Black Friday, for me, means ...
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For Americans only? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Black Friday - that sounds like a day when the stock market is plummeting.
But in the US that only means that your personal wallet got empty and your eyes filled with pepper spray.
Black Friday = reflect on pricing and consumerism (Score:4, Interesting)
To me Black Friday is a day to reflect and rethink about how consumer-and-profit economic structure has imposed itself upon every other way of designing and making things. Read about alternative economics, funding, complementary currencies, etc.
Re:Black Friday = reflect on pricing and consumeri (Score:4, Insightful)
the real problem is that Wall Street pushes "super profitability" and Black Friday is the one time of year that push is visible to the regular consumer. Most retail businesses run unprofitable from January to Thanksgiving... literally relying on Black Friday to keep the doors open come January 1. The frenzy is whipped up because the stakes for the big chains are so high... investors on Wall Street can shut them all down if they don't pull extreme numbers every year....
Just watching this year's YouTube videos of Black Friday show the whole thing is out of control.. the lackeys on the front lines are understaffed and poorly equipped for these yearly stunts. With the chaos over trivial items, it's almost like the 99% -ers are proved right... imagine the fun the 1% will have when we get to fight over food and clean water!!!
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Re:For Americans only? (Score:5, Funny)
Black Friday - that sounds like a day when the stock market is plummeting.
It sounds more like a day when Americans celebrate the contributions of African-Americans to their country.
Re:For Americans only? (Score:4, Interesting)
Speak for yourself. In Australia I would pay about $400 for Rockport boots. I just imported TWO pairs from Amazon's subsidiary for $107 delivered because of Black Friday sales.
As a non-American, I learn quickly when there is such a disparity between my local market in Aus and what I can buy over the net!
AC
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Speak for yourself. In Australia I would pay about $400 for Rockport boots. I just imported TWO pairs from Amazon's subsidiary for $107
I'm sure the Australian tax authority has kept a copy of this confession as evidence of you breaking the law. If I were you I wouldn't wear those boots outside the house for at least six months.
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GP wasn't saying that Australians have 'heard of Black Friday'. I'm Australian and I have NFI what it is either. He was simply saying that even though we may not have heard of it, we can reap the benefits of it regardless.
So the original comment stands: most of the world (including Australia) has never heard of black Friday.
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He was simply saying that even though we may not have heard of it, we can reap the benefits of it regardless.
The fact that you didn't know what "Black Friday" means in America but don't care as it turns out that you can nonetheless enjoy the benefits makes me feel obligated to warn you about what "tossing the salad" [urbandictionary.com] can mean in America.
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It's better than being one of China's bitches.
Tell that to pakistan.
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My thought exactly. I have no idea what it is about. Some kind of curse that makes you buy more than you need ?
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It's an American religious festival. Worshippers make sacrifices to Mammon and pray for fleeting affection from loved ones grateful for gifts to be received or impressed by toys and status symbols to be displayed.
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For Americans only? - Yep. (Score:5, Informative)
It is pretty much for Americans only. Black Friday is the friday after the American Thanksgiving* which many people have as a national holiday every year since Thanksgiving holiday is always a Thursday. As there are so many people with the day off, and Christmas is the next big holiday, stores usually have massive sales as people start to shop for gifts. It is famous for incredible loss leader sales such as TVs or computers for next to nothing. The $100 Touchpad type thing would be an example. However, most stores only have a few of whatever is on sale, so it leads to people camping out in front of the stores which tend to open earlier and earlier as people try to be the first in line to get what they want. It is also supposedly called 'Black Friday' because it is the day that most businesses go into the black for the year and is the beginning of the season that most make all their profits.
Frys electronics opened at midnight Friday morning for example. That's where I went (not at midnight) to pick up the RAM and hard drive I needed to upgrade my laptop. There were no sales I wanted, it just happened that it was the first chance I had to get the stuff and I had nothing else to do yesterday. Parking was insane as was the checkout line for a store that has acres of parking and 50 checkout counters. Once I got home, I spent the rest of the day eating Thanksgiving leftovers (mmm, pie as breakfast) and rebuilding my laptop.
*Not to be confused with the Canadian Thanksgiving, nor to infer that they aren't from the continent of North America either.
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Such marketing tactics are illegal in (some) other countries - for the reasons that are obvious from what happens in the US. In the US, it's only illegal to pepper spray and shoot people, since they are more free.
