WAL-MART
WAL-MART: Giving new meaning to the term “killer deals”
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Is it me, or is this just “not funny yet?”
I’m with you on this one, dear.
I agree its not funny. And in his own right, the guy is a hero.
I bet if he had just looked out for his own interests, he’d have lived. But he was shielding a pregnant woman to keep her from being trampled.
Funny, I just read about that little detail and was coming back to comment. And he was just a temp worker. What an… odd contrast between the selfless behavior of one underpaid grunt worker and the selfish, reckless behavior of the crowd.
really? I heard he was just trying to keep the door up, when the crowds pushed the door off the hinges and then … you know… trampled him. Still, this is not a good thing to “lol” because it was not funny in any respect.
totally. very sad.
I agree…this is a little too soon.
agreed. It will be joke fodder some time, but not just yet. It’s still too fresh and too disturbing.
Agreed. FAR too soon.
Not just you. It’s a good lol, but I personally can’t really giggle yet.
No, it is not funny. But it’s a nice reminder of how crappy people are.
I don’t know if it’s too soon; with a situation like this, sadly, once it’s not too soon anymore it will be less immediately relevant and require a lot of thought before we “get” the lol. Difficult situation even for dark humor, for sure. I took a crack at that picture myself (not because I think the situation is funny, but because I think it’s horrific, and that’s how I cope), but I don’t think the result’s terribly funny.
The part that’s really making me sick about the Long Island WalMart situation is that it doesn’t appear that anyone in that crowd is going to step forward and take even half-assed responsibility.
Too soon.
I don’t think it will ever be funny. A more fitting caption would allude to the class of people that shop there/live in that area. I have often wondered why they don’t integrate the welafe office, wal-mart and the county prison so that those people can get all of thier things done in one trip in thier welfare-subsidized Cadillac Escalade/86 Mustang/Camaro/Buick Regal
You shouldn’t talk about things of which you know very little. The “class of people” to which you refer earn low wages, if any, and I think above all this horrible incident demonstrates how commercially and consumptively driven our country is. I’m not defending the people who caused this incident– it’s horrible and boorish– but these were people who were desperate to save the holidays for their families. Because unfortunately, children are taught innately that the holidays = presents. And come on, we all know how little welfare does for any less fortunate family. And, don’t get me started on the subtle racism that has undergirded your entire comment.
Still, if they were trampling and killing people for bags of rice to feed their
families it would be a little bit different. No one deserves to die over a flat
screen tv or what ever they were going after even so their kids could have
a nice xmas… It’s inexcusable.
It’s not that simple. Nobody wants to trample other people to death. The problem is actually one of fluid dynamics. A crowd is like an incompressible fluid, so based on the geometry of the enclosing space and the forces acting on the crowd, one can make predictions about when and where this sort of catastrophe will occur. The problem is the people in the back, who can’t see that someone has fallen, and continue to push. The people near the fallen person don’t actually want to step on them, but they have no choice. The pressure from those in the rear is too great to hold back.
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The solution to situations like this is often fairly simply, fluid dynamic calculations can show where to place a few barriers and obstacles in order to reduce or diffuse crowd pressure.
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Just remember, if you had been in that crowd near the fallen, you would have most likely trampled them, or perhaps died uselessly trying to help them if you are particularly selfless. This isn’t a problem with human nature, it’s a design problem.
Seth, the people in the back know darn well what could happen if they
keep pushing people in the front. This happens every damn year. That’s
pretty much why I won’t go around anywhere there happens to be a crowd
no matter what shiny babble they hang in front of my nose. There are
people in those crowds, people with brains and a conscience trampling
and pushing to get at cheap electronics not food for their familes.
We aren’t animals and there is no excuse.
Simply blaming people and stopping there is counterproductive.
“Why did it happen?”
“Evil people made bad choices.”
That tells me nothing! It doesn’t suggest a way to avoid this in the future, or explain why it happened this time. It’s a total cop-out, a way to feel as though justice is being done. The evil people may not be punished, but at least we’re blaming them! We feel all warm and fuzzy in our hearts because we’ve judged and condemned the bad people, and because WE aren’t like that, oh no! We’re the good ones!
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When a hurricane kills people, do we blame the hurricane? Do we look to punish hurricanes, or do we seek to understand, to look for methods that will keep hurricanes from killing in the future? This is another aspect of ‘Judge not.’ When you judge, you feel as if you have solved the problem, when in fact you’ve done nothing more than moral masturbation. That’s all this thread is: a bunch of people who have never been in this situation casting blame in a giant circle jerk of condemnation and smug self congratulation. And here I come with a simple solution but you don’t want to hear it because my solution doesn’t bother with blame and condemnation, and you all are having too much fun feeling superior to the folks in the crowd.
Calm down Seth, I agree your solution would definitely help. Maybe people are reading too much into it, but I don’t think ema was saying you were altogether wrong. She’s just saying, maybe there’s a way to keep people accountable and keep them from falling into the crowd mentality to begin with and becoming those milling sheep that you are working on the solution to funnel better.
You know I don’t agree with her often. Relax. Have a cookie. I didn’t buy it at a door buster sale.
He knows it’s nothing personal, we have these dust-ups all the time!
I’ll take a cookie! ; )
If ema dies of shock from seeing me actually defend her, I will accept full responsibility for MY actions!!
Well I was shocked this morning when I agreed 100% with n8 and
I’m still alive!! So don’t worry too much, I’m resilient.
It’s cool. I agree with me 100% and I’m not dead yet, either. From this I conclude that my opinions are non-lethal.
Wow. I am in amazment of you all. You can disagree without resorting to name calling, and then respect each other’s differing opinions. This world would be a great place if more people had those skills. Kudos to you all, n8, ema, minerva, and Seth.
And that’s exactly why I like it here.
Mine cause minor but survivable symptoms.
yeah, but I’m still suffering from that damn leg twitch!
I also, have walked away with a rash… I would urge caution,
but not enough to inhibit the fun
Fine, fine…
“Minor, annoying, yet survivable symptoms…”
I love you guys, I hope you know that. I just don’t think that apportioning blame is the right approach in this situation. Yes, it’s horrible. I’m just philosophically opposed to judgment and blame. I’m a systems thinker, and to me, anytime you look at one part of a whole and not at the system itself, you are missing the point.
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What is the point of blame and judgment in this case? What do we achieve by finding and punishing the ‘guilty’ here?
Justice for the guy who was trampled to death. I’m not sure where the culpability lies in this case, but at the ONE (count em, ONE) Black Friday sale I went to, we were handed little tickets that allowed us in the door one at a time. If you didn’t have a ticket, you went to the back of the line. It was very controlled, very respectful, and a good way to handle about 300 people at 5AM. I agree with ema, the herd mentality was in full force and is difficult to stop, but those people don’t live under rocks. They knew what MIGHT happen if they kept pushing. Whether that is solely the fault of the crowd and the people in it, or the fault of WalMart, it’s a disservice to the man who died to NOT place the blame where it needs to go.
How does a dead person obtain justice? Maybe for the family, but are you sure3 you aren’t confusing justice with it’s evil cousin, revenge?
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The other part of the equation is what is known as ‘diffusion of responsibility,’ otherwise known as ‘No single raindrop thinks it caused the flood.’ The people in the back might know what would happen if EVERYONE pushed, but they aren’t everyone, are they? And if they don’t push, some other jerk is going to push and get ahead of them, and that is an injustice! So they HAVE to push, or they let the JERKS win!
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Blaming people feels good because we are endowed with a drive to uphold justice. We all feel it. In my heart, I’d love nothing more than to find the people responsible and administer a little rough justice of my own. But I know that isn’t right, it isn’t good, and it isn’t even helpful.
Doling out punishment may do something to discourage such behaviour in the future. In that, there is justice.
Oh, btw, wasn’t referring to vigilante or “rough” justice.
I don’t want revenge for the dead greeter (that sounds so callous!). I want responsibility to be placed somewhere. It needs to be. Maybe the raindrops involved didn’t think they themselves cause the flood, but those raindrops were aware that it could happen. And like I illustrated before, Walmart knew it could happen because it’s happened before. There should have been measures in place to control it.
True. But that is assuming that people in crowds will stop to think, ‘Hey, we should all be more careful or we might trample someone to death.” This isn’t a case where most people stop to consider the possible consequences.
Then there’s the ones who were so callous, when they closed the store for several hours, they were refusing to leave the store on the basis they’d been in line for so many hours. They didn’t care at all that someone DIED, as long as they got their bargains.
With regard to “How does a dead person obtain justice”, Seth… that dead person left family and friends, ostensibly. The justice is just as much for them.
And even if there were none, Justice must always be done, and must be seen to be done, lest the rule of law crumble.
As regards revenge… I would caution you not to mistake Justice for Revenge. Revenge is merely the poor man’s justice. The problem with revenge is that since it occurs outside a legal framework, there’s no check upon it, and it therefore is often disproportionate to the injury being avenged.
What Seth says has merit, IMO. I would apply it in this way: In a capitalist, consumerist society, people look to apportion blame to the people involved in an incident like this because it absolves them of personal blame. Every person who participates in the society that encourages this type of consumerist mania is equally to blame. Each participant in the society is a raindrop. To blame the people at the back of the crowd is to pardon the people who passively approve of and participate in the consumerism. To blame Walmart is to pardon the same people. The Walmart corporation simply take advantage of the structures of the society. The people at the store were simply acting in accordance with the societal norms. If you want to apportion blame, start by looking in your (insert brand name here) mirror.
What societal norms say you can trample someone to death
to get a flat screen tv? It’s absolutely nothing that should be
encouraged in any way for any reason. By saying Walmart
or no one or even you are to blame, you take the blame
away from the guilty party and condone the behavior.
The behavior should be condemned.
What I mean is, consumerism is not killing someone for
something you might want more than someone else.
What I mean is, consumerism is not killing someone for
something you might want more than someone else.
I see incidents like this as an inevitable extension of the ‘consumeconsumeconsume and damn the consequences’ attitude that is rampant from the governmental and corporate, all the way through to personal, level. The glorification of ‘get rich or die trying’ attitudes, which are a cornerstone of the consumer society dream, has consequences.
And pilgrims being trampled to death around Kaba shows that islam is a nasty religion?
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Sorry, that was a rather childish way to say “I think it’s a matter of humans and herd mentality” rather than consumerism. (And I am practically a commie. ;oP )
And I agree, Ema – it shouldn’t be encouraged in any way. The problem is that it is encouraged every day – quite blatantly.
Okay, so jsut because I am a friggin google-lover, I decided to try to find trampling incidents (no, I am not talking about the fetish here) and wound up with a wikipedia list, at least. (Click my name.)
.
Various causes.
Yes, I agree this is not due to an “ism” but a herd mentality
that needs to be discouraged. The life and safety of our fellow
human beings should be more important than anything else
as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not against consumerism or
capitalism.
But I think that consumerism encourages a herd mentality. ‘Keeping up with the Jones’ has reached a deadly conclusion at the personal level just as ‘profit before sustainability’ has reached a deadly conclusion at corporate level.
Seth made a comment to HHNF below about keeping the status quo so that she doesn’t have to make sacrifices. While I recognise that my rant against consumerism is just an opinion, from the basis of that opinion, it looks like separating consumerism from this incident is just a way of not facing responsibility for your part in the guy’s death, which was the point of my origional post.
(let me state for the record that I believe that you have more intelligence, compassion and breadth of vision in our big toe than HHNF could hope to achieve in 10 lives.)
*your
Well, I hear ya, my point is that if you blame outside
influences for your own behavior you end up giving your
own power to change yourself for the better away to
factors you have no control over. We all have the power to
change ourselves for the better, but if we continually blame
others for our behavior we have no reason to change and
grow. I hope I’m not being to abstract…
I’m with you there! The flip side of that is that if we don’t look at how our personal behaviour can influence the behaviour of others, then we give away our power to change society for the better. Obviously the result is out of our hands, but the effort isn’t. By making the effort to create a better society, we will change and grow on a personal level.
Step, could I get your definition of “consumerism” please? Everyone is a consumer (and producer) of something or another. Are you associating some sort of doctrine to consumerism?
I define it (well I subscribe to the definition – I didn’t come up with it) as a system where people are seen as units of consumption – their value to the system is defined by their ability to buy products and hence create profit for the business tycoons and investors.
This is encouraged through the creation and deliberate nurturing of a perception of discontent and unfulfillment amongst society, with the tandem creation of the solution to this discontent being the purchase of goods or services (retail therapy). The more discontented someone is, the more desparate they are to find a solution. Desparate times create desparate solutions and incidents like this death result.
Click my name for a Wiki entry on consumerism for more info.
Tickets? 0_0 I want to know what store that was. I should have applied there instead of walmart.
I survived two black friday’s at walmart (and I have the pins that say so, seriously). The first time, I had no idea what to expect. I was so excited to get off the till that I didn’t understand I was frakked over until after I was shoved into the carts for the second (and not my last) time.
My second black friday, we had people queing up the night before for something that we only had eight of. There were thirty-eight people in the parking lot in tents for this one product alone. Do I really have to say how that ended?
Anyway, my point, I very much blame the store for what happened. They have no concept of employee safety or crowd control. I’ve seen them encourage the chaos.
The thing I blame the customers for? Pushing the EMT’s after the mob had died down and having the nerve to actually complain when the store closed because of the death.
Best buy uses tickets now. In 2001 (I think) an old lady was trampled in a store near Philly. Corporate started the ticket system the next year (which was nice because that was when I started there). Luckily she lived through the incident with minor injuries.
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And I agree, blame the store. They know what can happen, it happens every year. Granted, it’s not always fatal, but it should never have gotten to that point.
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Actually, blame everyone involved. Shame on everyone in that line. And shame on the aholes who didn’t leave after someone died. It’s incidents like this that make me despise the holiday season. It’s supposed to remind people to love one another and give selflessly. All it reminds me of is road rage, mobs and disappointment in humanity.
Education?
But it’s a pretty important part of the whole! Those are people we
are talking about here and they have a choice to be in a crowd that
is more than likely to get ugly and trample other people for a
babble. But, I do understand what you are saying and something
should be done by those responsible for summoning that crowd.
Look, I’m being a little absolutist in my position just to make a point. In fact, I don’t think any of us regulars here would even put ourselves in that kind of situation. But I also don’t think the regulars here are average people…
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I actually do think that if the security tapes are clear enough, and there is some good evidence of particular, identifiable people doing the trampling, they should face the consequences. Involuntary manslaughter, not murder, as there was no intent to kill or malice aforethought. But the real focus should be on Wlamart’s lack of proper security procedures, as that will have the greatest positive effect. If the crowd is held responsible and not the store, then stores will have no incentive to provide proper crowd control.
