The plebeians were the commoners of ancient Rome, exhibiting characteristics described in this slide from the presentation "Seven Hills of Rome".
Today's plebeians would somewhat correspond to those in the lower middle class, with some disposable income to spend on minor luxuries, who go around with faces forever buried in their smartphones and who throng 24-hour eateries, serving shitty food and where its overworked and overexploited staff (latter day indentured wage slaves), provide equally shitty service to plebeian customers, who apparently with no pay TV at home, throng such shitty eateries to watch latter-day gladiatorial battles - i.e. football (soccer to Yanks) matches between foreign teams in far away places, or perfectly choreographed wrestling matches where professional wrestlers take turns to beat each other to a pulp, even with chairs or some weapon, without leaving even a minor bruise on the skin of the opponent.
Another example of later-day plebeian behaviour are the jostling and fights between bargain hunting shoppers at stores on Black Friday - the fourth Friday of November, following Thanksgiving on the Thursday before, in which there were 10 deaths and 111 injuries on Black Fridays from 2006 to 2017.
Also, watch how the latter-day plebeians, victims of today's capitalist consumer society battle each other for a few dollars less on goods, whist the stores laugh all their respective ways to their respective banks.
Well, not to be left behind in our quest to become a knowledge-based, information-rich, high-income nation by the year 2020 (or postponed to 2050), Malaysia's version of latter-day plebeians - Apple fanboys and fangirls - queued up outside the MyTown Shopping Mall in Cheras, a district of Kuala Lumpur, some as early as Thursday 1 March 2018 evening, to buy Apple iPhones, iPads and iMacs at bargain prices, at the Switch warehouse clearance sale on Friday 2 March 2018 - Malaysia's version of Black Friday, I suppose.
Below is a screen cap of the blog post about the event by blogger Soyacincau
Also, according to The Malaysian Insight of 3 February 2018, the crowd got unruly and it took auxiliary policemen two hours to control them and after 90 minutes, the store suspended the sale until further notice.
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Apple clearance sale quickly comes to a halt as mob turns unruly
The Malaysian Insight
A WAREHOUSE clearance sale offering Apple products for cheap yesterday in Cheras closed after just 90 minutes due to an overwhelming mob of customers.
Hundreds of fans showed up at the MyTown Shopping Mall, some even camping overnight at the mall, lured by the prospect of Apple products at bargain price.
In a move to control the swelling crowd, the management introduced a ticketing system, which failed to do the job as the crowd grew increasingly unruly.
After auxiliary policemen spent nearly two hours trying to control and disperse the crowd, the company announced the store would be closed until Sunday, leaving many Apple aficionados disappointed to the core.
A good number of them had come from far and had waited since the night before for the sale.
"I turned up to buy an iPad. As the crowd swelled, the outlet closed and I am left disappointed,” Amirul told Bernama.
Claiming the shop had failed to take measures for crowd control and to ensure order, a dejected Nabahat said: "We were here since 6am, and the people behind us were allowed to enter the store first. I think they were here since midnight but it was, nevertheless, unfair.”
The sale offered an iPhone 5s at RM200, a 9.7in, 32GB iPad Pro at RM1,600, iMacs at as low as RM1,000, and MacBooks at prices starting at RM500.
A spokesman from Switch Warehouse Clearance said the sale was suspended until further notice. – March 3, 2018.
The consumer IT industry thrives on getting people to buy their products and regularly comes out with new models, mostly with minor incremental features over older models to entice consumers to buy the latest model, even if their current one serves them fine.
Worse still is the most insidious form of advertising, helped by the consumer IT media, which aims to create peer pressure between the ranks of consumers themselves by encouraging them to engage in a "Living up with the Joneses' game of one-upmanship between each other, where they feel they need to have the latest and "greatest" model in order to be a "somebody" amongst their peers, whilst the consumer IT companies laugh their respective ways to their respective banks, whilst the tech-plebeians needlessly part with their hard earned money, leaving less in their respective banks.
Yours most truly
IT.Scheiss
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