Age of the Geek

Black Friday Blues

                Black Friday has come and gone again. I hope you all made it out OK.

     I went shopping on Friday morning, but it just wasn’t as fun as it used to be. Here’s five reasons why.

     1. If you shop on Thursday, you’re a bad person and should feel bad.

     Look, I appreciate irony as much as the next person. I love that we immediately follow the day of Thanksgiving with a day of rampant consumerism. It was already morally dubious to make retail employees go to bed early so we could all line-up outside at 2 a.m. on Friday morning. With so many retailers straight up opening on Thanksgiving evening, at this point we’ve taken the joke too far.

     Yes, some people will always have to work during the holidays. We need gas station clerks to keep our cars fueled while we travel and hotel staff to take care of our out-of-town guests.

     Nobody needs to go out and buy a television at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, and yet here we are.

     This has to stop and we have to stop it.

     With a few exceptions like Costco and GameStop, the retailers are never going to be the adults in this situation. They’ll force their workers in on Thanksgiving Day and absolve themselves of any responsibility for opening up early because the demand is there. This puts the fate of the holiday in the hands of the lowest common denominator.

     It also kind of sucks the fun out of it since, for those that do go out on Black Friday…

     2. It’s another shopping day

     Once you’ve drawn your line in the sand on keeping Black Friday on Black Friday, there’s really no more incentive to make an event of it. This year I took my little sister up at 9:30 a.m. We browsed a couple stores, met with our mother for lunch, and that was it. No lines to chat with people while waiting for the stores to open. No incentive to plan your day around the various opening times.

     With the crowd dispersed between Thursday evening, Black Friday is really just like any other day of shopping.

     And of course, no matter when you go shopping…

     3. It’s a trap.

     I think most people know this, but it’s worth repeating. Most people don’t actually save money on Black Friday. Oh sure, you might get a nice deal on some items, but we’ve all gone into a store for “just one thing” and ended up at the checkout with a full cart.

     That is exactly what they are hoping for.

     It even happened to me at Best Buy this year. I went in because they had some heavily discounted computer monitors and a sale on game cards. I figured at worst I’d spend $18 on $20 worth of Nintendo credit and come out ahead.

     But then I saw “Sin City” on Blu-Ray for just a few dollars. Which got me looking at the regular priced Blu-Ray of the sequel. And since I’d already sold myself on two movies with Bruce Willis, I figured I’d go for the hat trick and grab the newest Die Hard flick as well. Throw in a phone charger that my sister absolutely needed and that $18 gift card ended up with me putting $80 on my credit card.

     And I didn’t even get the monitor that baited me into the store in the first place. Which brings me to another point…

     4. The bait isn’t even that good anymore.

     Once upon a time there were some legitimately good deals to be had on Black Friday. At this point though, the “doorbusters” are really just a formality. The retailers know you’re going shopping. They don’t need to work as hard to get you into the store as they used to.

     The sales just aren’t as good as they used to be. The discounts are smaller and there are fewer of them.

     Even worse, the stuff that is heavily discounted generally isn’t worth buying anyway. My search for a new computer monitor ended when I realized that the $100 monitors being used to get me into the store were monitors that I wouldn’t spend $100 on at any time of year. The “doorbuster” items are, more often than not, third rate merchandise that retailers would never be rid of without the frenzy of Black Friday sales.

     So what does one do? Just shop online? Well…

     5. Forget about Cyber Monday

     Right now on Monday, as I write this, Amazon has a whole list of items between 25 and 75 percent off.

     On the day you read this, Amazon will still have a whole list of items between 25 and 75 percent off. Just as they did last week and just as they will next week. There’s nothing special to see here.

     That’s not to say there are no deals to be had, just that Cyber Monday, Black Friday, or Adjectiveless Wednesday are all pretty much the same when it comes to shopping online.

     Earlier this month I found a $120 Transformers gift set for 75 percent off, which I immediately picked up as a gift for a friend’s birthday.

     Just a couple weeks later I saved 40 percent on my new coat from Land’s End during a one-day sale. And nearly every day since I purchased it, I’ve gotten e-mails from them promoting similar “one-day” sales.

     And yes, I did end up pulling the trigger on a capture card I’ve had my eye on when Amazon offered it for $40 off, but that was something I was probably going to buy anyway.

     Just keep your eyes open, be wary about deals that are too good to be true, and don’t get too caught up in the hype.

     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and there’s only twenty-some shopping days until CHRISTMAS!