I totally agree with you Seth, Walmart should be forced to
implement better crowd control if they are going to hold these
kinds of sales and attract crowds like that. I also don’t think
anyone wanted to kill anyone and may actually feel bad about
it now. But, they were still careless and stupid and I reserve
the right to condemn that kind of behavior and yes if they
can be punished they should be…
I don’t know if anyone mentioned this, if so, sorry for being redundant, but; When a number of people were killed in Cincy,OH. a number of years ago rushing to get into a Who concert was anyone charged?
As far as a solution goes, I read that a lot of those people were complaining that they had been there since Thursday morning. This could not have been good for the higher cognitive functions that could have prevented this. Could wal mart perhaps not allow people to wait in line more than a certain amount of time so that by the time Black Friday rolls around they are still in good enough shape to recognize the utter foolishness of breaking down doors?
There is a very good way of doing this. I’ve been to many Black Friday rushes where the store employees line everyone up outside. They start with the first person and give them special coded tags for “specialty” limited edition items. You only grab the tags for the items you are going to buy.
The doors open and people don’t swarm in for the limited special deal items. You do your shopping and when you get the register you hand them your tags and they grab you the items you want that are locked up in the back. It works great and I’ve never seen a rush at a place that does it.
I think that stores encourage the rush because it makes people feel like they need to grab and buy everything in sight
Since I’m usually shopping with a younger nephew or an elder friend I don’t go to the places that only do a mad rush because I’m afraid someone will get hurt.
Slightly tangential, but could this tragedy please now phase out the term “door buster”?
I’ll second that!
There is nothing wrong with blaming evil people when they do
evil things, and yes this WAS an evil thing. This was nothing more than
putting material goods ahead of the safety of your fellow human being.
That is not to say something should not be done about it by Walmart, or any other stores to ensure it NEVER happens again. How many years has this been going on now? But to not blame and punish evil actions is only encouraging the
same behavior over and over again. This was nothing like a hurricane
or an act of nature, this could have definitely been prevented by the
people involved and should have been before the pushing and shoving
started.
You are assuming a lot, ema. You talk as though you know these people’s motivations. How? This is the problem with human judgment: we all have imperfect information. Certainty is feeling, not a logical process. We make up stories, and we fill in the parts we don’t know. Not with logically deduced facts, but with what our world-view says must be true.
You can know peoples motivations by observing their actions. What
exactly am i assuming here? They obviously were not concerned
about what might happen to the people around them, they were
focused on what they could get. How else can we ever know anyonese
motivations, even if you ask them they could tell you a lie. But
actions speak louder than words, as they say.
You assume that they are motivated by a lust for material goods. You assume they knew what might happen. And you CAN NOT know people’s motivations by observing their actions. Motivations are complex and multi-faceted. Perhaps the people desired justice, and didn’t want newcomers to the line to get ahead when they had been waiting all night. Perhaps they were frightened by the idea of a huge recession and were seeking comfort in the traditional act of Christmas shopping. Perhaps the thought of financial insecurity prompted them to act more selfishly than normal. Actions speak louder than words, but all they say is, “This person acted in this way.’ Actions do not reliably indicate motivations. In fact, all actions are the result of an internal consensus among multiple competing drives. You may think you know the reason for a given action, but I guarantee that there are dozens more contributing motivations that you’ve missed.
Seth, NONE of those motivations are enough to KILL another
person. Do you think they are? As far as I’m concerned there
was absolutely no reason, even if they were pushing ahead
for actual necessities like food, which they weren’t. So I
guess I’m saying it doesn’t even matter what the motivation
was. And, I can’t imagine anyone not knowing what could
happen if they push a huge crowd from the back and start a
panic…
I love you, Seth, because you’re such an optimist! You believe undyingly in the goodness of man. It makes me think I’m a sun-dried rasin of a cynic
) Having said that, I think you’re a little too optimistic about people. They aren’t all good. They suck, and then they kill you 
) (sweeping generalization alert *ducks under flame shield*)
I wont kill you
Adding to frous statement about not all people are good, refer to mothergoose and the story of her daughters foot
Not saying running over someones foot is the same as trampling them. But i think the principle is called “foot in the door” where if someone is capable of doing one thing, why wouldn’t they be capable of taking it a step further
Good point Matt! That was a case of someone that just
didn’t care about the person right next to them. And it
doesn’t matter to me if she may have been having a bad
day or she had just lost her job, or whatever…
Foot in the door is very similar to a slippery slope fallacy…
I believe in the general apathy of mankind. They don’t care. Sure, they like justice and fairness but justice is subjective. Justice isn’t some knight with a written code galloping around the world. Justice is based on the perspectives of those dispensing it. In some cultures, it is justice to remove the hands of a thief while that would be called revenge. Here, we put them in a cage with creatures far worse than them and expect them to come out better for it then call it justice.
The instance of this death is based on the socially conditioned greed of a materialistic society. You don’t faff about in a crowd to get food. You would have a hell of a time doing it anyway so a majority of people who just care about food shopping get it done before or after Black Friday. There is a reasonable chance that a tiny number of those people were there to food shop but that is a tiny number out of a stampede of people.
This was a mob of people out to get the best “deal” before somebody else did. You can debate recession, traditional hope, or insecurity to we are blue in the face. None of it is even remotely justifiable for the stampede. We’re adults and should be expected to act as such. We shouldn’t require authority to tell us to get in line and get things done. Seeking justice for being in line first by surging forward like a demented child does not compute.
It’s Walmart, it isn’t a jigsaw puzzle, it isn’t a rubix cube, it isn’t a damn maze. They know where the doors are and how to act like adults. Walmart has responsibility as they didn’t prepare the level of idiocy that happens EVERY year. No, I’m not exaggerating. I am not demeaning their inner good or belittling their motivations. I am speaking from experience from YEARS of observation. I’ve seen what they argue over, fist fight over, scream over.
Walmart is to blame for not taking steps to prevent an idiot stampede and the idiots are to blame for being idiots. They aren’t extras in a zombie movie attacking a store, there is no need to surge at the door when they unlock.
People are neither good nor bad. People are the way they are not from some internal choice, but from the external factors that influence them. Have you looked at the process of choice that goes on inside yourself. How do you choose to choose? How do you choose which options you will consider in your choice? Do you see, there is no answer. For any answer, you must ask the same question, in an infinite regress.
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People’s choices are preconditioned, and those choices become the preconditions for future events. There is an unbroken chain of cause and effect. When you say a person chose something without asking why they chose it, you oversimplify.
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People aren’t inherently good or bad, we can be selfish or selfless as conditions dictate. People’s choices influence the social reality we all inhabit, but the social reality also influences people’s choices. We create the system that creates us. I do believe that most people are born with a drive to be ‘good’ because that is that is what works. The reason we feel certain actions to be ‘good’ is becasue those actions are genetically advantageous to the species. The idea that we would have an ability to recognize ‘good,’ a desire to see ‘good’ rewarded and ‘evil’ punished, but no actual drive to be good flies in the face of all rationality.
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To be clear, ‘good’ here means a drive towards fairness and reciprocity. An instinctive understanding of the golden rule. That is an effective strategy as long as ‘evil’ can be punished. When the common person finds it hard to punish evil, they resort to evil themselves. Very few people are born wanting to take advantage of others, but most people will if they feel it’s screw or be screwed.
We have the words good and bad in the english language for
a reason. When someone gives in and acts on their base
instincts, which amount to “me first and screw the rest” they
are bad or evil. Because we are human we have the
opportunity to change and to atone for our bad behavior. But
saying no one is bad or good but a result of outside influence
takes power away and assigns it to something we have no
control over. That is defeating and keeps people helpless and
weak, I know, I have seen it first hand.
Twice a year I go to a large outdoor plant sale. People with garden carts line up along one side, behind a string. After everyone is lined up, a man with a megaphone begins announcing how many minutes are left until starting time, from 10 minutes down. I think the idea is to get everyone whipped into a shopping frenzy, and it seems to work. I used to line up with the others, but now prefer to hang back and watch as the crowds roll out. With a calmer mind, and a slower heart rate, I walk the same field, only to face people who, in a frenzy, have passed by their intended plants, and have had to double back. I’ve been going to the same sale for 6 years now, and have yet to miss more than one or two plants that sold out before I could get to them. Often, in the check-out line, I will hear someone say, “I forgot why I got this one–oh, well. I’ll look it up when I get home,” or some variant.
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I bring up this experience as an example of crowd control done well in tandem with PT Barnum style frenzy building. Without the trill of the hunt, I expect there would be more deliberation and lower sales figures at the end of the day. Still, if a relatively small organization can manage a crowd of 500 people with wagons, how can Wal-Mart not manage to keep everyone safe?
*thrill, not trill
I have to. I take responsibility for my actions and can try to repent those actions. I know why I do things the way I do. I know what causes them. People have control over their own lives or at least their decision to surge forward in a crowd. I’ve seen people make conscious decisions. Let’s not baby people, Seth.
We are supposed to think for ourselves. There is answers. It doesn’t exist within the statement that there is no answers either. Each person has a reason they surged forward that is personal to them. However, they all surged forward as a mob simply because a store opened up. Not because their lives were at stake. Not because they would lose everything. Not any kind of extreme or noble purpose. They wanted to buy something.
They wanted to buy something and decided that instead of calmly entering the store, they had to do or die. Guess what? Somebody died.
The store assumed that a large group of people would act in an orderly fashion. They were wrong and thus at fault.
The people assumed that something in that store was worth charging in like Godzilla was going to violate them rectally. They were wrong and thus have some form of fault as a mass.
It sounds like none of you have actually ever been in a crowd like the one that ending up trampling this man. I’ve been to futbal games in Latin America, where tampling deaths happen all the time. When you are in that kind of crowd, you may want to act like a reasonable adult, but you have people on all sides pushing you who want to get out. You have people who are absolutely elated and on cloud nine because there team just won. You have people who have just watched their team lose and are on absolute edge. And you have people who had no real investment in the event other than to be there. When you are being pushed from behind and are more than shoulder to shoulder with other people, you move forward, even though you cannot see what is five feet in front of you. And my only thought was, I want to get out of this mess. Yes, I know that people may have fallen and I can’t see them. Yes I know that they may be getting stepped on. But in these kinds of situations, you instinct of self-preservation take over.
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Yes, those people may have been there to get a television or whatever. But when they were in the crowd, I’m willing to bet that their only thought was to get out of the crowd by any means necessary to just to get out. Not to get out to get the television.
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But I’m not saying that these people are absolved of all responsibility. Because when someone falls in front of you, you help them up. But as Seth has said, I think that most of the fault lays at Wal-Mart’s feet.
So what you are saying is that in all the years this has been happening, nobody has fixed that system yet? I want to pretend to believe that people have thinking brains but if people are dying yearly at a damn GAME, there would be something done to alleviate that pressure since people obviously can’t think clearly in a group.
Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t say anything. I am a fan of Darwin’s work and moments like these where they keep dying from the same thing I just… Don’t care anymore. Have fun at the game and watch your step.
It’s not just at the yearly game, it’s at a number of games in a year. And it’s not just futbol either. Google “cricket India stampede” and you get over 32,000 resluts. What I’m trying to say it that it’s clear that none of the people making coments on this have been in the situation and are passing a lot of judgment on the people who were in the crowd. Not that the people are absolved of all responsibility, because like I said, when someone in front of you falls, you help them up. And that Wal-Mart, knowing about crowds having a history of trampling people should have had a system in place. And that while we do have higher thinking capabilities, there are times when our instincts take over and you don’t always know what those situations are. Because I sit here saying, I would never trample anyone, but at the same time, I know the feeling of being in crowd that large and I’m thinking about my own safety at that moment, not the original reason for being in the crowd.
I often get knocked over at concerts, but as soon as someone notices that someone has fallen in the mosh pit, it immediately stops until said person is out of harms way
It isn’t exactly difficult to stop, and I don’t know how similar metal shows are to Black Friday, but i can assure you that the crowd at a Lamb of God show (my personal favorite 
) are a tad rowdier than shoppers at 4 am.
Hey DWN, Unc attached this link a little while back. If you haven’t seen it, it’s sobering.
ema wrote:
I would say it means they are stupid and haven’t figured out what is best for themselves in the long run. The reason why words like “good” and “bad” exist do not straight off lead to the conclusion that there are bad or good people, to me. People can do things that to others appear good or bad, but the reson behind those can definitely be something other than inherent goodness or evil in those people.
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I am not trying to advocate irresponsibilty for actions. I am not sure what I am trying to get at. Maybe that I believe more in stupidity, ignorance and thoughtlessness than I do in evil.
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Maybe I should just go to bed. No one is either evil or stupid whilst sleeping. I think.
Further proof of why you will never find me near a stadium. Unless they bring back death matches. I might, POSSIBLY, leave to watch idiots kill themselves before their jaded audiences. Just to say I have witnesses the lowest form of entertainment.
Matt, I have born witness to mosh pits. There is way more space between people in them than in a crowd that is moving you forward because if you stopped you would die. Pits may be more thrashing and violent than a moving crowd, but it bears no resemblance to a crowd of tens of thousands all moving in one direction.
What about a circle pit? Those are very tightly packed and moving in one direction.
not very high quality but click my name for a video of a tightly packed mosh pit….This is way off topic…. lol
You still have the ability to option out of a pit. There is no way out of a stampede. You either go, or you are one of the trampled. It’s like the feeling of a pit, but multiplied by a hundred and again with no way out.
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My whole point is that a lot, if not all of you who have been commenting and laying blame have not been in a situation where you may have been trampled. When you are in a pit, there is a sense of comradery and community. That is not the sense when you are in a giant crowd where tramplings happen.
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However, I am disgusted by the people who refused to leave the store when they were told someone died. There is no excuse for that. Again, not that I’m excusing the crowd’s actions, but trying to explain the feelings they may have had.
Ok. to be quite honest, i was trying to pump some life back into what is designed as an lol page with a ridiculous comparison. and Christine, i understand what you mean, I got fried once for offering a suggestion as to why lawmakers wanted a gay marriage ban, not that i supported it myself.