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I've heard that story about the name of Black Friday being associated with that profit stuff and this is what Wikipedia has to say about Black Friday [wikipedia.org] (my emphasis):
The day's name originated in Philadelphia, where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. (...) Later an alternative explanation began to be offered: that "Black Friday" indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the
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Apparently it is the day after Thangsgiving. Now I just have to find out what thangsgiving is :-)
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It is the US equivalent of Boxing Day. In the UK, it is the day when you can stuff a bit cheaper in the Apple store but otherwise is just a normal day.
Re:For Americans only? (Score:5, Informative)
free weenies for pop
As a non-American, this seems rather...uhh...I mean...it's just...you know what? I don't want to know.
I just don't.
Oh, don't be so homophobic. :-D
"hot dogs" used to be called "wieners" back in the day when it was also acceptable to call people named "Richard" "Dick".
But don't blame the Americans, the Brits have many more strange names for phalluses and phallus-shaped objects than the Yanks could muster. I submit a small sampling: Monty Python's Penis Song [youtube.com] (lyrics NSFW)
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Americans also seem oblivious as to what "fanny" means to the rest of the english-speaking world.
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From an external viewpoint, to be brutally honest, it looks like the American day that the sub 100 cheeto munching victims of marketing go insane. The one that saner Americans take every measure to avoid participating in.
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It's not all bad. My brother picked up a 160GB PS3 & two decent games for $199. That's a pretty good deal.
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free weenies for pop
As a non-American, this seems rather...uhh...
Catholic?
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No, they just bomb them.
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Well it does get you to STFU, so can you really blame us?
Foreigner: *crying* I hate how the biggest economy in the world gets the most press!
USA: *drops neutron bomb*
USA: Ah, silence truly is golden!
If you want your country to be the one considered "the most important", then start busting your ass to become the country with the biggest economy - but I guess that would interfere with your 6 months of vacation and 15 hour work weeks.
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"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide ot the Galaxy
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And completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. People were whining about why the US gets all the media attention and I explained why and what is needed to do to become worthy of the majority of media attention.
Also, you're failing to acknowledge that the "dolphins" are the ones who're seeing their countries collapse right now under crushing debt due to thinking that you can just sit around and play while running up the credit card bills forever.
What is... (Score:3)
Re:What is... (Score:5, Informative)
It's the day in the U.S. where the well conditioned crazed consumers all go out and create a scene suitable for an after the apocalypse movie. Occasionally they trample store clerks to death when the doors are unlocked.
Re:What is... (Score:5, Funny)
well conditioned crazed women
There, fixed that for you...
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I'm not well conditioned and crazed, so "no".
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I'm not well conditioned and crazed, so "no".
What does hair product have to do with this?
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I'm not well conditioned and crazed, so "no".
What does hair product have to do with this?
Amazingly, I am not my hair.
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Actually, that doesn't happen any more often on Black Friday than it does on other days. Most of the violence is unrelated to shopping (e.g. gang violence), and that one trampling incident happened because of how insanely neglectful the store was. The media just likes to put out bullshit stories on Black Friday crowds because it gets good ratings.
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So was the pepper spray lady a Crip or a Blood? Meanwhile, I had no idea the gangs were so in to getting deals on bath towels [reuters.com].
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Yeah, Walmart has yet to figure out how to handle the BF crowds. You'd think they'd review store policies for that day after one of their employees got trampled to death a couple of years ago.
Give Walmart a little credit. I don't give them much myself, but they opened at 10pm in many locations, and made individual store maps available online in advance of BF to help the foot traffic to know where it was going.
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Maybe not the gangs themselves, but when the wives tell you to get your butt in line to get something... well...
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oh jeez... I just dropped my cheesecake.
But really... she couldn't wait until it hit the secondhand market? That's what I did. Ended up with (so far):
1 modded-to-hell XBox Crystal with 200GB HDD
2 XBox Mk. II units, neither modded
12 controllers (4 Crystal, 3 Fatty, 5 'S')
full sets of cables for all
nearly 200 games (after selling up several dozen duplicates)
Still hunting down games (anyone know how many were published for XBox?) and some more Fatty controllers, as I seem to be one of few people that actually
Re:What is... (Score:5, Insightful)
this Black Friday of which you speak?
It's the day where American's spend a lot of money on junk right after the day where all American's celebrate how thankful they are for having what they have.
bushfires (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, Black Friday means bushfires in Australia. What the hell is this talk about shopping???
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We also had Ash Wednesday (1983) and Black Saturday (2009) and plenty of other random bushfires.
Cyber Monday Started On Black Friday (Score:5, Funny)
I spent way too much on PC games this week, and then Blizzard discounted StarCraft 2.
