After a worker was killed at a Walmart last year in this same sort of mayhem, Walmarts (I think nationwide) were corralling people into specific lines for the Black Friday sale items (if you wanted more than one item, you had to bring someone else with you to queue up for each item, which wasn't announced ahead of time, leading to some quick value judgments) and they were handing out wristbands. If there were 100 of the super deal TV, only 100 people could line up. You couldn't sit down and if you needed to use a restroom you had to relinquish your wristband, and had four minutes to get to the restroom, use it, and get back or your band would be given to someone else. There are, of course, rampant sexism/ableism/sizeism/ageism implications to both of those rules but it was, by all reports, an orderly and mostly mannerly situation.

I'm not surprised that the problems shifted to Target this year. Their (ridiculously sexist) pre-Black Friday advertising was really emphasizing the competitive nature of running to get to your desired items before they were all taken, and loading up a cart, by featuring a woman doing all kinds of heavy physical training in order to "prepare" for the challenge. By playing up the "survival of the fittest" idea it's not surprising that people actually acted that way, especially now that the "secret" that each store has a very very limited quantity of the "doorbuster" items is well known.

It will be interesting to see how Target's Black Friday sales compare to Walmart's more orderly arrangement or Sears and Home Depot's method of making different items available at different times of the day to avoid the stampede situation.

I'm not sure which is more telling: the video itself or the fact that the webpage it's sourced from labels it as "funny."

First of all, not everyone who exercises regularly is model-trim, and not everyone who is relatively skinny works out regularly.

Secondly, so what if it *is* the only exercise they get? Not worshipping the treadmill does not make one a bad person, nor any more deserving of being made fun of.

A better version:

http://bennyhillifier.com/?id=YOVD-m8urJU&feature=player_embedded

That video was horrifying.

I very much agree on the "doorbuster" wording. I don't think that black friday is an inherently bad idea, and generally if you go later in the day it's not even that crowded. But riling people up to stay up all night and fight each other for the first deals of the day is a horrible idea.

I walked into a Target around 7pm on black friday, it wasn't even busier than usual. Found the sweaters I wanted - there were piles and piles left - tried on a few, and walked out with two $10 sweaters in under 20 minutes. I am sure that if I had gotten there at 4am or whenever they opened, it would have been a far less pleasant experience.

Let me tell you, in this moment, I am so proud to be a Buffalonian. <<;;;
It was distressing when I saw it in the news, but I didn't know it was nationally blog worthy! This almost tops the time that one of the columns from my college's newspaper was featured on a feminist blog because it was horrendously sexist.

So after watching a video, where people were walked all over, and honestly could have been seriously injured or even killed, your first thought was to make a fat joke.

classy.

I love how once the people who we saw trampled in this clip took a little break and got their wind back, they shook it off and carried on with a dogged determination as unstoppable as the Allies invading Normandy. And we all know that there is always a bit of collateral damage in war, but I guess the end justifies the means.

This is probably a good time to apologize to the woman with her two toddlers that I was forced to knock aside by elbowing her in the ribs as we both charged in for the last of the Squinkies. If I wait in line for 15 hours to be at a store when they open at 4am, you better believe I'm gonna get me some goddamned Squinkies!

Anyway, to me this is just the U.S. version of the running of the bulls in Spain, and like the people lining up to run in Pamplona (among other places), the people lining up outside stores on Black Friday know exactly what they're getting into so it really shouldn't be all that shocking or surprising to see the occasional trampling or goring during our annual Running of the Consumers, also known as the Flight from Dignity (Look! Our dignity is in the parking lot! It'll never find us in this store! Hurry!).

After all, what the hell do they expect, a polite, courteous and orderly mob?

And God help 'em if an evil prankster ever shows up to one of these with pockets full of ball bearings. It would make for good TV though, and the news commentators would be all over it like motorists slowing down to gawk at a horrible wreck.

It's symbolic in a way that reminds me of all the poor souls who were trampled to death during the celebrations of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette's wedding...

DANGER, SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGES, DANGER!! SERIOUS THREAD DE-RAIL IMMINENT.

Rickey: Health at Every Size leads to better health outcomes than traditional weight-loss regimes. Shame doesn't make people thin. You're an ass. Etc.

Can we please move on now?

I was at a JC Penney's in a mall recently and was surprised to see all the sale signs reading "doorbusters"! I thought at the time that it was insensitive to make fun of people that die in stupid shopping stampedes.

Also I did not know about the Target ads encouraging people to stampede and fight each other. Do you think they will stop the ads when someone gets killed? Maybe they should launch a new reality-gladiator show where people fight to the death for the privilege of first dibs on the sale items.

People tell me to get out of the house more often--that getting into the Christmas spirit means shopping in public.

Now I have horrifying proof that people are susceptible to forgetting humanity in the face of buying plastic shit on sale. I am imagining how awful it would feel to be that one person on the ground, panicking with every second because he could not get up.

I think I'll stick to internet shopping for my plastic shit.

Also: to the Fattie Patrol (Rickey/Slacker): I'm sure you recognize how classist/racist/size-ist you are. And I'm sure there's a bevy of websites out there that would appreciate your sardonic wit. This, however, is one place that doesn't recognize it as wit and just sees it as stupidity and intolerance.

Go be intolerant somewhere else.

Baby Jesus would be so proud!

Ricky. Somebody was almost stomped to death and the only thing you choose to focus on is the body size of random participants. You could discuss why some people feel the need to stampede or you could focus on the sociological implications of advertising which contributes to the mob behabior which almost killed someone, but no, you are rilly rilly concerned that somebody, somewhere, is not meeting your standards regarding personal appearance.

I require you to act like a human being, but I guess I'm not really entitled to expect you to behave according to my standards.

Oh dear. How do racists end up at a sociological website?

There is a black person who is clearly concerned and stays close to the door on the left side of the picture; and the vast majority of white folks also did not stop to help but just ran on by.

With so much low-hanging rhetorical fruit in this comment that could be so easily demolished, it gets a lot tougher to resist feeding the troll.

This clip is racist. By showing only this one select clip, most of the people doing the trampling are black, which gives the impression of desperate animals. If you are going to show clips like this, you should have several samples of different consumer tramplings from various regions.

um, can someone explain what 'Black Friday' is? I'm not from the USA. Thanks