Post Christmas sales: Why retail rioting is a classic symptom of 'affluenza'

Psychologist Oliver James tells Ellie O’Byrne why shoppers beating each other to a pulp over a cut-price flatscreen is a classic symptom of ’affluenza’

THE video footage appears to show a catastrophe. A bomb scare, perhaps, or a fire? But watch a second longer; the screaming throng is rushing into the building, not out of it. As the first wave thunders through the foyer, people are knocked to the ground. In their frantic scramble for a bargain, other shoppers — for that’s who these people are — trample straight over the fallen. This is Black Friday in the US, the sales bonanza the day after Thanksgiving. It is a frenzy of materialistic madness.

In 2014, the Black Friday phenomenon was foisted upon the Irish public, with mercifully no reports of the violence that occurred in the UK and US. But worldwide, increasingly common footage of people scuffling over flat-screen TVs and reports of police being called to stores have given rise to a new term — ‘retail rioting’.