At 1.5Mbps DSL it's still downloading.
Oh, was I supposed to be buying presents for OTHER people?
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I took advantage of Apple's "discounted" prices and finally ordered (from the online Apple Store) my dream Imac, which will be my first Apple/Mac. Late in the afternoon, we waddled over to Target just to buy some routine/ordinary household items, and my wife mentioned that she wanted an iPod for Christmas. Checked Target's prices (and product selection), then went home and ordered it for her from the Apple Store as well. Price was about the same, and I didn't feel like encouraging Target with any of the ope
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Weird. (Score:5, Insightful)
Black Friday (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know what this shopping bullshit is, but Black Friday is:
Black Friday (1869), the Fisk-Gould Scandal, a financial crisis in the United States
Black Friday (1881), the Eyemouth disaster in which 189 fishermen died
Black Friday (1939), a day of devastating bushfires in Victoria, Australia, which killed 71 people
Black Friday (1945), an Allied air attack against German ships in Norway
Hollywood Black Friday (1945), a riot at the Warner Bros. studios
Black Friday (1978), a massacre of protesters in Iran
Black Friday (1987), a tornado in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Re:Black Friday (Score:5, Informative)
The "shopping" black Friday is on the same list, moron.
I'd have made it blink too, but Slashdot won't let me.
Re:Black Friday (Score:5, Funny)
half of one, half of two (Score:3)
Well, I wouldn't say that it means absolutely nothing... to me it meant it was a fantastic day to take my boys on a four mile hike through some beautiful mountains. Black Friday may possibly have meant that there were fewer people on the trails, but that difference, if extant, was probably the difference between seeing 10 people instead of 11 on the trip.
Nothing special (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I was affected a little bit. I had to go buy some home repair stuff after work, and the box stores were absolutely mobbed. Apparently they were offering a drill and a shopvac for about the same price that they normally do, but told everybody that was 50% off.
Oddly enough, I had to go back by the same store about 7 PM and though they were still
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Some of the ads are for those who don't take time to read all the print. An Apple product was for sale listed in the local newspaper. Sale price 294.95. At the bottom in the small print was the MSRP of 99.99. Not worth the gas in savings. I think the ad was just for name recognition and to fill a spot at the bottom of the full truck newspaper page.
Steely Dan (Score:3)
Missing Option... (Score:5, Insightful)
As always, Missing Option: (Score:5, Insightful)
Hiding in my house until it all blows over.
It's like a reverse Zombie Apocalypse where you have to stay as far away from malls, hardware stores and supermarkets as possible.
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Hiding in my house until it all blows over.
It's like a reverse Zombie Apocalypse where you have to stay as far away from malls, hardware stores and supermarkets as possible.
ROFLMFAO...went looking to see if anyone had my option. Yep, you did, with a zombie apocalypse kicker. Nice!
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HYPE HYPE HYPE (Score:5, Interesting)
Black Friday seems a lot more hyped than usual this year.
Many Canadian retailers are doing Black Friday deals to compete with U.S. retailers. Our over-hyped consume-fest is traditionally Boxing Day.
Me? I didn't buy a thing. I don't need anything. My computer works. My TV works. I don't need any new clothes. Yes, I've lost a lot of weight and have bought new clothes as a result, but I'm set for winter.
...laura, lousy consumer
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It is more hyped and earlier each year to me.
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I noticed some "Black Friday" emails from Amazon.co.uk and thought it was weird to name a promotion like a stock market crash. I honestly thought from the emails that they were running a consumer electronics promotion, and the only tenuous link they could find between all the offers was the colour black.
It was only when I saw this poll on Slashdot that I bothered to google "Black Friday" and promptly lost interest, as it has as much relevance to me here in the UK as "Thanksgiving" (which I discovered was la
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I would never consider buying anything electronic from asda. Ever tried getting warranty repairs through anybody like them? Say bye bye to [insert gadget here - ooh er!] for three months for a scratch on the enamel finish! But really, I tried getting a spare head for my Philips/Nivea shaver last year, Asda don't carry spare heads (though they'll flog you the shaver for £90!)... I had to order one from Philips direct - which wasn't easy, me not being a retailer!
Printer time! (Score:5, Interesting)
Its the best time to buy a printer. Brother laser printers are only $50 at most office supply stores. The starter toner puts out ~1500 pages too, making it considerably cheaper than a single cartridge of black ink for an inkjet.
