Sunday 30 November 2014

Black Friday - what was that all about?

Black Friday, we were told, is a tradition.

No it's not. A tradition, according to my trusty dictionary, is a transmission of customs or beliefs passed from generation to generation. I know they all have to begin somewhere, but I still don't see something that has happened for a couple of years warrants the title 'tradition.'

On top of that, it has no relevance in the UK. Just because Americans have enjoyed their Thanksgiving feasts and feel a need to go shopping doesn't mean it must be mirrored over here. We can shop when (and if) we want to shop.

But the marketeers have got hold of the idea and convinced millions of people believe that this is the one day they must go shopping. A hint of a discount and there they all are, fighting for this and that, for fear they might be missing out.

I recognise that our economic system depends on people becoming so dissatisfied with their old stuff that they have to go out and buy new stuff. Then the people that make and sell the new stuff have an income and pay taxes that fund our schools and hospitals (and pay our politicians). I struggle with the implication that the system must be underpinned by greed, but so far no one has come up with anything better. (I know, we could all downsize. But the money for health care has to come from somewhere.)

So you could argue that Black Friday was a good thing. All those people rushing out to spend money with no insight into the fact that their 'need' was manufactured by the marketing men and women.

But let's cut the twaddle. It is not a tradition. It has no relevance in the UK. It is simply the ad-people manipulating the buying public into believing something that has no basis in our reality.

What depresses me most is the millions that believed the hype and went shopping. Do they really keep their brains in their wallets?

15 comments:

  1. You nailed it, Jo. We are so easy to be trapped. Short term wish fulfillment as a replacement for . . .

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    1. Thanks, Sabine. I just don't understand how so many people were sucked into it.

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  2. I am having the same thoughts Jo and they are calling today Cyber Monday, the day when we all shop online. It is much worse this year and those people who crawled over other people to buy a television well I have no words for what I think of them. It makes me worried when I see footage like that,those people would have killed for a TV. I did laugh when the next screen footage I saw was them struggling to get their buys into the car and the TV being too big to fit in.

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    1. Hi Anne - I saw a clip of film of someone with a TV, admitting they didn't even want one!! Bonkers.

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  3. I feel ashamed to think that those people who threw themselves across large TV sets are in any way from a similar race to you and me. The really frightening issue here is how easily people's minds can be manipulated. We only have to think back to the Nazi influence on ordinary German citizens to realise that civilised society hangs by a fragile thread.

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    1. I see where you're coming from, Ros - it's salutary, thinking how easily ideas can be manipulated. But there'll still be some of us shouting on the sidelines, 'Think for yourself!!'

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  4. Yes, manipulation by consumerism...worrying. I was out by chance and picked up my son's Christmas gift half price, but my town was quiet and no one was fighting for things they didn't need!
    What shocked me most was the footage of animals on TV stampeding for, like I said, things they probably didn't need for the sake of a 'bargain'. A bargain to me is something I was planning to buy and would have bought regardless of discount. Trying to grab three TV's in a riot and force them into a mini is laughable if it wasn't so sad.

    Did make us wonder what would happen in a real social emergency though, everyone for themself, I imagine...scary thought.

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    1. I just hope our natural altruism would win through in an emergency, Lisa. Somehow I still retain a belief that most of us are ok!

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  5. I Agee with you Ros. One of the Tescos on TV is the one where I shop. Glasgow people have the name of always helping each other in adversity, such as,accidents,no power at home, stuck in snow,etc. Now we are seeing what the darker side off Glasgow looks like. The people who would sell their grannies for a halfpenny.

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    1. Anne, good for you admitting it's a local Tesco's. But I'm sure we don't think that scrum was representative of the city as a whole.

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  6. It is part of a larger trend, isn't it? It surprised me during my recent visit how much more consumerist America has become even in the several years since I have "lived" there (I mean, staying in a normal house and doing normal things, not being a tourist in a hotel). But also of course most normal people are involved in other things than shopping. Nobody I knew did any shopping at all on Black Friday!

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  7. I meant to say that I think people have always gone mad in sales. I have some lovely old Giles cartoon books and he always did wonderful cartoons about people in sales squashing each other flat and trampling over Grandma etc - this was as far back as the sixties!

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  8. I wonder what they're all going to do on boxing day. I'm sure there were never any riots at the old post-christmas sales we used to have.

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  9. Great post. What depressed me also was to see people pushing and shoving over products they could have bought at the Christmas sales as most people do every year between Boxing Day and New Year.

    Greetings from London.

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  10. How did I miss this? We don't have that 'tradition' here in NL (tradition, my foot!) so we were not witness to these dreadful scenes, but I heard enough about it. There is a now a school of thought that claims we do not need 'growth' for economic prosperity. I am not an economist, so I don't know the numbers, but I am sure this kind of hysterical approach to acquisition is not about economic growth, it's about greed and profit for just a few. Horrible.

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