I think I said this last year, but I find the bitching about Black Friday to be almost as tiresome as Black Friday itself. Go shopping if you want to go shopping, but honestly, the carping about how awful it all is just smacks of classism to me. Herf derf, lookit the stoopid poor people trying to get a cheap TV, how dare they?
Um, well, stores are handing out hot chocolate to people in line and advertising “door buster” sales, and allowing people to camp on their property weeks in advance, so you’ll pardon me if I reserve my contempt for the people selling the shit and creating the dangerous situation in the first place.
And the coverage never fails to make me stabby.Here we are, Bob, standing outside a Wal-Mart to interview crazed shoppers, just hoping somebody gets trampled to death for the tail end of November sweeps. It just encourages bad behavior that we can then all soberly deplore in editorials a day later. How’s about you stop covering it like it’s fucking D-Day? And by the by if I read one more asshole comment about how Kids Today just don’t stand in line for anything that matters, I will take hostages.
Kids Today, and people today, are in fact better than we think they are:
What is at times overlooked is that Occupy Wall Street was always about mutual aid. The most shared images were of protests and pepper sprays, but the scene in Zuccotti was a common kitchen, a free library, shared living space, a medical tent and endless conversations in which people listened to and learned from each other as they modeled a mutually invested society as an alternative to the culture of Big Corporations…and Big Government. Had OWS found a way to make mutual aid its loudest message, it may have found even more followers from the start.
A.
Honestly I think it’s less HERF DERF LOOKIT THE STOOPID POOR PEOPLE and more “Jesus Christ upper middle class people, you can afford a TV at normal prices, stop this bullshit.”
Oh so I guess that meansyou don’t want to read my anti-Black Friday rant?
My problem with the whole thing is that it’s fake. It’s media created. Like the Tea Party and Saddam’s WMD. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pointing that out.
I keep hoping our media will get better and it never does.
It’s HERF DERF LOOKIT THE POOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO WORK TODAY so that my father associated can ‘save’ a few bucks. I agree, it’s fake. These stores can hold a sale any time they want and people will come. Why ruin the holiday. WM is run by Scrooge.
I don’t know if auto correct kicked in or the bad word filter did, but take the first three letters of ‘father associated’ and you’ll have what I meant.
My problem is that most of the ire I’ve seen on Facebook is directed at “people standing in line for electronics and look how superior we are for not being there with them because we value TRUE generosity and don’t need THINGS” and not at the coverage or the stores.
Both the latter are eminently ripe for mockery.
A.
The perfect storm.
The lemmings are hyped up to be swayed by the marketing. (And we Americans really love to get a good “deal” that we will drive around town looking for a gas station that is one cent per gallon cheaper.) Oddly enough it started with this being the kick-off to the XMas shopping season beginning ***AFTER*** Thanksgiving but now the stores have out their XMas stuff a month beforehand and are pushing Black Friday into Black Halloween (after all, the early bird gets the worm). (BTW – intentionally using XMas as this has nothing at all to do with Christ or Mass).
A small percentage of true believers get really hyped by the marketing. (20% per Southern Beale). That 20% engage in outrageous behavior becomes a “news” story not only that the stores are full but that you’d better be there or you’ll miss out – which in turns forms a postive feedback loop on more extravagant behavior of camping out in advance and the mad dash to trample people when the doors open. That the stores are full leads the news media to cover it even heavier including mandatory helicopter shots of the mall parking lots overflowing (After all, 1% of the population going to a ball game is a huge story. What is 20% of the people shopping? Not to mention that in mid-size and smaller towns the news media often sees one of its responsibilities as supporting the economic development of the area). More coverage leading to more pressure to become part of the hype.
The hype creating its own story would be amusing if it weren’t so similar to the process of getting on the news to eventually be elected.
The corporate media invites us to share in their contempt for people every day of the year. It makes me angry. It makes me sad.
Thank you for clarifying, Louis Wu. I thought you might have some odd father issues that I wasn’t understanding.
🙂
Ok.
Here’s my take on it.
You’re camping out on the holiday? Better be a hunting trip or a family reunion or a major event in a park you’ve looked forward to — starwatching in the Grand Canyon, for instance.
It’s not worth doing that to get some gewgaw or gimcrack at the cost of some other poor working stiff having to come in to work on Thanksgiving Day, or Christmas Day, or New Year’s Day, or Easter, or Memorial Day, or Independence Day, or Labor Day, or Armistice Day, or All Hallows’ Eve. Nothing you want to buy retail is worth taking that rest time, that time for family or worship or fellowship, away from your fellow human beings and those they want to see, visit, enjoy during those rare occasions — whether that be live and in person, over the phone, or out at the cemetery…
Fuck the Romneys and the Waltons and all their greedy cohort of bloodsucking dollar-chasers.
Nobody ought to be camping out on a sidewalk in the USA in November or December or July or August — and I am looking at all you idiot children pretending to camp in the stadium parking lots before big college football games, too. Shame on you. You’re not playing in the game, so why the devil do you think your “spirit support show” is worth risking your grades or your health for? There’s gonna be football next week, next year, next decade. The team, if you’re not actively interfering with their training and education ’cause classes can’t make while you’re out living it up in your make-believe tent cities, thinks you’re cute morons, but still morons. If you’re in their way, they think you’re the reason they’re not at their best come game day. Ever thought of that?
Those generators big boosters give you for lights and wi-fi and heat? If you had the brains God gave air ferns, you’d be in the dorms or apartments you or your parents are paying out the wazoo for so you can attend school to start with, safely; and if you had the hearts God gives air ferns, you’d be campaigning for those same boosters to put their names on those same donations, only give them to people who need them to stay alive in the cold or the heat or the aftermath of a hurricane, not spoilt children playing at hardship.
The media’s not the only thing to blame here. If we didn’t buy the crap, if we didn’t listen to the ads, if we weren’t susceptible to the pitches, this shit would stop. Let Black Friday lose some big store like Sears or Kohls a significant amount of money, and this whole phenomenon would dry up and blow away.