Last year I went on about how I hated Black Friday. To sum up last year, I felt it:
- Distorted economic planning.
- Was stressful on businesses.
- Was a giant cultural distorter.
- Wasted mindshare on things like . . . me writing about it.
- Distorted perspective.
None of my areas of concern really changed, and repeating them is kind of useless.
So I’d like to turn this around and ask – do I see Black Friday going away?
. . . and the answer really is no, not without specific effort or changes.
Black Friday is integrated into not just our economy, but our culture. It’s there, it’s expected, it’s assumed. As much as people (like me ) complain about it, it’s just something we do. There’s a lot of inertia behind the idea. I see no reason for it to stop.
It’s fascinating to imagine something economic like this being a cultural fixture, but there you go. The mutant offspring of Christmas greed (which we’ve been decrying for decades), bargain-hunting, and watching-the-car crash is just something we do. Much as we also rant about it (which is strangely its own traditions).
Now could I see it going away? Maybe, but it’d have to be conscious. We’d have to as a country and a culture, or at least part of us, move against the insanity of the day. We’d have to get businesses to go along with it. In short, there’d have to be a kind of movement.
Do I want one? Actually, yeah. The entire holiday distortion of the economy can’t be healthy, and I’m not sure it can last in its currently exponetially-insane-ifying state. Also it’s really annoying and distracting.
OK, you go start the movement. *I* am tired ranting.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.