(Emma G. Schaible / Fourth Estate)
Examining the freshly rotting corpse of corporate greed known as ‘Black Friday’
BY EVAN PARFITT, COPY EDITOR
With bellies and wallets stuffed for the upcoming holiday season, what better way to follow up the arguments at the table than with old-fashioned capitalism and a good amount of elbow-throwing?
In the nearly 28-day crawl between the feasting of Thanksgiving and the gift-giving of Christmas, the retail world overflows with the typical merriment and commotion of the holiday season. Shoppers flood stores to stock up on all of their gifting goods. The event that kicks this insanity off, and scourges bank accounts everywhere, is none other than Black Friday.
The modern interpretation of the faux holiday was coined as a term to describe the mayhem that followed Thanksgiving. The Black Friday people have come to know and loathe (or love, depending on who you are) arose in the late 1980s as retailers began to use the hustle and bustle to their advantage.
For myself, I remember the days of yore flipping through the toy catalogs from various department stores, pen in hand, vigorously circling nearly everything that caught my eye. I didn’t give much mind to the actual price of what my greed desired, as a key part of these magazines were the deals themselves designed to move as many units as possible.
Now that I’ve joined the ranks of hundreds upon thousands of broke college students, trying to find a good deal on nearly anything is nigh impossible. Deals are especially hard to find when it comes to holding hobbies requiring any monetary investment — particularly video games or record collecting.
Black Friday has always served as an excuse to splurge. Yet, as the years have passed, deals that may have once incited violence have dried up almost entirely.
Whether Black Friday’s lack of good deals and clamoring for its occurrence are due to companies’ stinginess or consumer apathy, its historical novelty has left buyers wanting more.
Many have attributed Black Friday’s fall from grace to the COVID-19 pandemic. In-person events dwindled into near-nonexistence, giving way to Black Friday’s hip younger brother: Cyber Monday.
While Black Friday sales plummeted when the world was in quarantine, Cyber Monday prospered. Online shopping had a 32% sales increase in the second quarter of 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
To adapt to the new economic climate that has a heavier emphasis on limited human interaction, stores have modified their approach for marketing, targeting younger audiences on various social media apps in order to garner a broader appeal.
Not only is there an ease of access to online retailers that has vastly expanded, but the timespan in which deals are available has shifted from a single day or two of bargains to more than a week.
Though not inherently a bad thing in itself, part of the joy and whimsy which came with retail events at physical stores is lost.
As Black Friday’s magic upon me and the cultural eye fades into a distant memory, the thrill of that one-day-only mentality just to buy a $9.99 miniature American flag crockpot from JCPenney in the early morning felt like more than just a good bargain. It was a milestone in my materialistic journey.
