Really, very few people are going anymore and if they are, are they even shopping?
I am talking about our dying Jersey mall culture, a culture that was ripe and alive pretty much since the big malls round my way were built (Willowbrook, Paramus Park, when they closed- in Garden State Plaza) but has pretty much gone the way of the dodo. The report of hundreds of yutes (“What’s a yute?”) descending upon Menlo Park Mall last Saturday night prompted by a TikTok meet-up call shouldn’t surprise any of us.
Really, what else are these massive caverns of commerce for if not a young persons’ get together that deteriorates into a melee? Can we expect anything less when you get this many folks meeting for the same purpose (which was no purpose at all) on a Saturday night, in a spot they truly have no respect for or is, for all intents and purposes, dead to society?
What I am surprised about, given the preponderance of bored youth trolling across social media 24/7 just looking to be triggered, is that stuff like this doesn’t happen more often. It’s akin to what I’ve always thought about the sitting duck nature of theater audiences; why aren’t more psychopaths like James Eagan Holmes making their way in and laying waste to hundreds? Surely, I am happy they are not. But like what just happened in Menlo Park, there are situations, spots and surely a vibe in our culture presently, as much here in NJ as anywhere else, that just begs for this kind of a thing to happen and happen again and again.
Stay on the lit path and by all means, avoid the malls.