“I would say it means they are stupid and haven’t figured out what is best for themselves in the long run. ” —
I hear that Danbala, but I don’t understand the reluctance to
label someone bad or good, but stupid is ok? Stupid is bad in
my book. It’s not like people can’t change, there’s nothing
permanent or scaring in saying a person is bad, if they are
behaving badly.
Aha! I made my usual mistake of not making sure we’re talking about the same concept. Many times before have I been in discussions about “good” and “bad” people, and always, those claiming such things exist have seen it is an unchangeable state. This makes it a bit difference.
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Still! I have a problem with saying people are good or bad, because i can’t see or understand all their reasonings behind their actions, and because it to me makes me suspect I am just making things too easy for myself, thereby probably not reaching as good a conclusion as possible in the end (for, say, finding out the cause of why crowds of people can trample some of its mebers to death).
(And, I pressed “Add Comment” too soon. Again.)
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Furthermore, when I say stupid and ignorant I meant that that is a state that can, more or less easily, be changed.
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So I’ll stick to saying a person is doing good or bad things, not that they are good or bad. But I’ll not be so fast in jumping to the conclusion that everyone else is unanimous in their definitions of good/bad people.
“This makes it a bit difference.”
Me, fail English? Unpossible!
I have to admit my closest comparison to being in a mob like this is also from a concert; one time I was at an outdoor concert with a friend and we were early enough that we were near the front. By the time the show started, we were packed in so close by the people behind and around us pressing forward
that we really couldn’t move. I had the joy of standing directly behind Drunk Chick With Ponytail who kept whacking me in the face with her hair. Anyway, at one point, the lead singer yelled something about “Any of the girls out there want to come up on stage and dance with me?” This resulted in the crowd surging forward as a mass, with us in it. Scared the crap out of me, really. I kept thinking “If I fall down, I’m done for.” Couldn’t get my arms up or anything. Anyway, nothing terrible happened and when it eased up a little we both decided it would be smart to ease sideways OUT of the
crush and did so, slowly.
But you know what? If the crowd at that concert had forced me over some poor unfortunate person on the ground, you bet your butt I’d be coming forward to help the investigation of the incident and offering every possible apology to that person and/or their family. I don’t see anyone doing that here.
Are you very closely related to the family, or involved in the investigation? I would presume that people are doing what you write there, probably not everyone who was there though. Some are probably in shock too, if they were close enough to see it happen. It is hard to see anything in a crowd.
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Hmm. My post came across as a bit cranky. What I meant to say was: Hopefully, people are helping, it’s just not hitting the media.
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(So I meant to make a positive post and ended up looking like I was being rather annoyingly provoking. Not my meaning, sorry.)
Well, I hope so, too; maybe I’m being a little too cynical. Given the level of press coverage, I would think that would be mentioned in coverage of the investigation, but I just keep hearing that they’re going over security tapes.
And no offense taken! I guess I should have said I haven’t seen any evidence of that happening based on the news coverage.
Have the option out of a pit, yes. Have the option not to go to a game where you might be trampled, also yes. Goddamn, I am a bitter thing today.
DWN, what I meant by optioning out of a pit is that if you are in it, and feel too overwhelmed, there are people on the side who are not in said pit and you can ste to the side and join the people not thrashing about. When you are leaving a game, there is no where to go to stop. And to be honest, the leaving part is not what I think about when I decide to go to any event.
I’ll give you that but I will also present the fact that past experiences should impress upon you that going to said event has complications that might KILL you as you leave. Unless you are saying that you forget, in which case the problem might be worse than I thought. You said yourself that you experienced being in that hell yet you just keep going.
Sorry, I am out of sympathy today. I will check my stock later to see if I get my daily shipment of Giv-a-damn. Fact remains, you have experienced this before and then keep going.
Again, I will say, best of luck and watch your step.
ema wrote:
Heh, I know this is probably sarting to look silly. I am not trying to flog the proverbial horse carcass here, I really just have discussion related ideas pop into my head all the time.
P
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I thought of another major reason why I don’t like the view of good and evil – good and evil actions. That makes people think they are immune to behaving badly. Because they are not bad persons, and they will never do bad things on purpose (I think this is how at least 95% of the population think, based on absolutely nothing at all except for wild guessing on my part). So they aren’t aware enough that it is possible that they might end up doign things they themselves would label bad, and they certainly aren’t aware that if they go into a crowd situation, the “possible” moves a lot closer to “probable”.
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There is a little bit of the same problem with “stupid”, but it’s far easier to realise, and admit, that you do stupid things now and then, than to say “Yeah, I do bad things now and then”.
Oh no. I’ve only been to one game. Wanted to experience the local flavor on my travels instead of the tour bus of “And this is where gigantic crowds form to see what you know as soccer games.” And I would think long and hard before going to another game because of the risk of my life. I’m not looking for sympathy, and you can look down on me all you want. I just wanted to try an explain a feeling that it seems like a lot of you may not have had, and try to get some people to see that these people had no option to stop, lest they be trampled as well and also probably were not thinking about the television at the moment of going through the door.
Sorry for sounding so bitter. One of those days yesterday and continuing today so I shall refrain from responding at this time.
Honestly? I think the people who refused to leave when they knew a man was dead were being more evil than the ones who trampled him.
I agree with Seth – to a point! There are physics at work here and WalMart SHOULD have known about it – good Lord, how many people come and go everyday in their stores?
If WalMart had thought about it at all, they would have put crowd control principles into place. That they didn’t suggests to me they either 1) weren’t thinking, 2) thought their clientele would not act like that, or 3) didn’t care.
I sense a class action lawsuit coming somewhere.
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I don’t mean to beat the drum of lawsuits, either, but sometimes a big nasty fine/settlement is what it takes as someone else somewhere else on this thread already pointed out.
To be fair, the science of crowd reaction is relatively new. I would have to add to your list the possibility that they simply didn’t know that there are cheap ways of preventing this kind of thing. I mean, I just read about this sort of research a few months ago in Scientific American. Fascinating stuff, they’ve borrowed from Peter Jackson’s LotR crowd modeling software. They can plop sims down in a realistic environment and then blow things up, light fires, or whatever and watch the simulated reaction.
Seth, you were arguing earlier ‘nature vs. nurture.’ As living proof of nature over nurture, I can speak for this. Also, there is plenty of research dealing with adopted kids who go psycho later in life and start mowing people down with machine guns even though they had the best parents they could have.
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I fight with stuff every day that is completely foreign to my adoptive family. Nurture has won out in that I am able to make the right choices because I was TAUGHT to, but that doesn’t negate the fact that there are many times I have to THINK about something that is instinct with the rest of my family. I have autistic tendancies that no one else in my family has. I have weird fantasies that no one else has. I have compulsions that are completely foreign to everyone around me, but more than likely were passed to me through my egg and sperm donors. You can’t just say that people choose to be good and choose to be bad. It’s no more a choice for some people than being gay. There are behaviors encoded on your DNA. That doesn’t excuse the behavior. I was able to overcome because I had very strict parents who showed me how to control anger issues and other obstacles in my path. Some people are just bad. Some people are just good. Most fall somewhere in between, but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that not everything is a choice. Like I said before, that doesn’t excuse behavior, nor should it keep people from being punished. A lack of self-control isn’t a good excuse. As to the severity of good and bad that is encoded on your genetic material, that’s different for different people. Son of Sam, Charles Manson, other sociopathic serial killers had a high predispotition for violence. Other people don’t.
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I guess the shorter version of this post is that goodness and badness are not always a choice. Nature does not always win over nurture, nor does how you were raised always dictate how you act, any more than you can teach a little boy how to act like a girl. Gender neutral raising has been shown not to work.
Wow, froo. You just impressed the hell out of me. The nature/nurture argument is a little silly because it presumes that nature and nurture aren’t intricately interconnected. For instance, there’s a long and short version of the gene to produce seratonin. If you get the short version, AND you have a traumatic event happen between the ages of 8-12, you will suffer from depression. The lady who researched this tested herself and found she had the short gene, but she had a very nice childhood, so she doesn’t have depression.
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They tried teaching gender neutral roles to kids in the kibbutzes (sp?) in Isreal. The little boys still wanted to play with trucks and the little girls wanted to play with dolls, even though the adults tried hard to model gender neutral behavior for them. Your right, it doesn’t work.
I get it right every once in a while
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I just hate it when people try to break stuff down into little pieces to be able to understand it, but in the breaking down, you lose the actual reasons that something is happening. It’s like tearing apart a watch into as many small pieces as possible and then asking someone who never saw the watch as a whole to rebuild it into something they understand. You’ll get a pretty weird looking watch if you leave out the context.
“Deconstructionist” is an insult fit for Parisian cab drivers, IMNSHO.
If one was to look at my family, one would assume that I would end up drinking, at least trying drugs, and most likely smoking as well as going out to bars/casinos as often as possible. I took a puff of a cig when I was maybe seven, coughed and haven’t tried it since. I have drank a couple times, not even enough to be tipsy and I avoid the possibility of being a mean drunk because I don’t want to find out so I don’t drink. I avoid drugs like the plague. I am also a bit of a shut in who dislikes parties, bars, and going to a place where I am somehow supposed to have fun losing money hand over fist.
These are all choices on my part. I have a compulsive personality so I consciously avoid getting started on things like smoking, drug use, drinking, and gambling. I want to protect my family and any/all of those prevent me from doing so.
Then again, perhaps I learned aversion by watching consequences around me. I still feel urges to chemically escape but I push them away and avoid getting in those situations. So I game instead. Which is just trading one addiction for another but at least I won’t get cancer, get indebted to drug dealers, or take a chance at drunkenly beating Lynn. I find I have enough self loathing without those added to the mix.
So yes, Froo, I made my choices too and am happy to see how you chosen to be a good person.
*hugs* I’m glad you made the choices you made! You’re obviously a good man, and have a good family, and you do right by them. That’s all any woman can ask of her man
) Well, and a few other things, but only if they are asked for properly.
Thanks hun, that means a lot to me. *hugs*
That would be fun to play with! Hopefully, WalMart will learn from this especially since the vicitm’s family is now suing them for it.
I heard this on NPR last night driving to choir practice, but cannot find it today on their page.
The problem with your reasoning is that hurricanes don’t have a brain, however humans do, humans should know better, humans can be held accountable.
But, for some reason, a herd has no brain. The only blame you can objectively do is that “no one should place themself in a crowd situation and everyone who does is responsible for the results of the crowd”, but that is assuming that they are aware of how badly crowds can function.
Congratulations, you’ve just made my point!
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I agree with what you’re saying, but on the other hand, like ema said, i avoid crowds like this for a reason. I don’t want to be in the front or in the back. I don’t want to trample or be trampled. But part of that is just claustrophobia The other part is that I don’t really like people very much. Crowds tend to be the worst of the two.
Seth, I know this has nothing to do with your post, but I just wanted to say…you know everything. Seriously, no sarcasm. I am in awe.
Dunno that he knows everything. But between Seth, FrooFrou, rhorho, your good self, DWN, HHNF and a handful of others I think you’d be getting close. Conversations like the above ema/seth/ froofrou is ethics at its finest. Beats seven kinds of snot out of university ethics courses. Love it. No sarcasm at all when I say you are wise guys.
You need to go to a better university.
In bed.
That’s what most people do there, anyway. *sigh* It seems I’ve missed another great discussion due to the fact that I actually have to pay attention to what my students are doing and can’t check out PK on the computer at work. Damn you selfish teenagers! *shakes fist*
I missed the better part of this one as well, so I’ve been trying to catch up. All I can say is, wow. I feel like I’m witnessing a discussion between historical figures–I definitely saw Hobbes’ and Locke’s ideas coming into play there, at least. That was amazing.
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Hey, Jane, whenever something interesting is always happening on here, you can always declare a movie day! : ) What subject do you teach, by the way?
Argh, I should really start proofing these things better before I hit “Add Comment.” Delete the first “always,” please. -_-
“Witnessing a discussion between historical figures” hahahahahahaha.
Oh wait, were you being serious?
Calvin and Hobbes were here? Dagnabbit! I missed them. I hope I can still get into the G.R.O.S.S. club without a personal invitation.
Hey wut?, does the phrase ‘Pearls before swine’ mean anything to you?
I will let the history books judge my actions.
In bed.
Seth – No, zeeba neyba, means nothing to us!
Thanks for that, slan. Love that comic. I was having a really sucky day, and that cheered me up. *hugs*
Hey seth, are you really agreeing that your discussion here approaches the level of historical philosophical figures? Come on now, don’t make me laugh more.
@Kuromisa & Slanagat, yeah, PBS is a really funny comic. Right up there withh ‘Get Fuzzy’ as far as current comics go. It’s no “Calvin & Hobbes” but it’s the equal of, say, “Bloom County.”
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@wut? Depends on the historical figures, doesn’t it? Basically, I’m saying I’ve seen a lot more wisdom on this board than I have in most places. If you don’t dig it, that’s cool. Some people find value in our discussion, some people don’t. Maybe Kuromisa was a little over the top, but she’s young. But if your going to come on here and laugh at her for her exuberance, I’m going to suggest that maybe you’re too stupid to understand the wisdom you’re seeing. Tit for tat…
I also wonder what the old scholars would do if they had the internet back then?
Probably babble on and on online just as they babbled offline in history. Not saying I have any historical import but just like to put that thought out there.
I love the mental image of Socrates and Aristotle arguing online about the Roman Emperor’s new robes, lol.
Eh…over the top, me? Always. I’ve been told I’m easily amused. But I figure that all that means is, I’m never bored. I’ve learned a lot from all of you on here, and I like that. You guys ‘n gals are awesome. : )
Maybe the drinking of hemlock could have been avoided with an anonymous username.
I KNOW nothing. I SUPPOSE a lot. I should really preface everything I say with “Now, consider the possibility that this is so,’ because that’s all I ever do. There is no certainty, ever, and I’m sorry if I come across as more certain than I am.
Took it as read that you aren’t the “I said it so it’s true” type…
It is a terrible thing to be taken seriously. Yes, it can certianly pay off to add “I believe”, “in my opinion”, “I have read” (and give sources) and similar to just about anything one writes or says, in my experience. Even when doing so I have come across people who are angry at me when I’ve been wrong, even if I’ve clearly said “I don’t know but I would assume”.
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You definitely had me fooled, then! But, on the other hand, I’ve heard that only fools are ever certain.
Also, to be honest, there are plenty of things that normal people apparently know that I don’t. Like where I put my car keys. Or when my bills are due. Or what I said I’d pick up from the store on my way home. Dog food? Toilet paper? Who knows. Or why dishes shouldn’t be stacked in the sink (they magically make it into the dishwasher anyway…) Or whether brown shoes go with black slacks. Luckily, I have a wife who puts up with my idiosyncrasies and helps me remember the things normal people have no trouble with.
