Danny Brown

podcaster - author - creator

Black Friday

The Official Annual Black Friday Rant by The Q

This is a guest post by Amanda D. Quraishi. It was originally a Facebook?update, and is republished here with her permission.

I hate Black Friday.

I think it’s everything that is wrong with America today.

It’s a day that is made up specifically for the purpose of encouraging crass consumerism, using a religious holiday as an excuse. Let that sink in. Holy Day Sales.

It’s not just about shopping. It’s about sacrificing time with family and friends that used to be for watching movies and playing games to go into the cold, electric light of big box retailers and going into debt buying shit that your family will forget in six months to a year.

It’s about being FIRST IN LINE. It turns purchasing gifts into a bloodsport (literally) where each year people are injured and/or killed. And despite the injuries, stores are more than happy to keep plugging Black Friday.

Because what matters to them are hordes of people who need a deal badly enough to be there at 5am for their fucking ‘door busters’.

Black Friday is evil. It doesn’t need to exist.

From Thanksgiving to Christmas there are 29 days to buy your shit. You don?t NEED to shop on Black Friday. Big fucking stores need you to shop on Black Friday so they can put themselves in the black. Get it?

This has nothing to do with anything except commercialism and consumption. It’s manufactured by marketers to make you think you’re getting deals when it’s really just a few things marked down to get you in the door.

I hate Black Friday.

If you absolutely MUST shop for holidays this weekend, go shop locally for Small Business Saturday. Or visit the Armadillo Bazaar or any place where you can buy something real and meaningful made by the person selling it to you.

Buy gifts that last for years, even generations. Or buy the materials to make something beautiful. Bring back American dollars to American manufacturers, artists and artisans. Gift the gift of services (massage, salon, etc.)

Stop the Pavlovian drooling over the ads that come too soon and the promise of love that comes with a purchase. It’s a lie.

Amanda Q

About the author:?Amanda Quraishi is a blogger, interfaith activist and technology professional living in Austin, Texas.?

She is the Technology Solutions Specialist?at?Charity?Dynamics, a marketing & technology consulting agency that works with non-profit organizations on national fundraising campaigns.

She also leads a populist-based interfaith initiative at?InterfaithActivism.org,?and is the Principle Web Media Strategist for?BlogathonATX. You can read more from Amanda on her blog.

Why The Black Friday Madness Has To Stop

I’ve never been a fan of one day rush sales like the Black Friday ones. Having been in retail many years ago, sales time was always a hectic and stressful time.

For those working the shop floor, it meant a long day of shoving and pushing and often bruised bodies at the end of the shift. The stories making the news from this year’s Black Friday are testament to why this craziness needs to stop.

What sales push could possibly be worth the death of a shopworker and the miscarriage of a woman’s baby? What does it say about both humanity and the greed of retailers?

The defining message in social media is that of sharing and helping others to better themselves. How many of the people that continued to barge by the dying shopworker are Twitter users, or Facebook members? Does the message of sharing and making ourselves better stop at social media? Doesn’t it have a place in the real world?

Many people have said that Barack Obama is “the social media President”. Not only did he use the medium to great effect during his campaign, he also offers a parallel to social media through his “Vote for Change” policies. Empower everyone, make the world around us a better place through caring and sharing.

If this is the case, he needs to make one of his promises more widespread. Instead of just focusing on corporate greed, he needs to look at why retailers hold back on prices until sales days like Black Fridays. If retailers can afford to offload so much stock at crazy prices one day a year, there’s nothing to stop them having these prices throughout the year.

I know it’s a tough market – as a business owner myself, I know profit is becoming even tighter as the economic bite kicks in.

But is any profit worth the death and injury we saw yesterday? People scramble for Black Friday sales because the retailers (and, to a degree, the manufacturers) fix prices throughout the year and offer less reasons to buy. Shoppers therefore wait until sales time, whether it’s Black Friday, Boxing Day or other sales periods.

We need to stop this process now, before anyone else gets hurt. Is that too much to ask?