriously sick.

[Swede]

1. I saw a newsclip of all the Black Friday incidents.

It was a sad spectacle.

[marlakay]

2. I think it says a lot about how desperate

people are for a bargain that they would do anything to get it…it is very sad.

We aren't buying any gifts this year and the only thing I bought this weekend was a gallon of milk on sale.

[Imajika]

7. No it does not...

We have these stories every year, without fail, no matter how good or bad the economy is. This year is no different. You offer great deals attracting more people to a single location than it was really meant to handle, sometimes you'll get a few nutbars that get unhinged. If your neighborhood 7-11 advertised free milk on Sunday, lots of people would push and shove to get it no matter what the economic conditions were.

[joeglow3]

10. In the late 1990's I worked in a store where an 80 year old was plowed over.

A group of women literally threw her into a rack of clothes. Wanna guess why you did not hear about it? This is a greater indictment on our media today than anything.

[TBF]

3. People want capitalism - and they also want a sane society.

Sorry, you can't have both.

[Horse with no Name]

4. What's even sadder is that I had several people insult me

because I posted that there is NOTHING that I needed that would make me venture into the pack of wolves on Black Friday and insinuate that I was classist.

[Imajika]

5. Total nonsense....

We get this sort of thing every year. Masses of people turn out at a store at the same time and you'll sometimes get a few bad apples. The pepper spray incident says one person is an idiot. It is not an indictment of society.

Sometimes concert goers get trampled at events. Is that a sign of a sick society, or just the result of a poorly managed crowd? Sometimes violence and crime happens at protests, is that a sign of a sick society or just the fact that anyone can show up and sometimes a few troublemakers will crawl out of the woodwork.

You are being overly dramatic and looking for broad lessons about consumerism in the actions of a few stupid people.

The Walmart near me was jammed all day with thousands of people (which sucks cause it ties up traffic), and as far as I know shopping somehow managed to go off without any carnage.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Either the press is reporting more on them

or they are increasing... and I was not just the only one making this observation

Same clip, two nooz stations (that is funny actually) with a psychologist, even called this a sign of desperation and how people are told they needed this stuff.

Yep SAME CLIP, that was funny... and it ran in the two MOST right wing stations too.

[Imajika]

8. This stuff happens EVERY single year...

Every holiday season we have the obligatory stories of holiday shoppers charging to be the first ones in to get a great deal before the merchandise runs out. Having worked retail in college at a drug store I've seen it myself many years ago - even when it wasn't a holiday. We'd have a limited supply of something and the store would sell it massively cheap (at a loss actually) to draw people into the store. Folks would scream at each other and us over the last few remaining of that item. They came to the store for the deal, and damn it they are determined to get it. People will fight over canned soup. It's a human nature thing. They made the effort to turn out for $2.00 off something and they want to get it. If anything, I'd say it is the stores fault more than not for failing to have enough of the sale items on hand and not managing crowds properly.

The media like to turn everything into the crisis. If you believed the media reporting, you'd think shopping on Black Friday was to literally risk life and limb. You know perfectly well that 99.99% of shoppers hit the stores without incident. We have more media now than ever, and reporting is always tilted (whether outlets are left or right) to the dramatic. "Walmart has sale, shopping mostly uneventful" does not sell copy or generate hits. "Black Friday carnage at Walmart as child suffers bloody nose" does even if the child simply slipped and fell.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. I am talknig of the QUANTITY of incidents

not the fact that it happens.

IT seems to me that either there are more reports of these things making it to the nooz, or there are simply MORE incidents.

Oh and at least yesterday almost all happened at wally worlds, (the one at Target was horrific for other reasons, gent collapsed and people walked around him, yup he's dead)

[Imajika]

14. Right, and I am telling you the quantity...

...if it is increasing at all, is probably only relative to population growth.

This same story gets blown out of proportion every single year. The reason you probably hear more about it is simply that just about everything is reported these days. Once upon a time if it didn't happen in a major city, to the news media it just didn't happen at all. If someone punched a kid out to get a Star Wars action figure in some rinky dink town in Kentucky the only place that might report the story is said rinky dink little town's newspaper. These days everything of interest that happens everywhere is available for all to see because of 24/7 cable news, the Drudge Report, etc.

Just a decade or so ago there wasn't even many places like DU where users neatly list and discuss virtually everything of the slightest interest that happens anywhere.

Ever hear people bemoan how awful the youth of today are and how crime is out of control? Try telling them that the crime rate has been falling for like 20 years. They don't want to hear it because it doesn't track with this sudden information overload available to everyone (along with the media turning everything into a crisis). Very often what seems to be true simply isn't.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. And a few psychologists might disagree with you

Including the gent last night on the tv.

Personally I will try to track this, out of personal interest.

[fishwax]

17. Black Friday shoppers are the new shark

:bounce:

[Butch350]

9. Yes! It does!

You must be a trampler.

[Imajika]

12. Well...you know...that 4 slice toaster & oven was totally worth it...

I didn't want to trample the old woman and the kid in the wheelchair, but it was the last one and Hamilton Beach makes a mean toasting product!

[marmar]

13. Freedom from that consumerist mindset is very liberating.

The last time I moved, I looked at all the crap I'd bought and rarely used over the years. Buying sh*t to buy sh*t. It's such a bleak existence.

[DirkGently]

16. I blame the stores, making people whose wages have been stagnant 30 years, dance like dogs for a

treat. Consumerism isn't the heart of the problem, in my opinion.

[RebelOne]

18. No, it just shows how sick consumers have become. n/t

[cyglet]

19. To me it's not even that it was Black Friday

it's that the misuse of pepper spray seems to be way too prevalent....

[sarcasmo]

20. Zombie consumerism.

[sendero]

21. Don't worry

.... it's (consumerism) is going to die a suicidal death in the not too distant future.

[Odin2005]

24. Yup.

[dkf]

22. I didn't go early enough to see a glimpse of the good bargains.

By the time I was looking it seemed pretty typical.

[theophilus]

23. Christmas is not only too commercial....it's too dangerous! Linus. n/t