Eh, my boyfriend is pretty normal but he has trouble with some of the little things you mentioned. Normalcy is overrated anyway.
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They also stomped on the police as they were LEAVING THE STORE WITH THE MERCHANDISE!! So, mostly, it’s lethal consumerism and lack of compassion.
Thank you Charlie Eppes. I appreciate that someone is able to explain this scientifically, instead of “oh these people are horrible”
“Welcome to Earth, Prince of Peace. We offer you the blood of innocents to celebrate your arrival…oh, and because I really, really *need* an iPod.”
I think the true meaning of this holiday is a completely lost cause… : (
The “true” meaning of the winter solstice celebration was lost when the early church hijacked it to begin with, if you want to get technical. ; )
Oh no, winter solstice was about boozing and feasting. We’re doing the same thing now.
So, full circle then, complete with blood sacrifices at midnight?
Midsummer. Dunno about your area, certainly here a series of vicious horse slashings and killings was attributed to witches gathering blood for the summer solstice.
Wow, they kill the poor horses? I didn’t think they did that kind of
thing anymore…
Naw, mostly it was slashings but some died of the injuries. Everything stopped as soon as midsummer was over but they never caught the witches who did it.
If by “witches” you mean “practitioners of Wicca”, big lose.
On the other hand, if you just mean “people who have creepy thoughts and don’t worship the Judeao-Christian God” then please continue the slander.
Thanks Mark, I was about to go into a nerd rage here.
I am also waiting for the slanderous ignorance to stop. Or at least a proper term to be used. Or til I faint from holding my breath too long.
“Witches” is the very word some witches (here, in any case) refer to themselves as. Aberdeen is called “the black city” by “witches” because of the high proportion of “witchcraft.”
I’m not referring to the (few) new-age Wiccans I’ve met. I’m referring to those who follow old, old ways from the ancient past. Not everything “magical” is Wiccan. Not everything that has been preserved was preserved for being good or right.
Please don’t accuse me of ignorance, there was no call for it..
Also not everything pagan is “Wiccan”. My only real problem with Wicca is that (as far as I know and I could be wrong) that it was “invented” (for lack of a better word) in the 50s.
That said, there were old traditions that Wicca borrowed from other places and toned down a bit (including most things dealing with sacrifices or harming other creatures in any way). Most of us probably didn’t realize that *black magic* witches still actually existed. Voodoo and some forms of shamanism have similar kinds of rituals. Even satanists do, though satanic goals are purely
selfish by definition.
Even though there are “old world” witches, I’d still venture to believe that in this day and age, the majority of people who call themselves
witches (whether they be Wiccan, Dianic Wiccan, eclectic, pagan, or Old world or whatever you would call them) probably don’t practice blood sacrifices. It’s possible you know a pocket of them, but they don’t necessarily exist everywhere.
Which witches would those be? The ones I’ve known would faint at the site of *their own* blood, much less a horse’s.
Sacrifices are for harvest festivals. Winter solstice is the last revel before the long winter because we’ve got to save the food. But at least it’s getting lighter outside (except for eddie) so we know spring will come back eventually.
Horray! Some pagan love!
That is a little uncalled for. There are plenty of people who shop at Wally World who AREN’T on welfare or driving government subsidized escalades. I shop there rarely, and usually in the middle of the night, and I am not on welfare and drive a honda civic that I pay for with my own money I earn from working. But to lump everyone into some kind of white trash or poor n**ger or poor mexican or WHATEVER he’s thinking category is just uncalled for.
There is no excuse for trampling people to buy gifts. But there is also no excuse for assuming that everyone who shops there every other day of the year (or even on black Friday) is a piece of sh*t welfare mooching cadillac driving ex-con. That’s just ignorant
Amen!
I have shopped there, a few times, so I’m not saying ALL of them. I didn’t say that, now did I? NOOOO nice assumption, though. And ignorant? I don’t think so, read my reply below, you silly twit.
“I have often wondered why they don’t integrate the welafe office, wal-mart and the county prison so that those people can get all of thier things done in one trip in thier welfare-subsidized Cadillac Escalade/86 Mustang/Camaro/Buick Regal”
So they should just integrate at this one Wal-Mart? You felt this way BEFORE the incident on Friday? About this particular Wal-Mart? I think not. Perhaps you should remember your pathetic arguments before going off half cocked on “silly little twits”.
And yes, your comment is completely ignorant.
Actually, I thought this at the Wal-Mart in my hometown, Bremerton, Wa, when I was there in June of this year. Oh, and it’s a Navy town, so you CANNOT say I’m being racist. This was when I walked out with my 8 yr old sister, to see four people breaking into my car, in the middle of the day, and when I hollered, ‘Get away from my car!” *like they were going to or something*, they looked at me and kept going, while people walked past. I could do nothing but stand there and watch. A couple walked up next to me to watch, no one offered to help, and it was obviously acceptable what they were doing.
We can’t be expected to know your thoughts or your personal life history as it pertains to Walmart. Even taking your experiences into account, your original comment WAS ignorant because it was stereotyping at it’s worst. The least you can do is own up to the fact that you made an unfair blanket statement when someone calls you on it.
I’m sorry – how does being in/from a Navy Town mean that you are not a racist? I don’t see the correlation.
Because I’m a mixed-race Jew. That’s why. And i don’t recall them saying on the news….”and they were all/mostly black” Then that would have been racist. Trashy people are trashy people, no matter what color.
“Oh, and it’s a Navy town, so you CANNOT say I’m being racist.”
You have not explained your point. How does being from or living in a Navy Town mean that you are not a racist? A person can live in any town, city, village, county, pricipality, whatever anywhere in the world and still be a racist. Please explain how Navy Town = not racist.
I’m also trying to get my head around how being a mixed-race jew means she can’t be racist. How am I supposed to make that mental leap without any supporting data?
That is such a childish thing to say, but never fear. You’ll grow up someday. Some people just take longer to mature.
As is your comment about people who are poor enough to be on welfare, which pays barely anything to begin with. The only people driving government funded escalades are the ones who WORK FOR the government. Damn I miss my military benefits. Have seen nothing in the civilian world like them.
Welfare is a government subsidized benefit. Fury lumped the welfare folks who shop at Wal-Mart into the Welfare Subsidized Escalade group. Maybe you should re read my comment, it simply says that not everyone who shops at WalMart is on welfare and not everyone on welfare is some kind of mooching ex-con.
Of which I know very little? Nice assumption. My mother and father both retired from DSHS in Bremerton, Wa. Tell me how little I know, please. I would love to hear how you know more than the offspring of two people who spend 30+ years dealing with welfare people, and I work in the state capitol dealing with the criminal records of ‘impoverished’ people. Racism? Wow, being a mixed-race Jew, I’m actually offended that you would would imply that I’m racist. Seeing as my people know nothing of oppression. Now, go on with your little politically correct feel-good story. I’ll listen, and put on the blinders to the facts.
Yep, racism. You’re capable of it too.
There are just as many Jew hating Jews out there as there are homophobic GLBTQ’s. Basing your prejudice on personal anecdotes =/= wisdom.
Hey stepnerd, forgive my ignorance, but what is the “Q” for? I’ve never seen that added on the the GLBT. And if it’s for “Queer” (which is my guess) who are the queers it’s referring to?
I’m genuinely curious.
I think queer is the catchall for anything else that isn’t hetero-normative.
So in this case, it’s like et cetera?
Ah. I thought so, makes sense. Thanks!
The Q is usually added in Aus – it is for queer. In Aus, queer is a term that non hetro people often apply to ourselves as an empowering term – turning a slur on it’s head. I’m not sure if this is common overseas.
That usage has picked up some steam in the US as well. Cf. the very popular cable TV series “Queer as Folk” (linky).
Thanks. I’ve seen the show, I just never saw the “Q” added on to the GLBT before.
I’m sorry, you don’t get a “get out of racism free” card just because you’re mixed raced and jewish.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Reading that was my morning “WTF?” moment. No matter what a person’s heritage, they can still be racist.
Haha..
“Oh he threw down the Jew card! Everyone back off!”
“Oh yeah, well I’ve got the Native American card.. that trumps Jew, right?”
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That is also ignorant.
Damn, I didn’t even think about that one. I can use it too!
Use away eddie. Use away.
*checks deck of cards for australian aboriginal card*
Oh thank god I didn’t lose that one. That’s the end all be all of “I’m not a racist because I am …” cards.
No, no.. Native American. I’m only an immigrant to the land of Oz.
He? *checks pants* No, sorry.
Well you have to admit that your name is rather ambiguous and we have no way of determining your gender.
Umm, actually I felt it was quite obvious that she is a woman… “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” It is commonly misquoted as “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” The only question is, who scorned her so?
You and your accurate quotations… I will get you, my pretty, and your little literacy filled brain too!!!
It’s from ‘The Mourning Bride” by William Congreve… even the proper citation for the quote. Most people think it was Shakespeare.
I know the quote, but it also could have meant she is a man who got burned by a woman he scorned… And now wears it as a badge to remind himself that women can be furious when scorned.
In all my 27 little years, I have never seen it used in that context in modern times. I have always seen it used to describe women or by women as a warning. It isn’t something I can see a guy using nowadays for a username since usually it is the woman detailing that has been scorned nowadays.
Also on a side note, men today with any kind of literary sense already know that women can be furious when scorned so we wouldn’t need the badge. ; )
Well, I did correct my comment. It was just an assumption, an incorrect one, based on.. I dunno really.
On your side note, I haven’t met many men with literary sense, so the ones I’ve met tend to use it to remind themselves that women are bitches. *shrug*
That’s just how the world works I guess.
Women are bitches and men are dogs… It actually balances out in a creepy karmic sense.
I always say “Women are crazy and Men are stupid”. That’s what I’ve observed at any rate. That’s why I don’t date women anymore, the last one tried to kill me and destroy my life. Then she turned around and tried to ingratiate herself upon me. It was very creepy. I prefer the stupidity of my dear husband to the craziness. I’m surprised he puts up with my craziness.. How stupid of him! Hahahaha.
But yes, it does balance.
HHNF is sort of the other side of the coin from an old friend who named the favorite blade of his collection “Ungrateful Child.”
Let’s see who picks that one up…
I feel all the more sorry for Lynn. I am definitely male with male needs and urges. However, I also have stereotypical emotional craziness usually attributed to women. So I am stupidly crazy… Poor woman. However, I suppose they temper each other out since I don’t try to destroy her or kill her.
Now I wish I was literate enough to get that Ungrateful Child reference. Sounds like a good name for a blade. For some reason I am imagining the Fangs of the Serpent from Conan…
Slanagat, is it a reference to being sharper than a serpent’s tooth? King Lear, right?
Aaaaaand dissimilitude gets it! The lovely rho^2 will open curtain #2 and show you what you’ve won!
It’s not a WalMart gift card, is it? *looks for body armor*
… Ambiguous?
“Hell Hath No Fury like a Woman Scorned…”
I kinda thought everybody knew that. I just thought it meant she was an angry chic. Which can be fun if you ask me. *hugs HHNF*
We must’ve posted at exactly the same time, cause yours came up as soon as my browser reset after posting… but I was first. *smiley*
Ok, ok.. I give!
)
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Yes, I know the quote and have even used it many times. I just made the incorrect assumption.
Oh, my bad.
“SHE threw down the Jew card! Everyone back off!”
“I still have the Native American card and that still trumps Jew, right?”
You’re still ignorant.
She’s just a child. I thought I knew everything at 23 too.
Ok…I’ve been reading your responses and have to step in here…I am in the Socail Work Field and work with young men (14-18) who are adjudicated either Dependant or Delinquent. I have been in this field for quite a while and seen every race, creed and socio-economic background send young men into our program. Believe it or not, FAMILIES of ALL KINDS HAVE PROBLEMS!!! These are not just “impoverished” kids with criminal records…
I hope your “I’ll put on the blinders to the facts” statement was meant to be sarcastic; however, I get the sense from your comments that there’s some truth to it. That’s a very sad existence. No wonder you’re coming off as bitter toward groups of people that you really don’t know.
And by the way, just because your parents had experiences does not make those experiences yours. My father fought in WWII, that doesn’t mean I know what war is truly like…
I know a lot of racist Jews, racist blacks, racist whites (and I don’t like that term to begin with), racist Hindus, I could go on. Being half a Jew doesn’t absolve you from being called a racist when you have clearly made some racist comments.
once again….assuming you didn’t get it the first time, I don’t recall ANY of the media adding…”and they were all or mostly black.” how the hell would i know what color they are? Are YOU saying that everyone there was black, and that it is a segregated area? Now THAT would be racist.
I don’t see what that has to do with the point I was trying to make. I don’t knwo what race any of those people were. I’m saying your comments have come across as racist and that being half a Jew doesn’t magically make you not racist.
Every “class of people” has led to the current economy. I wonder how many things purchased that day were absolutely essential. I’ve always considered WalMart the anti-christ in our trends. Everyone has to have more. The retail frenzy called Christmas is just sad. The gift giver feels good (about themselves when they give the gift), the store’s happy, China is happy. Does no one see that this is how we got in this current mess? Predatory marketing only works on predatory shopping.
People who live in that area? You mean the white, college educated, white-collar families with incomes around $80K/year? (Which, even with the higher cost of living in Long Island, is pretty good and near the county median.)
http://www.muninetguide.com/states/new_york/municipality/Valley_Stream.php
http://homes.point2.com/Neighborhood/US/New-York/Nassau-County/Valley-Stream-Demographics.aspx
Your ignorance regarding the profiles of typical TANF recipients is also showing (it hasn’t een “welfare” for decades now).
I miss the days when it was een… Thank you for the link, too. As a resident and citizen of a country many many miles away, it truly made my day. Forgive our ignorance, and feel free to stamp your little feet when someone ever generalises…
My favorite part here is that the median income for people under 25 is 55k. I don’t know how accurate it is but it kinda makes the bile rise in my throat.
Nobody on welfare is driving an Escalade, that’s a right wing myth. This kind of ‘rich lazy welfare bum’ mythology is real class warfare in action. The true welfare bums are the wealthy folks getting most of the tax breaks, as well as the social benefits that their taxes are supposed to be paying for. You come across as a real elitist tool when you parrot back owning class propaganda.