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oh? Last time I bought a printer was six years ago (Brother HL1030 and £50 secondhand), so far it's been through over 30,000 sheets of paper and had a grand total of three toner refills at £11 a pop and one new drum unit at £23. I don't think I've come across a more efficient printer.
Enough of this "Black Friday" nonsense (Score:2, Funny)
Please, from here on out, refer to it as "Friday of Color".
Thank you.
Time to go skiing. (Score:3, Informative)
The slopes were empty. The snow was great. The sky was clear.
Boxing Day (Score:4, Informative)
ignoring consumerism (Score:2)
It means staying away from the mall and anything that might be called a "superstore".
I went to the gym and a mom-and-pop party store.
What Happened to Buy Nothing Day? (Score:2)
Surprised this didn't come up..nor was an option for the vote.
Haven't really seen it promoted much this year either.
I'm not sure if a single 'buy nothing' day really has an impact, especially if the retailer isn't informed that you're 'buying nothing'..but i think the questioning of mass consumerism still needs to be brought up, and most people (who can access Black Friday sales) need to think more on the consequences of constantly buying more, and what that means environmentally, and to the people who are
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Haven't really seen it promoted much this year either.
It would help if American TV networks would stop refusing to air the ads. Apparently the mere suggestion of going an entire day without shopping is utterly sacrilegious and un-American.
Buy Nothing Day (Score:3)
Up here north of the border, for most it's just another friday, but for some it's also Buy-Nothing-Day. Which I believe was started by the magazine Ad-Busters, which also was responsible for the occupy movement.
For those that knew about Buy-Nothing-Day I'm pretty sure, up until this year, they didn't know that it fell on Black Friday in the states.
Still from what I read about what goes on, it doesn't compare to Boxing Day (Or Boxing Week) up here. THAT's crazy.
Black Friday is in NZ (Score:2)
Should have changed the PSU first... but at least I managed to get it ordered, free delivery and get the same discount...
Missing Option: Get Down (Score:2)
It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday
Everybodyâ(TM)s lookinâ(TM) forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Why do you Americans have a whole holiday dedicated to that Rebecca Black song?
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GTA franchise pack on Steam (Score:2)
I live in the UK, so it mostly passed me by, but I did take advantage of the £5 GTA franchise pack on Steam. Everything from GTA 1 to Liberty City Stories!
Cyber Monday? (Score:2)
Missing option... (Score:2)
Going to the local Wal-Mart with my video camera :)
Missed option -- Avoid going near shopping centers (Score:2)
For me, Black Friday means a day to stay at home. Avoid the roads, which will be packed with idiots being distracted by kids and shopping lists. Avoid stores, where you will get physically assaulted or even pepper sprayed by rabid bargain hunters. It's a fine day to avoid the human race in general.
recession (Score:2)
For all those who are still suffering from the recession...
Black Friday is a painful reminder, you insensitive clod!
Mostly a day when Americans are batshit insane (Score:2)
And the rest of us sit back and think "what the fuck is wrong with those people?"
Of course, since stores were actually opening on Thursday this year, pretty soon it'll be "Black Thanksgiving" instead. But hey, the important thing is that you got a good deal on junk you don't need and only had to trample a few hapless minimum wage employees who would rather be having a holiday with family to get it.
America, Fuck Yeah!
another day off from work (Score:2)
My wife goes out shopping (though she doesn't leave until 9am) and I play video games all day.
Re:First in line (Score:5, Funny)
So many options as an American. Do I pepperspray you? Beat you to death with a baseball bat? Shoot you?
Re:First in line (Score:5, Funny)
"So many options as an American. Do I pepperspray you? Beat you to death with a baseball bat? Shoot you?"
Yes.
Re:First in line (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Missing option: get your popcorn ready (Score:5, Interesting)
I got the perfect penalty for that: she buys 360s for those she sprayed. And personally hands the one she got to the 5yo. In full public view. With an apology for spraying her.
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yet the Wall Street owners of these same companies are the ones urging police to pepper spray OWS protestors because giving in to some reasonable economics would cost them one gold-plated item out of the dozens they already have?
There were plenty of examples on YouTube of police pepper spraying and/or arresting shoppers for far less useful purposes.
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...This year the winner, clearly by unanimous decision, is the woman who pepper sprayed 15 or 20 people (including a 5 year old girl) in order to get an Xbox 360.
The funny thing is that she forgot to grab a copy of Grand Theft Auto to go with it.
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That's charcoal grey Friday, you insensitive clod!
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Eh? Just use 2-3 drops of car-appropriate shampoo and water.