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Black Friday: Thumbs Up, Fists Down
The Death of Deals, Drama, and Department Store Wars
I used to like Black Fridays for the same reason I like to watch UFC — I love bloody fights.
You might say that a 75" screen TV for $25 is not worth punching someone in the nose, and I’ll say that it was never about the 75" TV. Black Friday was The Purge meeting the rage of Thanksgiving dinner.
It was about people who were stuck with the distant uncle who, in thirty minutes, reminded everyone why no one invited him to happy family events. The deals were merely the excuse; the battlefield was already set at the Thanksgiving table. Black Friday was the catharsis for all the repressed tension, the final act of a play that had started with overcooked turkey and passive-aggressive digs about life choices.
It was a golden age for chaos. Cell phone cameras were still blurry, and department store security cameras didn’t have facial recognition software. We had the freedom of plausible deniability. Did you knee the man who tried to pry a $20 laptop from your hands, or were you innocently raising your leg to prevent stepping on the thief? Who knows? We can’t prove anything.
And sure, Black Friday was also about the deals. It was when 70% off was a starting point, not a relic of liquidation sales. It was…