Brilliant.
seth,
i know picking a fight with you without proof is just dumb. but i got to this time. around where i’m from we do have welfare people driving escalades. the number 1 case (that actually got national press) was lebron james’ mom buying him an escalade when he was still in high school (in 2003). she was living in the projects, he was on a scholarship to a pretty nice private school because of basketball, and she managed to get a loan based on his future earnings and bought him an escalade.
they lived in the projects, she was on welfare, her kid went to a private school and he drove an escalade.
that’s just the one version that is easily verifiable (even though i don’t have it right now). but it happens more times than i care to count around here. i’m driving a 10 year old SUV through neighborhoods where it’s all projects and welfare and i’ve got the worst car in the area…
Okay, welfare did not subsidize Lebron’s Escalade. His sports skills did. And the fancy cars you see in the projects belong to drug dealers, not welfare recipients. Try again.
I thought that was pretty much a given about the fancy cars being the drug dealer ones?
Sadly, and I’m not trying to be argumentative this is just something I see in Waukegan, some of the drug dealers are on welfare. This is because they have no taxable income and can show proof that they aren’t working, so they get things like food stamps and section 8 housing.
While I don’t think it’s the “epidemic” people make it out to be, there are people who abuse the system and it REALLY SUCKS.
There will always be a few abusers of ANY system. Doesn’t everybody has a co-worker that comes in at 8:07 every day because the clock will bill the quarter hour as late if he gets there at 8:08? The problem is, many people, particularly politicians and pundits with an agenda, demonize the ENTIRE system, because of a few bad eggs, and their followers buy their argument hook, line, and sinker, that it’s the SYSTEM to blame, and not the individuals.
I agree, completely. It’s easier to make the people look bad than to admit that the system is flawed and needs re-hauling.
Especially when they can’t afford the lawyers to sue half the damn country for slander and libel.
Min, every time I read one of your comments, I move a little closer to the hetero end of the Kinsey scale!!
Hey charro, my dad grew up in Waukegan!! I still have some family out that way!! (and no…they’re not in the drug trade
)
Wow. Small world. Your dad grew up in Waukegan and I grew up in Tucson where ema is.
I’m not in the drug trade either. I just watch it from my front door.
Come visit! We’ll plot Wal-Mart lady revenge and eat cookies.
Cool! I’ll bring the Taser and Cattleprod…will there be milk with the cookies?
I’ll supply the milk since there is a 66% chance that you will forget it ;o)
seth,
i invite you to come to cleveland and drive down kinsman ave between e 55th and lee rd… you’ll see more expensive cars than the area can support drug dealers. when more than half the cars are nice expensive SUVs, i highly doubt half the people down there are dealers (simple supply and demand will back that up).
and lebron james did NOTHING to subsidize his hummer (eddie corrected me, it wasn’t an escalade). his mother got it for him as a present, with her money, while she was on welfare. if he had blown out his knee in the last game of the season (which he was incidentally suspended from because of receiving gifts) he wouldn’t have been drafted by the NBA and wouldn’t have gotten an incredibly lucrative contract and signing bonus. without that money coming inf from the contract, how do you think that car would have been paid off? with the same money mom had when she got it… welfare.
Really? How do you know, have you been doing surveys? Checking tax returns? Asked anyone at the ‘welfare’ office for data? Or are you simply making unsupported assumption after unsupported assumption in order to defend your world-view?
One could ask the same question concerning your “drug dealers” comment.
there is at least some data there, i’ll have to find the book, but basically interviews with drug dealers where they admit to getting really expensive cars, particularly the recruiters of foot soldiers in order to make the drug dealing life seem more glamorous
i don’t really have a world view about welfare. i know people who have been on welfare who didn’t abuse the system, they were just in need. hell, my parents used WIC for my brother and i when my dad was laid off when we were little. but when mom doesn’t work, gets welfare, uses my tax money to buy groceries and then manages to get her son an expensive SUV that there was a possibility they’d never be able to pay for on their own… it pisses me off.
plus, which part of my previous comment were you asking if i had surveys about? the fact that she bought the car? the fact that she was on welfare? the fact that he was suspended from games? the fact that that specific area of cleveland is full of ghettos and projects? the fact that there are way too many fancy cars there to only “belong to drug dealers”?
i guess i’m confused.
I was referring to this line, “you’ll see more expensive cars than the area can support drug dealers.” You implied that everyone on that block must be on welfare, and that was how they could afford the fancy cars. Drug dealing are only one possible reason other than welfare that they could afford those cars. Maybe they actually work at some productive job and actually, you know, earned the money for the cars? You don’t know. You assume.
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I wasn’t saying you have a particular world view regarding welfare, even though you sure seem to. I don’t know what your world view is, I just know that most people fit the facts to their world view, not vice versa. Maybe you feel that you deserve a fancy car more than ‘those people’ do, and so you have to invent reasons why they don’t deserve it?
Well you could technically ask yourself why a person who can legitimately afford a car like that would live in the projects. It can’t be for some kind of magical tax break or rent break.
Perhaps you are asking a too selfish rhetorical question. I don’t think it is a matter of Shortright thinking they deserve more than somebody else. They are probably just questioning the ability of somebody in the same shitty boat as themselves being able to afford more when that income would better be reflected in better housing if the money was legitimately gained.
You are making the assumption that people earn everything they own. Even you thought they were gaining money illegally. So why is Shortright’s assumption any less realistic or true than yours? Do you live in that neighborhood? Can you make that judgment call? I see you saying they are earning it. Shortright, who actually lived there and knows these people, states otherwise.
I will take Shortright’s assumption over yours since you are both just assuming and they were actually there.
in terms of the affording a car but not a house. the issue of red lining is still lingering in the system, and statistically only about 5% of loans go to minorities.
I was about to ask something along these lines but I couldn’t formulate a coherent idea. Thanks FaileV : )
thanks DWN…. always nice to have someone sticking up for you when you’re away!!
His comment struck a nerve as he was making a worse assumption than you were about your neighbors. Glad to help.
Since when is asking a question making an assumption? Oh right, when it’s a loaded question that implies a certain answer. Yeah, I don’t always play fair.
It is why I stick around, ready to chew on your bones and the bones of others. I get chewed on, sure, but it is for the greater…. something.
ahh implications. that wasn’t the way it was meant but the way you read it. what was meant was that the neighborhood subsides on welfare (well known fact if you’re from cleveland). there are people who go out and have good paying jobs who live in those aforementioned neighborhoods but it’s much more likely that the money is criminally based. even the mcd’s in this neighborhood have bars on their windows and metal detectors on the door. the crime rate is astronomical and i’m sure that helps support those overly expensive cars also.
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as to my possibly feeling that i deserve a fancy car. nope, i like my car. it’s a freaking tank. can’t break it at all. i bought it and paid for it with my own money that i made from working. my first car i bought at 17 with all my own money too. i’ve never had anything handed to me and with that i didn’t get any sense of entitlement to nice things. if i want nice things, i save my money and i get them. i work full time and also own my own company which keeps me up late almost every night trying to put in a full days work there too. but i do that because there are things i want and i’m going to get them the RIGHT way.
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be honest here… how many 23 year olds (besides celebrities and athletes) do you know who work full time, own their own company, pay all their own bills, have NO credit card debt (only college) and are buying houses? i’m doing just fine for myself. i don’t need to make excuses why i should have something that someone else does.
We need to get married. I’m 23, I was a Microsoft intern at 17 *Halo-w00t*, own my own performance shop, Full Throttle Motors, now work for the state capitol in Olympia, Wa. Own my own home and seperate property, never use credit, have never depended on state assistance *even though I’m paid by the state, does that count?* Graduated at 16, etc. Both my parents retired from DSHS, and I know all the ins and outs of welfare people.
sorry HHNF…. i’m a chick too. and i like boys.
Even though we’re dumb?
You worked because someone would hire you. You have a business because people will be your customers. You could just as easily have had no job and not been able to make the business work out. You can’t possibly believe that everything you have is due to your own efforts alone and not also owing to luck or to unfair advantages you may have if you happen to be of the “correct” race. Like it or not, even people of color and people from certain ethnic groups who do NOT have criminal records working against them have trouble making it because of racism and stupid assumptions.
And a white person with a criminal record has a better chance of making it in life than a black person with the same exact type of record. Fact.
Funny, like I said, being a mixed-race Jew. I’m sure the whole world is trying to hand me things. Hahahah
Nobody likes to think they had unfair advantages. Everyone likes to believe theyb got where they are through nothing more than their own brilliance and hard work. Because of this, people who have achieved more than the average do not like to think the system is unfair. The system must be fair, otherwise, maybe I achieved what I did through unfair advantages. And worse, in order to maintain my self image as a good person, I may feel compelled to do something about the unfairness. And if I do that, I may not have all the fun privileges I have now. So it is much easier to just defend the status quo.
Ruby Payne’s The Culture of Poverty. Everyone should read it.
To clarify, it was a Hummer H2 and from what I was able to determine, his mother was on welfare for a couple of years, but it doesn’t sound like she was a lifer.
you’re right… it was a hummer. my bad. i was going off memory. but his mother was on welfare when she managed to buy him a ridiculously expense SUV that was definitely out of her price range. no matter HOW you slice it she was on welfare and purchased a hummer.
and p.s. she’s not a lifer because her son bought her a house and nice fancy things. up until then she was on it almost his whole life. i graduated HS the same year lebron did… i still remember all the interviews on the news about how he was going to be the next michael jordan, raised on welfare in cleveland by his poor mother who always hoped he’d be something special.
You’re making it sound like she had the cash lying around. SHE TOOK OUT A LOAN. The government did not finance it, she did not come by the money dishonestly–a bank CHOSE to loan it to her. That WAS NOT a governmental decision. That was decided by a BUSINESS.
You’re trying to make this into some kind of proof that people on welfare are there because they’re dishonest, parasitical a-holes and I will not let you do it.
I guess it stands to reason that people on Welfare shouldn’t have access to any type of credit.
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Good call, Dana!
that wasn’t what i was trying to say. people on welfare should have access to REASONABLE credit. credit that it’s possible they will be able to pay back. but when you’re on welfare and living in the projects (which around here only cost about $8 a month) you have no reasonable prospect of paying back an absurdly expensive car. no bank would have given me a loan for that much even though i work full time, have impeccable credit for someone my age, have no debt (besides college) and have the potential to be able to pay it back. when i bought my car i had to fight for the loan i got… yet someone on welfare managed to get a much larger loan with much less collateral or chance of paying it back.
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and dana, if you read what i wrote above you’d see that i don’t think that people on welfare are there because they’re “dishonest parasitical a-holes”. i think they’re in shitty situations and MOST of them are trying to fix that situation. however examples like this are the ones that piss me off really badly.
Horse crap, Seth. HORSE CRAP. At the grocery store I worked at during college, we had a lady drive up in her Caddy (not Escalade, but still) and pay for her groceries with a Lone Star card. Don’t give me the left-wing myth that no one on welfare is a rich lazy bum.
He didn’t say that. His sweeping generalization is the “bling” come from drug dealers. Your sweeping generalization is welfare recipients are gaming the system.
I think you are both right and both wrong but I am too lazy to go look for statistics to prove it.
Yes, he actually did. “Nobody on welfare is driving an Escalade, that’s a right wing myth.”
She didn’t say that all welfare recipients are gaming the system. “Don’t give me the left-wing myth that no one on welfare is a rich lazy bum.”
All she is saying is that it is not true that no one is gaming the system, but she is not saying they all are.
As I said, they are both right and both wrong.
There is always middle ground.
Right. Not everyone on welfare is a drug dealer/scammer, and not every drug dealer/scammer is on welfare. But there are people that abuse the system. There always will be. Even if it’s only ONE person, that means that you cannot argue that “nobody” is abusing the system.
Was it a new Caddy or an old one? Have you ever *driven* an old Caddy? I have. They suck.
And for all you know it was a gift from someone. My mother was on welfare for most of her adult life (she didn’t raise me), and she once had a car in that class of vehicle–don’t remember make or model–and it WAS a gift.
Brand new, and she was known for bragging that she got a new one every few years.
Okay, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll admit that some welfare recipients may be driving Escalades if you’ll admit that the majority of them aren’t.
As long as a sub-deal within that deal is that you admit that there are far more moochers in the system than people like to admit
)
like I said, parents retired from DSHS. Several of the people that my mother did house visits for drove Escalades. Please tell me you aren’t that blind, to not know that many welfare-recipient drug dealers drive the most expensive cars.
yeah. Welfare-recipient *drug dealers.* Not normal welfare recipients. If the government won’t keep tabs on these people how is it the fault of the ones who aren’t dealing?
Or buying for that matter.
True that. Not everyone on welfare is somehow involved in drugs, either the buying or the selling.
Really? Damned, all my incentive to become a wellfare-taker just vanished!
(
Oh no Dan, you can still be on welfare AND have drugs!
But then I had to work for it. I kinda assumed it’d be automagic. NOthing is ever perfeect.
/
“Here are your food stamps, your section 8 housing and your ounce of coke. Anything else for you today?”
LOL
LOL! “Coke? Damn! Are you out of meth?”
Wow! You’re comment has left me absolutely speechless. Want to take your foot out of your mouth now? You show tremendous classiness. /sarcasm/
Hey Eddie, i agree. Maybe “Fury” might want to learn the “Karma is a bitch” mantra I described below…
By the way, “Fury”, The Stereotype College Called, your master’s degree is ready and waiting…
Oh, you didn’t hear? They decided to reject his thesis and thus will only get a degree in being an asshat.
Lol!
I have it, kthx.
And stereotypes are only made possible by the extensive knowledge that a certain type of people act a certain way.
Nope, fraid not, try again. Here’s a little secret: until YOU work for a welfare agency and can come back with stories of YOUR OWN and not filtered through your parents’ biases, your entire argument is epic fail.
I did work there, while interning for Microsoft, as well for 15 months. It was closer to home, I got more hours there, I still had time to do my night job Micro, and it was only an hour ferry ride from the college in Seattle. So yes, I have my own stories. Thanks for the advice, though.
I was about to write my own boigraphy, but then figured I needn’t, because you already know my life story.
Even then, confirmation bias will likely cause Fury to remember the events that confirm her(?) bias and forget the events that don’t. Because of confirmation bias, even personal anecdotes are no substitute for real data.
Didn’t anyone ever tell that stereotypes are not valid for identifying groups of people? That’s been the problem with the whole terrorist issue. Just because someone is Muslim doesn’t make them a terrorist. Just because someone is a minority doesn’t mean they lack an education. Just because I live in Australia doesn’t mean I run around saying “G’day, mate”. You see where I’m going with this?
