You don't need zombies and an apocalyptic meltdown to bring out the dark, reptilian side of man. Simply have an extreme one-day-only sale on luxury goods, and watch man's fight-or-flight instincts kick in — and wreak havoc. Every Black Friday comes with atrocious stories of violence that accompany epic fire sales at major retailers (flat screen TVs for pennies!). It's a source of deep shame and concern for many of us and of grim delight for the immature and voyeuristic.
Walmart's Black Friday sales are known to be particularly chaotic — so much so, that the company took great strides this year to prevent injury to its customers. It hired crowd control experts, incorporated a wrist band policy, and enlisted overall security measures to ensure shopper safety. But, unfortunately, it wasn't enough. With discount events beginning Thanksgiving night, the usual Friday mayhem just started earlier. While the level-headed among us were enjoying a lovely tryptophan hangover, there were some spending the evening throwing boxes — and punches — in the name of cheap buys.
And, it gets worse. People are taking to social media to chronicle the instances of bad shopping behavior across America: @YourAnonNews started documenting the chaos Thursday night, encouraging others to use #WalmartFights to report what they see. Before midnight, the tag was already trending. Anyone not surprised? We don't want to detail the whole grisly scene, but we did see tweets mentioning knife fights, fist fights, and a line-cutting incident that ended with ambulance sirens. Here's a video that nicely summarizes why we're thankful to be at home right now, safely isolated from this particularly ugly strain of shoppers. (Buzzfeed)