Semantic Nonsense: Go home Black Friday, you’re drunk
I’m old, so my ability to focus isn’t what it once was. And it seems like Black Friday is even further over the hill, because it’s got none left.
To heavily paraphrase Tim Sample, some of you younger folks might not realize that Black Friday used to happen… on Black Friday. Before they invented all these Black Friday extenders like the weekend, Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.
But if all that was simply unfocused, what’s going on nowadays is downright sloppy. This year has been a slow, staggering pub crawl of a Black Friday dating back to perhaps October.
In some ways, it has been a right disaster for the average deal-seeker. Like Angela, I was also on the hunt for a GPU upgrade this month. Each week brought different sales on different cards from different retailers with no way of knowing if something better was coming along or if the best deal was already long gone. Somehow I managed to snag an RX 6700 for less than the deal Angela got, at which point I promptly stopped looking at GPU sales alerts lest I discover I hadn’t played chicken long enough.
Because a gamble really is the nature of a Black November. A Black Friday involves research and planning and execution, with some physical endurance and athleticism tossed in for good measure. Black November is roulette. Will this be the only time this is on sale? Is this the good sale, or is the best yet to come? Will Amazon change the price of the 4K edition of Thor: Love and Thunder four times today? (or did they change it more times than I witnessed?)
Step right up and take your chance. Those who fish and those who cut bait alike will have their chance to be wrong. Everyone is a loser!
Really, any advantage in being able to spread around the spending over multiple paychecks really gets lost in the chaos of never knowing how good a deal you’re getting. And I fully expect it to reach into December as Cyber Monday sprawls out as far as it can make it.
While there’s still plenty of real deals out there, perhaps the biggest-ticket items remain the current-gen consoles. But the traditional holiday bundles we’re seeing out of Sony reflect the rarity of the Playstation 5 by packing in a game and charging… exactly what the console and a game would cost. The deal, you see, is the PS5 existing to be purchased to begin with. Though I’m sure not one will be left by the time Friday comes… heck, they’re probably all gone as I’m typing this.
Also new this year was a paucity of ad “leaks”, once a vital cog in the advertising/industrial espionage/hype cycle for Black Friday. This, of course, ties right back into Black November: The reason why there were fewer leaks was because there were fewer retailers publishing Black Friday-specific fliers. That and quite a few places “leaked” their Black Friday deals by simply offering them up on November 1.
Overall, I think this whole blobification of Black Friday hasn’t really done it any favors. We’ll need to withhold final judgment until we have hard numbers from the retailers themselves, of course. But from a consumer perspective, it’s been awkward, stressful, time-consuming, and has very much worn out its welcome. The whole thing’s just been an unpredictable mess of what was once a holiday unto itself. Economic trouble notwithstanding, I believe that the lack of focus by retailers is leading to a lack of focus from shoppers, and that Black November will perform MUCH worse than the extended Black Friday weeks that became the norm pre-pandemic.
…and I suspect that some real journalist will be coining the term “Black Friday Fatigue” in an analysis piece in a few weeks.
About The Author
Drew
Features Editor | Drew started behind the 8(bit)-ball in the video game world. He first became interested in anime by chance exposure on the Sci-Fi channel. Drew's the creative force behind blog-wide features, works the movie and food beats, and pioneered Damage Control’s entry into video, podcasts and streaming.