You mean that even though someone is Jewish.. they CAN be capable of racism?? *boggle*
I believe you once said you were bisexual. Let us from now on use cultural stereotypes of bisexuals in all our interactions with you. While we’re at it, we’ll treat you unfairly using Jewish stereotypes and mixed-raced stereotypes. How do you feel about that, since you seem to think stereotypes are valid and justified?
And the end result of stereotyping is redlining by insurance companies.
Seems fair to me.
I don’t mind. I’ve dealt with it my whole life, and insults only bother people if the boot fits too well, as with all those people up there.
You bisexuals are all the same. You’re either dirty sluts who can’t make up their mind, or closeted homosexuals who pretend to be normal. And a Jew who owns her own business by 23? Ha. That’s a new one. Obviously you must gouge your customers.
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No, that’s simply silly. What I’ll do is work with what I know about you, and there is a boot that fits very well. A lovely little stereotype. You’re young. And like all young people, you’re arrogant and think you know more than you really do. You aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are. Like many young people, you are smugly self satisfied and harbor undeserved feelings of superiority. You really haven’t demonstrated any remarkable traits here that would make any of your elders sit up and take notice. No outstanding wit, no cogent analysis, nothing but parroting back tired stereotypes and opinions you’ve heard from other people. But don’t worry, like all young people, you’ll grow out of this phase. Maybe in a few years you’ll realize how insufferable you’ve been and finally start to grow up. I hope so, because you’ve sure proven you aren’t nearly as mature as you think you are.
On behalf of my clients, the dirty sluts, I will issue this statement.
*cough*
Sorry, I can’t find the statement. I guess they never wrote as they are still have sex with multiple anonymous partners. Speaking of which, I think I need to be somewhere.
I resent the “all young people” thing. There are several with good heads on their shoulders…
Now, if you say MOST, I’m completely in agreement.
Read further down, I’m trying to make a point to HHNH, I don’t have anything against young people, especially those who post on PK, as most of them seem to be quite smart and funny.
I did read farther down – but thought PK ate my comment so I didn’t make any effort to recant it.
<3
Ah yes. The extensive knowledge of a 23 year old, LOL.
Shoot, and I’m only 19… I must not know anything. I’m not ragging on your comment, it’s just interesting the way people argue on this site to think of them as older than, say, 15? I know that most people here have jobs and families, but I don’t always remember that while I’m typing/reading comments. But seriously, the b!tching and complaining does get annoying. You may not want to answer this, and I might be out of line asking, but how old are you, Seth?
I’m actually not prejudiced against young people at all. I’d rather talk to a smart 15 year old than a stupid 50 year old. I just wanted to give HHNF a little taste of her own prejudiced medicine. I figured she was immune to the bisexual and Jewish prejudices, but the youth one would still get her goat. Of course, now I’ve given the game away and she knows I’m not really serious. I’m 37, by the way.
No way! I had you pegged to be as old as Moses!
P
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Actually, I assumed you were probably in your early to mid 30’s.
I half read this post at first, and somehow I saw “predjudiced against goat”. I felt bad for the goats.
I knew you were joking Seth, if that makes you feel any better. Or would that make you feel worse…? I dunno. But I saw what you were doing at any rate. I thought it was brilliant. The first two lines “You bisexuals are all the same. You’re either dirty sluts who can’t make up their mind, or closeted homosexuals who pretend to be normal.” started to rile me but then I kept going and saw where you were going.
Though, I suppose that is something that doesn’t always happen, some people might just read the first part and not keep going.. Or some people might just half read it and then go on a rant about predjudiced goats.
Don’t get me started about goats! Those losers. When was the last time youmet a goat with a job? Did you know that nearly every goat is born out of wedlock? Not to mention the smell, can’t they be bothered to bathe? And their atrocious table manners, I mean, who eats a tin can, really? Goats, bah!
Hey, I like goats. Poor goats. Now I am sad.
My only complaint about goats is the trouble separating them from the shep – and the Scotsmen from both of them, that takes a restraining order.
From the sheep, too. Stupid unscalable comment window.
Bwahahahaaa… I now remember my McGregor joke.
Oh, they have that problem in Scotland as well? I thought it was just New Zealand.
Hey! It’s only Scotsmen from Aberdeen. They even admit it. Once, their football team was in town and someone yelled “Ah, ya sheep-shagger” and the footballer turned round and said “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.” I know folk who’ve been up there and apparently there are NO SHEEP in the fields! What sort of Scottish city has no sheep in the fields? The general consensus here in Central Scotland is that they are all either in bedrooms or evacuated for their own safety.
.
They speak funny up there too….
Well, you certainly seem to live up to the stereotype of ’spoilt brat.’ You have people on this site from all over the world responding to your posts as if you are behaving like a churlish, arrogant, immature, precocious, judgemental child who takes her privileged upbringing and charmed life for granted.
Has it ever occurred to you that you might want to look at that?
Actually, I live by that Wal-Mart, and its location is surprisingly on the border of Queens, NY. Not a very well-fare area. Although I must admit, I was laughing my ass off at the time of the incident while we were still hearing bits and pieces. Although now that more information has come out its less funny, but as breaking news… it was hilarious.
(Cause you just know, people were bitching and complaining that they closed the Wal-mart and not left it open so they could continue shopping.) ^^
Don’t hate on all Valley Streamers! We aren’t all animals.
I actually live in that area and the class of people that shop there is not like that of many Wal-MArts. I shop there and i make over 70,000/year! That area is just full of snobs who can’t wait to get Little Suzie her Jonas Brothers CD for $2.99!
You’re an ass. Sorry we can’t all afford to shop at Whole Foods.
I agree. Not only is it a living NIGHTMARE for those of us who actually WORK at a WAL-MART, but to see some people who don’t work there, but shop there make fun of things like this, it’s cruel and wrong. And, he was holding the doors. The pregnant lady was off to the side. It just goes to show that not only are Black Friday shoppers moronic and greedy, people who put things like this up are equally unintelligent.
Also, the welfare in Texas is sadly better. I see people coming into my store with great looking clothes, with their hair done and nails in perfect condition. I work at Wal-Mart and I have none of those things.
Maybe, someone should really go out and tell kids what Christmas is really about: the birth of Jesus Christ.
tasteless, seriously bad form and should be removed
no, it’s not funny. and never will be… but humour may not be the point of it. it’s certainly made is all think about how greedy people can be etc.
perhaps that was the intention.
Thank you, I understand, but this was still totally tasteless
I don’t think this will ever be funny. It is more like a dark satire or somber thought. It is not funny in the way that “A modest Proposal” is not funny
See, I think “A modest Proposal” is a little funny.
yeah, I thought the same thing as soon as I read it
Not even close to funny.
someday we will all be able to look back at this pic and LOL…well cept that one guy who got trampled
Yes, it is too soon – This didn’t even happen 1 week ago….
Sobering…..
Too soon? YOU make the call! GO!
I worked my retail job both Friday and Saturday and it was all anyone could talk about. Everyone was nice and calm, too. I don’t work at any major retailer like Wal-Mart though, thankfully, but it was nice to see people coming in and actually paying attention to such horrible events and learning from them.
No toy is worth the life of another human being.
Apparently that is not true, as three people died of shopping-related incidents on Friday. They might feel sobered now, but it’ll probably be the same shit next year. : /
People were just dyin’ to get in!
Killing to get in, ekshually.
We were shopping at a WalMart in Pa. on Friday and my 13-year-old daughter was standing in the electronics dept looking at i-pods when a woman ran over her right foot with a loaded shopping cart. My daughter (who is a timid creature) didn’t yell or csay anything, and this woman just kept going!! I had my back turned and didn’t see anything, but another woman saw it and chased the first woman down and told her what happened…her response was “So?!”.
Unfortunately for us, the woman left the store before their “crack security staff” could get her name…
Turns out my daughter’s foot is broken, and she’ll be in a cast for Christmas.
That? Sucks. *grrrrrr*
I’m sorry for you and your teenager, mothergoose.
Thanks, grunt. She’s a good-hearted kid and the doctors gave her a green and red cast just for the holiday, so she’s having fun with it…I went back and bought her the i-pod later that night…HEY!!! Maybe if I get my foot run over by someone while I’m looking at a new Lexus…hmmmmmmm
Green and red? Awesome! Has she gotten many people to sign it yet? When I broke my ankle a few years ago, that was my favorite part.
-
I’m glad she’s okay…well, mostly okay.
She actually has a very good friend who is an incredible artist (well, as incredible as a thirteen-year-old can be) and she drew the Grinch with a loaded-sleigh (and the little dog with the reindeer antlers) overlooking Whoville on it…
Not to sound like a litigious prick, but sue.
Seriously, walmart will hand over security tapes. This lady assaulted your child. I wouldn’t let it stand. Seriously, if the lady hit your child with a 2×4 and broke her arm would your reaction be subdued?
I second this, mothergoose. At least look into having your medical bills covered. It may not have been intentional assault, but she was alerted to what she had done and walked away from the responsibility.
We actually contacted our attorney last night…They have the incident on tape but the big problem is going to be getting this woman’s name. I don’t think we can sue WalMart (it was an accident in their store, and they weren’t neglegent in any way (I think)), but even if we do sue someone, it wouldn’t be punitive…we would just want the medical costs covered.
I’ve never been one of those litigious people either, but I was thinking like you in that if she’d hit my daughter with her car and drove off…
Without a name for the woman, it’s going to be tough going. And you’re right, there’s really no liability on Walmart in that situation; the only point in naming them as a defendant would be to get them to use their infinite corporate powers to identify the shopper (you just know they could if they HAD to!). Although their failure to prevent her from leaving before you could find out who she was could present a negligence issue, I guess, assuming you alerted them promptly.
Sorry to hear about your daughter’s foot, but her cast sounds cool!
I’m not one to yell lawyer either but that’s just inexcusable.
One thing you might be able to do – if it was a loaded cart you should be able to identify many of the items in the cart. Then I’m sure the register tapes will show the purchases for those items and if the lady paid with a card you could track her that way. They also have cameras over the registers show you should be able to match them up as well. Just hope she did pay with a card.
Should be another tape showing where/when she checked out, where she likely payed with a credit card.
That’s exactly what I wanted to say.
Depending on how she paid for her stuff, they may be able to cross-reference the transaction and get a name from it
If she paid with a credit card and they got her on the security camera it’s a possibility.
Actually, if your lawyer doesn’t want to sue Walmart, you may want to take the case to another attorney. Businesses are usually negligent when they allow customers to commit crimes against other customers, especially in a crowded store with ’security officers’, and a good lawyer can make the case.
If you feel vaguely dirty about that, think of it this way: if, next year, Walmart has a better crowd control policy because they spent too much money this year settling suits from people who got hurt, then something very good came out of it.
I hate that this is the only good way to make businesses change their practices, but the only alternative is direct government intervention, and only hippies and communists want that.
I’m with Rafiq on this – I’m not usually one to yell “lawyer” but bad behavior needs to have consequences.
They probably won’t even be able to prosecute people that ran over the guy who DIED. Security tapes exist, but identifying the people is the problem.
Well, it’s simpler when you have one person you’re trying to identify
instead of a mob. If the security video actually shows this woman with a cart full of identifiable purchases and a time and date stamp, store purchase records should be able to narrow it right down unless she paid cash or left without buying her cart full of stuff.
Also with the mob stampede thing even if you can ID the people there’s a big question of to what extent they were actively shoving their way forward or just being propelled by those behind them, making prosecution for an actual criminal act more unlikely to succeed. (Much as I would love to see that entire mob be walked over on a regular basis by an NFL team’s defensive line.)
beat me to it. that’s what i get for not refreshing the page before commenting!
I tried to post this earlier, but it didn’t work..so if this is a repeat, sorry. I’ve always tried to live by the mantra “Kharma is a bitch.” So, as much as I’d like my pound of flesh from that woman who ran over my daughters foot…Even if we can’t identify her from the video (and by the way, thanks to all for the advice), KHARMA IS A BITCH, and somehow she’ll wind up getting hers…
in mothergoose’s case it’ll be pretty easy to track the woman on the security tapes from the electronic department to the checkout counter and then see what time her purchase was made then check it against all the credit card recipts from the day.
if the cart was full enough to be heavy enough to break a girls foot, i doubt she paid cash.
unfortunately in the case of the guy being trampled, it’ll be a lot harder to track the individuals who did it through the store and then to the check out and then to their receipts.
On the other hand…I’ve always lived by the mantra “Kharma’s a bitch.” And while I’d like my pound of flesh from the woman that ran my daughter’s foot over…
With an attitude like that she is bound to end up in a world of hurt
at some point. But I do hope you can find her and make her pay at
least for your medical.
Mmm, violence. Sweet, retributive violence….
*ahem* Sorry, what? Did I say something?
Damn, where’s DWN and the rest of the vigilante squad? We need to re-make Roadhouse at some local retail establishments…
There was a fist fight and some pushing and shoving where I work. (not Wal-mart) I’m told there were like 900 people lined up. They were told to get back in line and the police were called about the fight. They I guess were more civilized after that and walked at least until they were inside the store. There was some running inside once they were in a ways, but at least after the initial altercation they kept it mostly under control. I’m just grateful I didn’t start until 8 when the worst of the initial wave had played itself out.
I’ve been busy preparing to hate people more and more as the holidays get closer and my disposable income becomes less and less. Also, my patience with people who can’t figure out basic decency is getting thinner and thinner as it gets colder.
Disclaimer/For the dim: Basic Decency is very simple. Don’t be a jackass. If you need an explanation of this, I will save up to visit you with a bat with nails through it and give you a very thorough explanation. You won’t learn anything but I will feel better.
RUN! He’s got a piece of wood with a nail in it!
Damn right you better run because your knees are first…
Wow um. That’s a little uncalled for.
Jackasses make my brains bleed. If I have to save up for a trip and the hassle of getting a bat with nails in it that balances just right, I am surely not going to be stupid to let them get away.
I made a joke about beating somebody to death with a nailbat. It didn’t magically get any worse than it was. I simply responded to what you said in the same tone I used in the first place. I am not making a trip for you as you do not meet the criteria of jackass. Don’t get your undies in a bunch.
Don’t wear undies. But thanks for the clarification.
*warily opens arms for a hug* Hugs?
… *hugs and sighs* Thanks, I needed that.
Now I have to update my list of people who are not going to die brutally and slowly by my hand.
