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Black Friday 2019 fights prove shopping for deals is as perilous as ever

Because what would this American shopping tradition be without brawls and f-bombs?

Leslie Katz Former Culture Editor
Leslie Katz led a team that explored the intersection of tech and culture, plus all manner of awe-inspiring science, from space to AI and archaeology. When she's not smithing words, she's probably playing online word games, tending to her garden or referring to herself in the third person.
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  • Third place film critic, 2021 LA Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards
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Leslie Katz
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A Black Friday shopper looks over an advertisement at a Best Buy in Emeryville, California. Stay safe out there, people. 

 Philip Pacheco/Getty Images

Black Friday wouldn't be Black Friday if it didn't include amped-up consumers swearing, shoving and punching their way to post-Thanksgiving deals. 

Just take a scroll through the tweets below, which capture scenes of Black Friday mayhem at retailers around the country. One shows guys punching each other out on the ground in front of a Forever 21 store at the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall, Pennsylvania, while another shows employees and security guards at a Walmart in Hendersonville, Tennessee, rushing to break up a profanity-laced melee. 

As one Twitter user wrote: "What's Black Friday without fights?" He included a couple of laughing emojis (because if we didn't laugh we'd cry?), but Black Friday can be flat-out dangerous, with plenty of violence and even some deaths reported in recent years. 

In a video from last year of two women who look like they could be MMA wrestlers duking out it out on the floor of a Charlotte, North Carolina, Walmart, one shopper's hands get perilously close to the other's neck. Pretty chilling stuff. The video has gotten close to 4 million views, with responses expressing both amusement and utter dismay. 

If you have a helmet handy, here are the best Black Friday deals we've spotted so far. Or you could follow my lead and adopt a retreat-from-humanity approach to this year's bargain-shopping blowout. 

Fortunately for all of us, there's always Cyber Monday. 

Have your own crazy Black Friday experiences? Tell us in the comments and include links to your tweets. 

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