Black Friday - Do you enjoy it or find it tiresome?

[Lucap]

All the spamfest is annoying.

[Moem]

I hardly notice it at all.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The spam fest is the least of what was wrong with Black Friday. The greedy, often violent mobs at unreal early hours and the fact it was the epitome of what had become the greedy, selfish commercialization of a religious holiday for months before were the real problem. My family and I stopped shopping on that day around forty years ago after, on the last Black Friday shopping trip we went on, two items were stolen from our shopping cart when we weren't looking. After that and having been jostled about by the crowds that were frantically and rudely grabbing what and as much as they could before anyone else could while trying to keep our kids from getting separated from us and getting trampled, I had had enough and told my ex we were going home. I never went shopping on Black Friday since.

If something good could ever be said about the current pandemic (and it would be a stretch), it's that stores are not having that massive, one day, greedy, often violent riot disguised as a "sale" and are spreading the "sales" out over several weeks. I'm not seeing the ads much this year since there is very little worth watching on TV anymore "thanks" to the pandemic and I'm staying home as much as I can until the worst of the nightmare is under control.

[Portreve]

Black Friday 2020 Drinking Game:

Every time someone does something really stupid, drink a shot.

Every time someone does something tragic, or which results in a tragedy, donate to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, or another credible charity of your choice.

[ZakGordon]

I hardly notice it at all.

Yeah i'm pretty much hear. I never go to the physical store sales during it, or any other kind of 'rush event' sale day. Many things are on-sale at various times through the year all the time anyway, so i just see if i get lucky when i'm looking for something.

I did just get some printer ink cartridges as they were about half the normal (rip-off) price. I'm not a 'grand' consumer type, so find it hard to get that bothered about days like Black Friday.

[ugly]

It's gotten tiresome.

Probably the last 5-10 years, the supposed deals do not live up to the hype. For the most part it ends up being not a whole lot more than another set of deals that stores push out every week. There tends to be some products that have really good deals, but those are usually limited stock, or things I'm not interested in (how many TVs can you buy?). Even Amazon seems to just mostly put their own products on sale, like the Alexa.

So it's to the point where it's really not worth wasting your time wading through all the deals to try and find something.

[Portreve]

Black Friday sales are and have been pretty much over hyped b******t for a long time because retailers just want to live off the coattails of the reputation, but don't really want to do crazy sales. The masses, for the most part, are little more than dumb sheeple who go crazy for it even though they're really not the fantastic things they used to be a couple decades or more ago, even to the point of actually trampling their fellow human beings to death.

This mindless extremist consumerism had become the bane of at least the American pro-corporatist way of life.

And to think folks question why I have so little sympathy for many of my fellow Americans.

[Pepi]

Bah humbug

[AZgl1800]

I refuse to shop where there are huge crowds of thoughtless jerks.

anymore, my shopping is right here on my laptop, and the delivery service folks bring it to my door.
same prices, if not lower than the sales adverts.

[AbitOnTheMintySide]

I had my eye on a new mechanical keyboard for my adventures in Python. (Online stores)
Then I saw the prices from 12 months and 24 months ago. Realizing I was being ripped even during the BF sale I decided I wouldn't bother.
I'll purchase items as these break on me.

[JeremyB]

With the virus that is currently circulating, I recommend avoiding being anywhere that you have to wait in line as it isn't true social distancing. You might be 6 feet(2 meters) behind someone else in that line but the truth is you are only separated by that person in front of you by the time it takes to move that distance

[antikythera]

I never go near the shops during Black Friday. My Father-in-law used to work part-time in a store selling Electronics until he retired 2 years ago. He learnt the first Black Friday to book that particular day off. All common sense and decency goes out of the window, he says he saw better behaved Millwall fans in the 80s

[Lady Fitzgerald]

With the virus that is currently circulating, I recommend avoiding being anywhere that you have to wait in line as it isn't true social distancing. You might be 6 feet(2 meters) behind someone else in that line but the truth is you are only separated by that person in front of you by the time it takes to move that distance

It's so refreshing to see someone who gets it. If more people thought like you, the pandemic would have been under control a long time ago.

[freshminted]

I find it tiresome that USA based companies send spam advertising Black Friday (whatever it is) that is of no relevance to the rest of the world. Almost as bad as what they've turned All Souls Day into.

[Portreve]

With the virus that is currently circulating, I recommend avoiding being anywhere that you have to wait in line as it isn't true social distancing. You might be 6 feet(2 meters) behind someone else in that line but the truth is you are only separated by that person in front of you by the time it takes to move that distance

I second this sentiment. Much as was the case after Hurricane Charley in 2004 that you could tell which houses were new versus old based on which ones had blue tarps covering their rooves, you'll be able to pretty much tell who is who in line by whether they're wearing masks or not. And I, for one, have absolutely zero desire to be a part of that. Besides, I get enough public exposure, thanks to my job, to idiots who refuse to protect themselves and others.

[BenTrabetere]

The first Black Friday sale I went to was when I started working in Big Box retail. I was not a fan of Black Friday, but I grew to loathe it the earlier the store started opening. At first it was 6am and then 5am, with the opening crew having to show up 1hr before opening. My breaking point was when the store started opening at 3am.

There were around 300 people waiting for the store to at 3am, and most of them had been there for more than an hour. The only thing that would have brightened my mood as I drove through the parking lot was if it had been cold and raining. I am schadenfreude personified.

Then the store started opening at 10pm on Thanksgiving Day. We pulled 12-hour shifts, which meant nobody got to enjoy Thanksgiving in a meaningful way. I did that gig for three years before I could not take any more. Every time a customer asked 'Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?' it took a fistful of karma-points to keep me from saying 'Not really. I had to come to work so that you could buy a pair of $19 boots.'

Since then I any store that opens on Thanksgiving Day will not get business from me until April.

[ricardogroetaers]

Black Friday, aka "fool me, I like it".
50% discount on previously increased prices and slowly more than 100%.

[antikythera]

DDR3 - Relative bargain not in Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales for older machines you are mulling a RAM upgrade for:

https://www.ebuyer.com/408828-patriot-1 ... 316g160c9k

I grabbed one myself tonight and will put it in my Kabini system that currently has 8GB running LMDE4 so I can run the VM that were on my laptop that had 16GB RAM a bit more efficiently. I'd been looking at the Kingston and Crucial kits but they are way more expensive.

[ajgringo619]

It's not Black Friday anymore - it's Black November. I started getting ads non-stop on November 1st, only to change to Cyber November/December right after Thanksgiving.

[antikythera]

Yes, they did that in the UK too and straight after went into Christmas Sales. That's why I don't tend to pay much attention to them these days and the better higher end tech. bargains are usually available around June to July when there's a lull in unit sales due to people taking holidays.