Well, thanks. Now I can update my list of people who want to brutally and slowly kill me.
Good, cuz my name being on there is a typo.
Oh.. you’re right. This person has two “x”’s in their name. Who the hell is impersonating you DWN?
He was using the generic you, not the particular *you, biznitch!*
The “royal you”? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
No, the royal biznitch! X-D
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! What is it about people that shop at Wal-Mart? Is there a sign out there that says “Leave brain and manners at door”, that can only be read by people whose IQ is below a certain level?
That is terrible. I am very sorry for your daughter.
Thanks…
Sorry, I should have said “the vast majority of people who shop at wal-mart”. Not trying to put you down, I was just shocked and not typing clearly.
I also try to go there rarely and in the middle of the night to avoid the throngs of stupid people like the lady who ran over your daughter’s foot. I probably would have beat her with her own shoe if she did that to me/someone I love. I’m told I have poor impulse control. Which is another reason to stay away from Wal Mart.
I was saying thanks about the sentiment for my daughter, but I agree…I had to truly “enhance my inner calm” when it happened…my first thought was helping my daughter…my second thought was, “seek and destroy”…
Mommy missile…armed!
Deadly, them…
And highly accurate when used properly…
Ah, well you are welcome. Sometimes I re read what I type and think to myself “wow that sounds kinda bitchy”. The “…” made me feel as though you saw it as some kind of backhanded apology.
Glad to clear it up.
Now that you have enhanced your inner calm.. GO SEEK AND DESTROY!
When something like this happens in my life, one of my first thoughts tends to be “and here I am without any piano wire”.
@Charro, I’m with you, my impulse control leaves much to be desired. It’s why my friends don’t let me drive anymore.
I really shouldn’t be allowed to drive either. But I do. Actually, I really just shouldn’t be allowed to drive in Chicago rush hour. Other times I am able to not rage.
Agreed, I’m in the outskirts of Philly. City of brotherly love my ass…
*used to work at wallyworld*
It’s not a sign it’s a ray, it zaps about 1 in every 3 incoming customers and nullifies all brain activity for 2-12 hours. It helps with sales.. the dumber you are the more you buy. They turn the power up around the holidays so they can effect a higher quantity of people.
Mother goose, I’m very sorry about your daughter’s foot… Unfortunately your daughter is not alone. We had an employee get run over by an old lady. I don’t think anything was broken but if I remember correctly the foot in question was damaged.
AH-HA! I knew it. Are there certain impervious braine types? Though, if it nullifies brain activity, I assume I wouldn’t remember if I had been affected by one, would I.
Of course there are Impervious brain types… Criminally stupid. Good news is it only effects a portion of your brain, mostly impulse control, and it’s pretty hard to know if you’ve been effected… I mean… clearly in order to get away with it there are no real or effectual lasting marks… You can grow a tolerance to it though…
*wonders if she is criminally stupid*
I’ve been accused of it only later to be vindicated.
)
I prefer to think of myself as criminally insane anyway. ;o)
Do you have any cheaply-made electronics you don’t really need and don’t remember purchasing? Or large quantities of processed food items you don’t normally eat that much of (though that could be Costco…I believe they share technology with Wallyworld.)
Cheaply made electronics yes.. But they aren’t from wal mart.
Maybe that’s why I forget to buy milk about 66% of the time…maybe I should wear a “tin-foil hat”
Y’know, that’s not a bad idea…at the very least, people might make way for you in those crowded aisles. On the other hand, you might make some new friends you’d rather not have. : )
If you want to not make friends with the crazies, wear the tinfoil hat, but flap your arms constantly as if trying to chase away flies and keep muttering things like “The plague is upon us” and “Death to American Idol”.
LOL!! This is a good idea… I like that! and For some reason that reminds me of when my friend (who worked in photo along with me) Tried to find the last name “microwave” in the drawer (no he’s not touched…. jsut a jerk)
Yes, I believe there is. I remember one time, I was trying to grocery shop there, and two women (customer and employee) were yakking away, so I said excuse me, politely. They each moved about 2 inches. I paused, waited about 20 more seconds staring at them, finally said, “Excuse me!’ more forcefully, and they moved, saying I didn’t have to be so rude. Ohai, politeness got me a gap not even an anorexic (which I definitely am NOT) could fit through.
I hate going to walmart.
That’s awful!! Your poor daughter, it must have hurt something terrible.
What did that lady have in that cart that could break someones foot? Was she
buying bricks!? I won’t even go to Walmart unless it’s really really early in the morning and not many people are there. The only thing I get there is pet supplies anyway.
Yeah, the cart was pretty loaded down. It probably didn’t help that my daughter was wearing “Crocs” either…
Ouch!! Her poor little foot!
Hah! Sue the Crocs people too!! Bwahahahaha!!! ‘Tis the season to be litigious, fa la la la la, la la la la….
Hm bad taste guys, really bad taste.
This is sad. It’s really disturbing to think that the human race is capable of doing something like that, and not even for something important. It makes me sick inside.
I agree. I also feel sick.
I can’t laugh at a man dying while working a crappy shift so other people could save a few cents on plastic shit they don’t need. It’s sad and pathetic.
Not good. . . This is why I don’t go ANYWARE on black Friday. No bargan is that important!
Every year it seems to be something that makes people crazy during the holiday. Reminds me of the Cabbage Patch Kids stabbings in the 80s.
Or Mumbai last week.
.
.
People do some crazy stuff, shonuff
At least in Mumbai, it was for political / national / religious reasons, as misguided as they may have been. It wasn’t for “plastic shit they don’t really need.” (thanks, DW)
Or the XBOX 360 shootings a couple of years ago.
…or those idiots fighting over Tickle Me Elmo
What the hell is so interesting about those damn things? i could see if you were stoned, drunk or under the age of 6, but….. what the hell?
Ugh, those always kind of freaked me out…interactive Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch), fairly awesome. Interactive Elmo, complete with homicidal, angry giggles? Creepy as frack. Furbies fall into the same catagory.
Even stoned or drunk those things irritate the hell out of me.
not cool.
Ok, I’m not a big fan of Wal-Mart, but I don’t blame them for this. I blame the bastards who left their humanity at the door, trading that to save a couple bucks on cheap Chinese crap. Maybe that NY Wal-Mart could’ve implemented better crowd control, but that wouldn’t be necessary if the people in the crowd had some self-control of their own!
Wow, n8! I agree with you 100%! I don’t think that has every happened before…
Heh, now that the election is over, I suspect it will happen more and more. I used to roll conservative, and I still hold true to the conservative ideal of Personal Responsibility. (Perhaps that’s one reason why I left the Republicans!)
Hey now, I’m pretty sure personal responsibility isn’t the domain of a particular political philosophy. It SHOULD be simply a common sense thing. AS we all know though, that’s gone out the window!
Pubbies play it up more, though. If they’re gonna talk the talk, they should at least attempt to walk the walk. I do like the philosophy that it should be common sense, but alas there’s nothing -less- common than sense these days. (Except perhaps courtesy.)
Both are very, very endangered. Probably courtesy the most, but sense not far behind.
….
.
.
Since when do we look to politicians to teach us morals?
They’re there to make sure everyone has the same opportunity for life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.
Make sure people don’t kill me, & get the frick outta my way, Mr. President. That’s all I ask.
Well, not that they should teach us morals, but at least they
should practice what they preach.
n8 – have to agree that personal responsibility is NOT specific to a particular political party. I’m an independent – democratic – libertarian mashup who believes in personal responsibility. It’s crowded in my brain, but the voices are mostly happy….
It’s insane to expect intelligent behavior from a mob.
1) This isn’t the first black friday Wal-Mart has been through, they should have known they’d have a line of people outside.
2) Security should have been corraling the crowd into an orderly line starting the day before, like we see when people line up for tickets for a big show or movie.
I believe Wal-Mart was criminally liable here.
A mob consists of individuals and yes they “should” be responsible for their
behavior. But knowing they probably won’t be, Walmart should probably have
done more. But, the blame should not be on Walmart…
Respectfully I must disagree. Mobs are comprised of people, and people have a responsibility, to themselves at least, to own their behavior. I know I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I were part of a mob that claimed a life over something as trivial as consumer goods. The fact that “everyone else was doing it” just wouldn’t suffice to excuse it. Putting the blame on Wal-Mart only serves to excuse the people in the mob. “It’s your fault for not stopping me” is a defense that I hope never, ever carries the day in a court of law.
True, Wal Mart could have been better prepared. But n8 has a point – “mob mentality” is not an excuse. It’s not a justification. It’s nothing. We live in a “civilized” society and these people gave into uncivilized behavior for a bunch of crap that really is ultimately meaningless.
What I see if Wal Mart had more security and Police protection is The Mob becoming even more unruly, tear gas and rubber bullets being fired and Wal Mart being blamed for hurting the “poor customers who waited so patiently outside all night to peacefully shop”. Sad, but true. If we’re factoring in mob mentality, we have to recognize that mobs get more insane with more control, not less insane.
Walmart failed to provide adequate security frankly. The Nassau Co Sheriff’s are facing tough questions too, as to why they (apparently) left the site after Walmart called for help with crowd control. Because they WERE there, before this happened
mothergoose, I’m sorry about your daughter’s injury. She should beat that “lady” with her cast.
Seriously, we claim to be the “best” species- most intelligent, most evolved- but incidents like this makes me think that maybe we aren’t quite as evolved as we like to think ourselves. But that leads to a few more things I shouldn’t get into…
Last year a woman was killed in a mall here… In addition to that, some floozies somehow managed to take off all of their clothes and proceeded to dance on the tables in the food court. HOW? did they get there? WHY? in the hell did they decide to do that? WTF is wrong with people?!
You mean the “floozies”? It’s because they are encouraged to do that kind of thing
especially if they have any kind of inclination. Just watch TV, it’s everywhere on
the internet, so why not the mall? It’s attention getting for them.
The killing, well women have been stalked and
murdered forever, that’s nothing new… We only claim that we are the best
species because we can see our own behavior and attempt to change it, not that
our behavior is the best, it’s obviously not.
Yeah.. Girls Gone Wild comes to mind. Bunch of trashy whores if you ask me. Ugh. It really bothers me to think that men actually LIKE that kind of whore-ible behavior. I can’t stand crap like that. GAH.
I can dig slutty behavior but not the drunken displays that the GGW series have. I don’t watch them. If I am going to get porn, I will get porn. GGW just seems like a sad cope out. But whatever, I never said people were smart. Though I will stand up for sexually aggressive women with style. Table dancing in a food court has a critical lack of style.
At least the people in porn movies are getting paid. I think the drunk girls on the GGW’s get a t-shirt or something. Pathetic lack of self-esteem to sell your image for someone’s masturbatory pleasure for so little compensation.
Didn’t that guy finally get busted for that crap anyway? Taping underage girls or something?
He did but he’s out again.
Not only a lack of style but a lack of common courtesy for the people, many
with children around them who may not be in the mood to see naked.
Mothergoose
Several years ago, I broke my knee in a wal-mart slipping in some baby shampoo that someone had put on the ground a moment or two before I slipped in it. It was no fault of wal-mart, but they were very willing to pay my medical bills and something more on top to keep it out of court. I think this is a similar situation. You were on THEIR property. Therefore, they have liability and responsibility to keep their customers safe. It’s the exact same thing with liability insurance most home owners have, so if someone is injured on their property, even if it is not their fault, the medical bills can be covered. I think you have a serious chance to at least get your medical bills out of wal-mart, and then they can go after the crazy woman who did it. That is what liability insurance is FOR, to pay for things like this, and you know wal-mart has to have liability up the wazoo. Whatever you decide, I wish you luck.
Thanks for that. Our attorney is talking to WalMart reps tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll ask him to bring that up!
Worth a shot, although a slip-and-fall like that is different from the direct type of injury from another customer you’ve got here.
Great point, I forgot about that!
This was in poor taste.
And this is why I’m jewish.
Oh, please don’t make me drag out the Jewish Shopkeeper Stereotype and beat you about the head and shoulders!
What, saving pennies and looking at everything a couple hundred times before buying it? Haha. Puh-leez, I already know. But walmart is below us, so at least we don’t kill the security there. (total sarcasm, inviting flame)
Hey I’m not Jewish and I’m great at finding bargains, and arguing with companies to get the price down (or delete incorrect charges from my account). Hell, I spent two years of my life arguing with cell phone companies for my customers. Why should you guys get all the cred?
Because there’s never been a Jewish mob that hurt anybody? (Click my name, based on real-world events)
seriously, you guys need to lighten up. It’s a joke. Check out John Stewart sometime. He’s my god.
I agree. It’s not all that funny on a personal basis, but it’s got the potential to be funny.
Oh, absolutely. I love Jewish folk, they are some of the most fun people you can ever hang with. I’m just saying, let’s not act like they’re all saints or something. Hell, look at Meyer Lansky, the guy Hyman Roth was based on. He was pretty hardcore.
Who was acting like a saint? Joke Joke Joke Joke Joke Joke. I figured someone would notice the obvious intentional hypocrisy and laugh. Eh, never mind. I quit. Let’s talk about death and destruction, are ya with me?
Holy crap!!! A jewish gangster?!!! sweet
See above. And watch the Godfather movies. “Your father did business with Hyman Roth, he respected Hyman Roth, but he never -trusted- Hyman Roth.” Dude was serious business, and based on a real-life Jewish mobster, Meyer Lansky.
I think I’m in love.
Ah, so instead of being evil he’s now an “anti-hero” or -possibly- “roguish.”
Sorry. I am very sorry for the death of this worker and for his family, but Wal-Mart is PURE evil, people. The people who shop there are a reflection of how that place is run. If New Yorkers are tired that the world thinks they’re just a bunch of pricks, then how and why did this happen? And if it’s too soon, then why was this picture even posted on PK, waiting for a caption? The human race does, indeed, suck.
Yes, Wal-Mart is evil. But the people involved in this incident MUST own up to their own actions. Two wrongs, people.
People own up? They’re not to blame. When a group is in mob formation, the people in front find it hard to stop going foreward. No one’s to blame.
Excusing it that way is only going to perpetuate the behavior.
Because forgiving someone for being shoved forward over someone else lying prone on the ground induces mobs.
Find me one person who was really more concerned about their kids toy than a casualty. Go ahead. I’m waiting.
You mean like the people who were told that the store was closing because of a death and they refused to leave because they’d been in line since the morning before?
