Do tales of ‘Black Friday violence’ reflect reality or just our bias?

By David McElroy · November 29, 2013

Did you hear about the death at a New York City Walmart early Friday morning? Black Friday shoppers were so eager to get inside and start spending money that they broke through the store’s front doors and trampled an employee.

All over social media, this story and similar bits and pieces of anecdotes are being reported as the latest evidence of the depravity of our society. But I’ve been sitting here Friday afternoon wondering whether we’re all just looking for evidence to confirm what we already believe.

There’s an odd bias that causes what’s expected to be reported and talked about, especially if the anecdote confirms what we already believe. For instance, there are stories every year on Black Friday about how violent it is to be shopping today, especially at Walmart (since Walmart is the all-purpose boogeyman today). There’s always at least one story about a shopper being trampled to death. (It was an employee in the story today who was killed, but maybe a dead shopper will still turn up and save the narrative.)

But I’ve been to stores on Black Friday and never seen anything vaguely violent. My friends who are “serious shoppers” don’t seem to see this horrible violence. They might see angry people argue over who gets to buy the last giant television for a few hundred dollars off, maybe. They might have even heard frustrated people threaten each other over who gets to buy the last $9 crockpot.

But I’m pretty sure that more people were killed in their cars on the way to shop today than die in the stores. If you combined every Black Friday-related “shopping death” for decades and decades, it still wouldn’t be as many as were killed in car accidents before breakfast this morning.

In other words, the situation isn’t really what the stories make it appear, but we believe that the rare stories must say something about our society — especially when they confirm what we already believe.

I believe that our society is degenerating into something I don’t like. Most of my friends believe that, too. We see people’s values changing in ways that we don’t like. We see people valuing material things more than we would like them to. And we see a meanness that is very de-humanizing.

So maybe it’s easy for us to believe that violent anecdotes say something about the death of our society — something that may or may not be true.

This is the danger of anecdotes as news — and of assuming that random news reports tell us something meaningful about the world around us.

I have no interest in shopping today. I’m also disgusted that so many people are so obsessed with material things that they go to such lengths to buy. I’m even disturbed that people get so much pleasure from spending their money on things that ultimately don’t matter.

But even though I believe those things, I think the narrative that it’s violent and dangerous today is essentially dishonest. It’s an interpretation that’s simply repeated because it’s convenient evidence for those of us who already feel that our society is falling apart.

The vast majority of people who shopped today didn’t experience any violence or experience any danger in stores. Statistically speaking, they were in far more danger from traffic driving to and from shopping than they were while they were in stores. But that’s not the story we’re hearing.

I’m disturbed by what I see as an overly materialistic culture. But the narrative that Black Friday is a carnival of violence signifying the ruin of civilization is overblown. I’m tempted to fall for it, but I just don’t think it’s honest.

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I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

After Tampa Bay, Fla., musician Colt Clark had all of his gigs canceled last year for months on end, the entire family felt trapped at home as most of the world was on quarantine lockdown. His wife, Aubree, had an idea that would let Colt make music and involve the whole family in making music videos to share with their friends and family on Facebook. Aubree is a photographer and homeschooling mom to a daughter and two sons, who range in age from 6 to 11. After their friends started asking to share the videos, they made the performances public — and a few of them are now on YouTube, where they go by the name of Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids. The younger son, Becket, is on drums. The older boy, Cash, plays keyboards, strings and guitars. Dad supplies lead vocals and plays guitar, while 6-year-old Bellamy mostly dances but sometimes does backup vocals. There’s even a dog who makes an occasional appearance. The Clark family has just raised the bar for what I need to create with my future children. And best of all, they seem to be having a great time together. I hope they make you as happy as they make me.

Have you ever wondered how the social media world works for so-called “influencers”? I find it comical, so I thought I’d share with you. I frequently get offers such as what I’m about to describe. And if I’m getting such offers — as a relative nobody in the online world — you can only imagine what people with huge audiences are offered. It starts with an email appealing to my ego: “We came across your online presence and we LOVE your style. We’d love to have you as one of our Brand Ambassadors. To celebrate our new [Brand Name] collection, we want to give you a FREE Watch so you can post a picture of you wearing it and drive more exposure to our brand.” Did you hear that? They love me. They want me to be seen wearing their cheap $59 watch so other people will think, “If this amazing influencer wears that, surely I should buy one.” They even offer me commissions on the watches sold from people clicking from my site. So the next time you see some alleged “influencer” touting something online or on social media, remember that this is what it’s probably all about. It’s laughable.

Modern culture is going insane. The latest evidence comes from the effort to redefine children’s author Dr. Seuss as a racist whose books should be banned. Why? Because a few images in those books don’t meet modern political standards. The drawing you see here is one of those “dangerously racist images,” and it comes from the Dr. Seuss classic, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” The book catalogs all the wild diversity seen by a child on one street, including the offending drawing of a Chinese boy. What’s racist about it? Apparently, it was racist to show the boy eating rice, wearing a funny hat, using chopsticks and (worst of all) having eyes represented by a slit. (The bearded man near him has dots for eyes, but that’s apparently OK.) In other words, the stereotypes are considered racist today. (Oddly, the culture warriors who fret over such things are never concerned if a white southerner is depicted as ignorant trash living in a trailer. Some stereotypes are great, especially if the left hates those people anyway.) Theodore Geisel — the name of the real-life Dr. Seuss — was a product of his time and nobody at that time would have seen any of this as racist. Using stereotypes and exaggerations is how artists depict differences in simple ways. You can argue that it’s better to achieve the end result in a different way, but it’s insane to pretend that everybody from the past should have his work erased because it doesn’t match the preferences of modern leftists. Unfortunately, the company that publishes Dr. Seuss books has caved to the insane people — and six of his popular works will no longer be published. The world has simply gone insane.

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