Baby Steps

If you went to high school than you understand how big a deal "Fight Day" was. "Fight Day" was an unscheduled day of the year when you arrived at homeroom and were informed that after school two random people were going to have a fight. Most of the time you never knew what the fight was about (half the time the people in the fight had no idea why they were fighting either) and no one ever seemed all that concerned about who was about to fight, just that one was about to take place. As long as you weren't one of the people expected to fight it was all good for you. All day long the anticipation would build until it was finally time for the fight (this was the one day of the year when being in an after-school club was not worth being able to put it on college applications). Often the "fights" consisted of a lot of talk, swearing and the occasional shove before the two combatants came together for roughly 30 seconds of wild swinging before it was over and both parties returned to their normal lives like nothing happened. At that point it was up to the gossipers to decide who won while the rest of us were just happy that something different happened for a change. The only way this day would get ruined was if a) one of the fighters backed down or b) some goody two-shoes told a teacher before the fight could happen and the teachers were waiting in the parking lot for the students to arrive. Obviously as an adult I see this is the right way to handle a situation but as a testosterone filled teen it was rather disappointing. After this weekend I am starting to think many headline writers never made it past the 11th grade.

Last Friday was obviously "Black Friday" - the busiest, most notorious shopping day of the year. And while there were several fights spread across the nation, for the most part everyone seemed to be behaving themselves. (Admittedly, it could just be that the really bad stories were covered up to make it seem that way. I read one story about a man who shot a video of a brawl inside a Wal-Mart and the only person ejected from the store was the guy behind the camera.) But if the reports that people were behaving are real there are lots of ways to explain this relatively calm behavior. The most simple is that the violence has always been slightly over-blown and most members of society are in no hurry to fight someone over a TV. If you don't buy into that theory, you could try and explain it away by saying that times are still tough and there aren't as many people out to shop, no matter how good a deal may be. You could also argue the entire Black Friday concept is on the way out thanks to inventions like Cyber Monday. (I may hate the name but there is no denying that being able to stay home, sleep late, spend extra time with the family and still get a very good price on most items is a damn good deal). But maybe, just maybe, the reason the Black Friday was calmer than most is that people have realized there is no need to get into a fight over a stupid toy. They can probably find it at another store and if they can't their kid will learn to live without getting everything they want. It's a rather intellectualized way of looking at things but you'd never know that from all the headlines I saw, many of which seemed to be upset that the night didn't end with someone on the way to the hospital. Apparently they were expecting the worst from the shoppers and are mad they didn't get it.

That was actually just one of two example of restraint shown this weekend and if you think people being calm on Black Friday is rare, the other happened in an even more unlikely place - the internet. Normally the internet acts as though no event is above being made fun on. It doesn't matter how tragic a circumstance may be to a large group of people, there is always one person who feels it is their job to make the most cringe-worthy comment first so no one can beat them to the punch. They say comedy is just tragedy + time and the tricky part is figuring out how long to wait to make the first joke. Sadly, some internet users think 3 seconds is enough time. So when actor Paul Walker, best known for starring in the "Fast & Furious" movies, died in an horrific car crash on Saturday I braced for the worst. Given the way comments on the internet usually trend, I was expecting many people to make a crass comment about either Walker, his films or the way he died, followed by people going after the person who made the joke with insults which were far more distasteful than the first comment. Instead, everyone appeared to take the correct tone - paying their respects while sending thoughts of comfort to his friends and family - and that was about it. It was about as snark-free as I have ever seen sites like Twitter and I was very pleasantly surprised. It was almost as if people finally figured out that things which are said on the internet can be hurtful and realized that this man left behind a 15 year-old daughter who probably has internet access and doesn't need to know what you thought of her father's last movie right now.

Now, I know expecting people to behave like adult while showing a level of restraint that should be easily attained by anyone over the age of 10 is a disturbingly low bar. In the words of Chris Rock, we shouldn't be giving these people credit for doing something a normal person just does. However, I am choosing to take the opposite view and look on the positive side of things, which is to use news stories like this to accentuate the fact that people are not nearly as bad as the news media would like us to believe. Sure, there are always going to be jerks and idiots out there who make the rest of us look bad but we shouldn't give them such a high level of attention. Not only does it paint all of us in a bad light, it encourages this kind of behavior. And while I am trying not to go overboard or read too much into this but it makes me hopeful that maybe we have turned a corner. If you look through history it doesn't matter how popular a twisted mentality may be at the time, society has a knack for eventually getting our heads out of our asses and doing the right thing. Well, it may be we have finally reached the breaking point when it comes to things like fighting during Black Friday and trolling people on the internet in the face of tragedy. In the last couple of months I have talked about a few examples of companies who have stopped using anonymous commenting systems because they don't want people to be able to say whatever hate speech pops into their heads without some consequences. I'd like to think that has caused people to tone down their internet comments in general and it has spread to all their web presence. Also, I'm always saying self-awareness is the enemy of a brawl and you have to think people fighting on Black Friday don't enjoy being the laughingstock of the nation, so maybe all that public shaming has finally gotten them to think before they start punching in the name of that last Playstation 4. Let's keep the fighting in high school parking lots, where it belongs.