*snort*
From the pictures, the guy was pretty large, the security tapes show nobody trying to stop at all. Supposedly they even were pushing emt workers. No, I’m not going to let the people skate on this one. Somebody should have tried to show some reason instead of becoming an ant in the mob.
But how can you stop when there are at least a hundred people behind you, not aware of what’s going ahead? As for shoving, I personally would be a little pissed at having no control over which direction I move.
Sorry. Like n8 said. Mob mentality is no excuse.
It seems as if no one wants to take responsibility for themselves or their actions anymore. The attitude from this walmart mob is something like “a single raindrop doesn’t cause the flood”
But it certainly contributes and is just as much at fault
Inexcusable
Mob mentality? It’s not mentality, it’s physics. Again, the people in back can’t see that anyone has fallen, and they push the people in front, who therefore can’t stop. Nobody was thinking, “You know, I could totally get away with trampling someone to death today!” Everyone is acting as if this was a decision, as if the people involved had any possibility of doing something other than they did. The only real bad decision was to be there in the first place, after that it was the simple, brutal inevitability of an avalanche.
Thank you for making sense of my attempts. That was the best way to put it. The many, innumerable people in the back can’t see or hear, and as for those in front, besides the wall and the unbroken glass, there was nowhere else to go.
Well, I was trying to say the same thing above. Christine has actually been in this situation, so she knows first hand. But the three of us are pissing into the wind here. Everybody wants to condemn, to blame rather than understand, as if punishing the ‘guilty’ is going to do anything to stop this in the future. It won’t, because it wasn’t a ‘choice’ that people made in the first place. I think people just want to feel superior. They imagine themselves in the situation, and they imagine themselves acting heroically to save the poor fellow. But they aren’t imagining the situation correctly, they are extrapolating from their own experiences with ‘big crowds.’ Yeah, that crowd at the fair that it was so hard to walk through is TOTALLY the same thing. Not.
Well you could choose not to be there if it looks unsafe?
This will be just as funny next year when it happens again.
Just like last year.
Endless cycle of not-so-funny.
Exactly. Doesn’t this happen every year? It’s sad and horrible, but why is this any different that the news stories last year about Black Friday?
I honestly don’t know whats worse. That this happens every year and people act like its a new thing and pretend to be shocked, or that it happens every year and there are no steps taken to prevent it.
But what can we do? Outlaw Doorbuster sales?
Hand out tickets and make people stay in line in order. They already do this when there’s a new game system, etc. It could be done. All you need is a little extra security and some decent ground rules and you can prevent a mob scene.
Some Lowes somewhere had the idea to let people in 25 at I time. I give them credit. But there was no chance for a line- the doors literally bust.
Wal-mart, Target, Kohls, Macy’s, Sears. All those stores could so something of the same type.
Absolutely. I know of a local store that posts an employee in front of a big-sale item and hands out tickets. The customers then have to go to the front and pay for it, and get a cliam ticket/receipt, then go around the BACK of the store where the items are kept. Once they are sold out, the employee leaves that post. There are no actual items on the floor, only the empty box for display. I think that’s pretty clever myself.
That’s how I got my reserved copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. I was not too happy at first, but the line moved and I got my copy. Happy!!
Ironic that they busted down the door…
Scary, right?
This was too soo
Exactly what I mean. If we think it will be funny next year, it won’t be. Last year was an old woman getting trampled- now that there’s been a nother death, that doesn’t have a chance to be so funny, Does it?
The old woman may have been somewhere she shouldn’t have been. People still should have tried to help her out of the way. The guy this year was an employee, probably working for minimum wage or close to, and didn’t have a choice but to be exactly where he was. The company can’t guarantee the safety of the employees? Minimum wage isn’t worth risking your life for. What will they do if no workers are willing to be there for this, if they can’t/won’t control it better?
She was in the front of the crowd and tripped, as I remember it.
Of course, I’m nothing to go by.
Then they also can’t guarantee the safety of their shoppers. Not having something in place to control the crowd so that it doesn’t become a mob is criminally negligent. Especially since it’s not the first time this has happened.
Tacky & way too soon.
Hm… I dunno. I got the humor, but I don’t think anyone in time down the road will *actually* laugh at it. It’s dark yes. But hey, if we don’t have a little humor in our lives, we will be dragged down in to the dark pit of dispair. Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not. Who knows?
Wal-Mart security = non-existent. Hundreds of people have been robbed, raped and/or kidnapped from Walmart parking lots across the country. What Vi said…Walmart really is an evil corporation.
I shop there and I am ashamed. I know what you mean. And I don’t get the “low prices” thing either. I’ve seen the same prices on things in the Mall for baby Jesus’ sake.
Agreed, the last few time’s I’ve gone there, I’ve left angry because of the way people working and shopping there treated me.
The incident wasn’t funny, but I don’t think the joke is funny either — it’s not a ha-ha joke, it’s very sharp satire. I think it needs to be said frequently.
I think people get that it’s dark humor or satire. Many have just said that it’s too soon after the fact for it to be appreciated, even as such. I much prefer this to what inevitably will degenerate into “how many x does it take to trample a Walmart janitor?” etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum that will come out of the next few months.
What actually happened is terrible, but I think this LOL is still funny.
greed kills, though that was always evdient from human history
Are you all JUST realizing how terrible people are?
People have been destroying our Earth and whiping species off of the planet for forever, but no one notices how terrible people can be until a man gets trampled at Wal Mart.
It’s so true! Very sad to admit, but unfortunately, very true. I’m ashamed to be human sometimes… and a man died, for nothing! No cheaply priced TV or BluRay player is worth a human life, at least, that’s what I think.
Well, one seems to be the solution to the other. Is the world overpopulated? Well then the solution isn’t birth rate limitation, it’s elimination of large numbers of people at one time. We need to be starting more massive scale wars out there to make sure there is room for our children. Wide scale elimination of the weakest means that the children of the survivors will be even stronger. It’s evolution taken to the next level. More babies, but better babies. I mean, honestly, how can we say that stupid, unproductive, weak people have the same right to procreate as the intelligent, strong, attractive, and productive? (Please, Please, PLEASE understand Poe’s law before replying)
On a serious note, why is it that our most intelligent and gifted seem to decide that procreation is a bad idea, or at least that’s how a lot of media portray it. The high class, ritzy people are the ones who won’t have children, while the “poor, stupid, and lazy” people have tons of children. Note, I am not saying that this is the truth, I am saying that this is the way it is portrayed.
Also, instead of limiting population, why not look to expand our current effective habitable area. Look into say floating cities, and expansion into space. expensive, sure, but as population and curiosity increase, we will return to space, and with much greater intensity than a “Space station”
this was a horrible happening that shouldn’t be “lol-ed”. Someone died over a sale on items that those people probably didn’t need. (Ex. TV, Camera etc.) Not funny at all.
Next year, lets control the crowds!
I agree that the people in back may have kept pushing, and that didn’t help. But my point is how couldn’t they realize that they weren’t stepping on the floor? If everyone in front yelled “someone is down” or something like that, maybe we can prevent this.
I only hope that this experience will allow people in the back of the crowd – or the middle or front – that if the crowd is not moving, maybe they should stop pushing forward and stop. The chain reaction would allow the crowd to stop, and this horrific event will – hopefully – never happen again.
i wouldn’t shop at Buy N Large if i could afford not to, but i don’t make much money at present and so i must – but based on my experiences in a number of different locations, you are clearly overestimating the average wal-mart shopper. Uncontrolled children careening around like flabby little pinballs, vacant, cow-eyed adults plodding through the main aisles as if they were going to spot their favorite niche item from 100ft away and paying no attention to anyone around them…what is funny is that it is some sort of perverse social equalizer though, as you will find every ethnic group’s lowest common denominator slouching through the stores
wall*e reference WIN
You know, my ex-wife loved Wal-Mart and Kmart, whereas I actually detested both and what’s funny is, I can relate to what you said. Along with that, I would include the spouses (non-gender specific) standing on the sidelines with a look on their faces that says, “How in the hell did I get drug into this?!?!”
Have you tried being in a dense crowd? It’s hard to see the ground. There’s a great possibility they were yelling something, but other people were yelling, too.
I see where you’re coming from, though.
I find it appropriate that one of the “expert” commentators who was brought on to talk about it on one of the cable news outlets described the crowd’s behavior as “Herd mentality” because those people who took part in that truly were nothing but a bunch of dumb, worthless cattle if they couldn’t be bothered to see they were killing someone.
Yep, there is a reason a group of people is referred to as a “mass”, when moving like that, they don’t think. It goes back to what you said about the “expert” commenting on the “herd mentality”, but I think the cattle would have been kind enough to realize what they were doing. People are cruel, unfortunately.
I am sorry, but before I go postal (okay, not really
) ) over this, I must ask: Do you really mean this?
No, I don’t. I was being sarcastic, sorry about that.
Oh, good, thanks.
) (I have met, and argued with people, who would have been serious. Good thing I checked first this time. ;o))
Speaking as someone who was raised around cattle and horses, both animals will do their best to avoid something or someone on the ground (my hand was saved from being crushed because my horse was jumping around three-legged in order to not step on it after I fell underneath him). It’s silly to think that cows are kind, but they do try not to step on things
)
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Mythbusters even busted the myth of the bull in the china shop. Turns out, bulls are very nimble and will avoid when at all possible.
Yes, but not in a stampeding herd.
You got me there
) Also add: “when pissed off”.
Hear, hear. (I just got home from the stables a few hours ago. The horsie I had today is meek, but right across the … aisle? … from here is a really grumpy sod who really has started to aim at people lately. Obviously, he’s not evil, but he’s definitely not mentally stable in this stable anymore.
( Well, that was a very loosely related side note. Just wanted to show that I muck about with horses too, I guess. ;o))
From her. Not “from here”.
Yeek! Can he be removed? Horses learn bad behavior from their stable-mates…..I can’t tell you the number of horses I’ve had learn cribbing from a pasture-mate! And you can’t break that habit! They also learn rocking, kicking, and other nasty habits.
(
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Do you own your horse, or do you ride at a stable? My horse is three hours away and I don’t get to see her or play with her but a couple of times a year
I think he’s learned that from silly people not knowing how to handle horses.
/ But yes, they will have to move him pretty soon, I think. Now even we who are fairly experienced are getting problems handling him, so either they’ll have to get rid of him altogether, or at least try to move him to another area of the compound.
.
I ride at a riding school. It’s generally very good, and the horses are too, but every now and then a horse just seems to get fed up with it all. Fortunately, the vast majority are happy.
I’m sure it’s a right wing conspiracy to make him out as worse than he is. You have to watch out for stuff like that ;o)
Naeh, it’s cool, he isn’t an American horse.
)
That’s true! I saw that episode, too.
Herd animals can be extremely careful i agree with you. I’d never set foot in an arena with a horse if i didn’t realize that it doesn’t really want to tramble me, however something to look at are wild herd animals that are migrating. There was a thing on water buffulo that drowned terribly because they just couldn’t make it up the other end of the river. Those at the front of the herd venture forward to investigate, those at the back push so the ones at the front fall in and are trampled, after that they surge forward to avoid being crushed but can’t make it up the other bank and eventually drown, or are eaten by crocs.
It was tragic to think that this is exactly the same thing as the walmart thing, except instead of the drive of food, and water and better living, the drive was cheap shit.
I’m not trying to absolve anuyone in the crowd, or Wal-Mart for their unbelievable lack of security/common sense, but we DO seem to be hard-wired for the “herd mentality.”
Click my name for full article:
“Researchers performed a series of experiments where volunteers were told to randomly walk around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions on where to walk. The scientists discovered that people end up blindly following one or two people who appear to know where they’re going.”
So contrary to what people have being arguing in this thread,
I think it’s funny. Very taboo, but still funny.
To each their own sense of humor.
Don’t worry about being alone. It has an average 3.5 at least, which means it has gotten quite a few 5s (because I am sure also that it received its fair share of 1s).
It is just like the Failblog incident. I think the people who run this website have no hearts. They just want money. I may be done with everyone of their sites. Too bad. Most of the time they were funny. Now you lose my support, so less money for you.
But it’s not the people running the site who made it, and it was most likely put up because of the irony, not the humor.
I don’t see what “time” has to do with it. Either the joke is unacceptable and tasteless, or it’s not. I think this joke is just as funny now as it will be six months from now. The problem is with our morals, not our timing.
okay this is all going way too far. It seems as though you are all defending the idea that it is okay and acceptable to be standing in line for 14 hours to get some money off of a TV or some other new product for the spoiled children of America. All im saying is that this idea of getting and giving the best gift is ruining the idea of Christmas. Please just make a change this Christmas and make it be about what it used to be about. Spreading cheer and love with family and friends. Think of all of our soldiers over fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq who probably won’t make it home for Christmas. I know Christmas morning they will all be greatfull to see the faces of their comrades still standing next to them and knowing that they have someone back home waiting for them. Please just come together and lighten up about this comment because the ideal of Christmas is getting ruined. Merry Christmas to all.
Actually if you read the majority of the posts, you will come to the conclusion that isn’t what is being said at all. I think most of us were horrified that this even happened, and that Wal-Mart should be held accountable.
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As for the rest of what you said, I couldn’t agree more!
Why, thank you. I’m glad to know I’m a bad person for being willing to wait in line to get my parents the only good presents they’ll be getting for the next few years. Great to know I’m ruining Christmas.
bwahaha a black “person” called her own race savages lol thats freakin funny and yeh this pic happens to be funny as hell. they all are svages bwahahahaha
OK, it may be too soon, but I work retail, I worked black Friday, I am not a Fail-mart employee.
I lol’d
Oh, well, Dan, it’s been a couple of days since it was posted. I guess it’s not too soon anymore!
One thing no one seems to have mentioned (I stopped reading about 50 comments in), is that Nassau Co SD was on site after a call from walmart for help with the crowd, then apparently LEFT.
Am I the ONLY one who feels they should also be held at fault? I actually do think the guy’s family is including them in the lawsuit, but I can’t recall for certain…
You forgot every person who stepped on the poor fellow.
I lol’ed
Napalm and VX
Good for any crowd
I don’t know. I’m not shocked. I was at Black Friday, and while I did happily yell and flip off anybody who was caught cutting in line, other than that there wasn’t any problems. We didn’t run or push until we were in the store, and even there it wasn’t bad. I went to both Best Buy and Walmart. Not all Black Friday Walmart sales produce monsters who enjoy killing innocent people…
I agree its too soon and too sad. Truthfully it will always be too soon because this seems to happen every year.