16 Comments

  1. That would appear to be the Xbox 360 Arcade bundle for $199 (incl. Sega Superstars, Guitar Hero III + wireless Les Paul guitar)

    Pity, I just dropped $700CDN on an Elite + 4-game bundle + G.H.W.T. full band kit. Oh wait…

  4. America, Fuck Yeah! I think this ought to push the consumer confidence index up a few points. It’s glad to see that Americans are still the greatest consumers on earth. We’re #1!!!!

  5. After seeing this, sadly, I’m not surprised that a worker of Wal-Mart died in a stampede of stupidity.

    This is worse than Eastern Europe in the 1980s, when the shipment of good would come into a grocery store and people would stampede in order to get the limited amount. At least than, it was desperate time, this is jsut pathetic.

  6. Yea, the strange part is, that people wealthy enough to afford an expensive entertainment product, are showing the same symptoms as people who are merely fighting for their lives (like starving people in front of a grocery store).

  8. won’t they be disappointed when their kids open those babies up and realize that it doesn’t come with a hard drive to actually play / save games
    ..
    the xbox arcade is the biggest joke.

  12. years and years and years ago, when i was fifteen going on sixteen, my mother took me to some bizarre “sale” at a hotel conference room. it was part “let’s make a deal” and part “auction.” a variety of things were offered for sale, one of which was a car stereo.

    now, i had just convinced someone to sell me (when i turned 16 in a few weeks) this piece of shit car that had only an am radio in it, and in the 80s there was no way you could get by with an am radio. this thing on offer had am/fm and a tape deck. perfect for driving around listening to 2 Live Crew and Springsteen and Beethoven (i was always an eclectic kid musically).

    so it was cheap to get in and the items on offer were cheap and i went because i had nothing better to do and because my mom asked me and because she wanted to go and wouldn’t have gone without me.

    the guy running the “sale” was this slick either australian or english or irish guy (i was too green in those days to be able to make the distinction; hell, he might have even been kiwi). within twenty minutes, he had the whole crowd, myself included, hanging on his every word. he worked that crowd from left right and center, egging us on, pumping us up, getting us wigged out for his wares.

    when it came time for the stereos near the end of the two hours of sales, he had us right where he wanted us. i didn’t realize it at the time, had only been induced to come at the last minute, had my thirty dollars cash in my pocket, but these radios were shit and he was selling them like they were the second coming of audio sound. pretty much everything, i later suspected, was like that.

    when he started giving out the radios to those who bid, he had the crowd on their feet, jumping and waving their arms, acting like slaves or robots to his command. and i participated just like everyone else. i wanted that thirty dollar radio more than i wanted anything in my life by that point. he worked me over like a master. i jumped and i raised my hands in the air and i fucking begged for that stupid radio.

    and afterwards, it wasn’t just the obvious cheap shit quality of what i had paid for that made me ashamed. it was how i had acted, what i had made myself into just for a crummy product. it was how i had become one with the crowd of greedy grasping types who just wanted THE DEAL they thought they were getting, and didn’t care what they had to get through to get it.

    i was ashamed for setting aside my dignity for a product, for giving up my basic humanity and individuality for some shitty little plastic piece of crap. ashamed for having been swept up in the mob reaction to the sales. i felt like i had been cheated and used and humiliated.

    i don’t care much for black thursday. my relatives like to go. i go along for more spectatorship than anything else. sometimes i buy a thing or two, but mostly i just watch and remember.

    the video in this post? no one was that bad in the room with me years ago, though sometimes i wonder if we could have gone that far, if we could have been egged on that far. it was my first and last experience with a mob mindset and i hope to fuck never to be a part of something like that ever again.

    every year now, almost, i see these videos of people rolling around on the ground, fighting, biting, kicking, scratching, screaming for whatever must-have product on the market these days. i shudder in a partial recognition, but i thank my lucky stars that i once had this moment, years ago, and i learned from it, that i had it when i was young enough that i might gain something from the experience.

    i see the people in these videos and i wonder if it isn’t already too late for them. for humanity. for us all.

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