Friday, November 27, 2015

It's the least wonderful time of the year!

Like, they'll bring it to your door.
You don't even have to get up.
Like, we all know that businesses will sell us stuff the other 355 days of the year, right? And it's not like a secret that you can just order things on the internet and they'll send them to you, right? So why in the name of hell do people still line up hours in advance of a store's opening in stupid cold November weather and risk not only contact with their fellow humans but actual injury just to buy the same crap they could buy any other time of the year?

Is it the super-low door-busting savings? Because something tells me that we're not smarter than the marketing strategy. Like, businesses are in the business of making money, so it's not like they're doing you a solid by setting up a retail cage match and letting idiots battle each other for the last flatscreen.
Pictured: Just some of the savvy shoppers who took advantage of today's big sales. Yup, they made
the smart move by shopping today and not say, any other day of the year (not pictured: dignity).
Lots. I asked that rhetorically, but
for real, there's lots wrong with us.
So back to the injury. Yeah, it wouldn't be the brutal, pointless consumer frenzy invented by advertisers if there weren't casualties. Hey, did you know there's a website devoted to tracking Black Friday fatalities and injuries? Well there is and they count seven deaths and ninety-eight injuries since 2004. A few of the incidents were car crashes which just happened on Black Friday and maybe can't directly be blamed on shopping but holy shit, what is wrong with us?

What kind of a country do we
live in where you can't even get paid
for video of the mall fight you staged?
I mean, look at this shit (see right). It's video some asshole posted on Twitter of two other assholes fighting in a mall. I actually think this one is bullshit. The idiots fighting don't seem to have any bags or anything, and it kind of looks like they just wanted to be part of the Black Friday batshit crazy news day. If you scroll down the tweets, @DaddyWeaknd, the aforementioned asshole who shot the video in the first place, is complaining about not getting credit (and money) from ABC for using it on Good Morning America:

"If you're with a news agency don't tweet me until your ready to send some money"

-@DaddyWeaknd, noted filmmaker
and argument for childlessness

Above: video of a man being escorted-
hey, side note? Can we all agree to stop
holding our iPhones the wrong way?*
Hey, did you notice that gross feeling in the pit of you stomach just now? That was the last vestige of your hope for the future of the human race being squeezed out of you by the crushing realization that @DaddyWeaknd gets to vote and drive. So while that video felt a little hoax-y, there were still a lot a people being total dicks to one another today. There was a fight at a mall in Frankfort Kentucky, some guy took a swing at a cop in an El Paso Walmart and some woman ripped a veggie steamer† out of a healthy child's hands.

All this because we got suckered into this fiction that we're missing out on some essential American experience if we're not trampling one another at goddamn Best Buy and that just makes my face sad.
Pictured: Americans acting out our yearly pageant of crass consumerism, greed
 and-hey, are those teddy bears humping? Ok, that makes me feel a little better.



*Today in Side Notes...

Seriously, do some people just not understand that they can hold their phones sideways while taking video? Like, look at this example below of two idiots beating each other in front of Forever 21. Notice anything vertically oriented about it? Exactly. Our eyes are widescreen, so please, for the love of God, hold your phone correctly while taking video of the ridiculous bullshit that's happening all around us.
Brought to you by Skinny-Vision®
"You're just doing it wrong..." 

† This one might have been a hoax too, which I suppose is a good thing, right?

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