Controversial shitboxing time: Black Friday isn’t real.
Well, okay. It exists. It’s a real name affixed to a real name on a real shitshow of a calendar system used by Western civilization. (I’m using the term civilization loosely here.)
But: I’ve been watching. I am a paranoid shopper, mostly because I hate shopping, so I’m not going to spend my money on something unless I know I’m getting a deal. This means I price-watch, even on things I’m not currently in the market to buy. The only market I don’t do this on the regular for is cars, because we already know the prices are inflated. That’s what haggling is for. (Always. Play. Hardball. Be willing to walk away. If you need financing, get it before you go to the dealership. You want to be in control, not them.)
Anyway.
Black Friday isn’t fucking real and hasn’t been for at least the last five years. This week in particular has been fun: I’ve been watching them advertise sales for their early Black Friday specials, and the prices that are the “sale” price are the same or higher than they were the week before, or the month before. Hell, one year I think pretty much everyone and their neighbor’s dog raised prices prior to the sale and then lowered them back down to normal in the name of Black Friday. In fact, I think that was the first year I really noticed the trend.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There USED to be Black Friday sales. Legitimate ones. I worked in those fucking stores, so I knew those prices, and I knew if they’d been legitimately dropped or not for Black Friday. Toystore and retail, your primary Black Friday offenders–I walked those trenches, my dudes. I saw true Black Friday prices for items whose prices had been lowered just for that day.
This year, I have seen exactly ONE Black Friday deal where the price was legitimately lowered $100 below its normal going price.
Just. One.
None of the others. They have claimed price drops…except these price drops? Yeah, the items in question were already that price. Nothing changed except the advertising. I’ve been looking for BF deals, too–you never know when you might see something that other people are in desperate need of, y’know?
Y’all, there ain’t shit except a one-day sale on a pair of Apple earbuds that are still hella overpriced. Just let it go. Maybe if we all refuse to fucking participate, they’ll either bring legitimate BF deals back, or ditch the idea entirely. It’s stupid and it’s gotten people killed and encouraging greed is a sin in like a lot of religions, so maybe we can step back a little.
This isn’t to say don’t buy shit. I mean, the way our society is set up, some of this is shit we actually need. But don’t be fooled by the bullshit. Shop around. Price-watch. Don’t leap for the fancy bold print, because just like the cake, it’s probably a lie.
Anyway. Stay home on Friday. You’re not missing anything this year. If you see an honest-to-fuck Black Friday deal, buy the damned thing online at 3am and then go the fuck to sleep.
Origins of Black Friday:
First use of the term referred to September 24, 1869, and a huge stock market crash caused by a couple of rich assholes trying to buy up all the gold and corner the market.
First use of it to refer to the day after Thanksgiving was in 1951 (and again in 1952) - Factory Management and Maintenance journal used it to describe workers calling in sick the day after Thanksgiving to get themselves a 4-day weekend.
Around that time: The Army-Navy football game was traditionally held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which resulted in a huge rush of tourists (and frantic sports fan activity everywhere else) - and of course everything was closed on Thursday, and Saturday they were watching the game; Friday was the big shopping day.
A little after that, the “red to black” narrative took over - possibly because for a lot of struggling businesses that were “in the red” most of the year, one big day of sales could push them “into the black” and out of debt/expenses covered; the rest of the year’s sales were pure profit.
When I was growing up, there were two kinds of Black Friday sales: Honest one-day sales bargains, and “it’s the start of the Christmas buying season” sales. Many of these were weekend-long sales, sometimes longer - normal sales, but all starting on the same day to get people to rush in and start their holiday shopping early, and give the stores a good sense of what was selling like crazy this year so they had time to get in another order or two before mid-December.
Consumerist rush, but one that tied to normal expected consumer habits.
Now, I’ve seen “Early Black Friday” sales start in OCTOBER.
And “Black Friday Sales” that are… 5% discounts on 4-item bundle purchases. Black Friday Sales that are indistinguishable from the year-round sales habits. Black Friday Sale that are clearance sales. Black Friday Sales that are “we’ve lowered the price to almost as low as our competitors offer.”
And of course, the “Black Friday Sales” that are “suggested price is $80 but it’s $50!!” … only, it’s always offered at $50 or lower.
They are all, technically, sales. But if you don’t shop regularly, you don’t know how many of those items can be purchased at that price - or lower - somewhere else, or by waiting a few weeks. You don’t know which ones are the Shiny New Version which differs from Last Year’s Boring Model in having different colored buttons, but costs 30% more (but it’s 10% off this week!!!).
Look for the stuff you actually need, that’s actually on sale this week. Don’t buy anything just because it’s on sale.
someone in the notes on that “stop fetishizing old houses” post commented that builders before the 1970s were too concerned with elegance and grandeur, and that was all really just wastefulness
and I think about my apartment, a duplex from 1912, surely built for a middle- or working-class family. spartan, really; quite basic and no-frills. not much to look at from the outside. just like a thousand buildings of similar provenance in the Boston area.
there are flowers molded in the chunky, cast-iron radiators
there’s a design of concentric circles in the carved door-lintels
many buildings of this type have a little stained-glass window somewhere
I think about ornate door hinges in the staff wing of a country estate from 1878. think of patterned wallpaper in a mansion’s kitchen, from 1797. I think about purely functional spaces someone looked at and said, “this needs beauty”
the past was certainly guilty of waste in many ways. but I cannot call making a house more than just a box to live in one of them
Minimalism is just propaganda to make people accept souless surroundings
you know what else is pretty amazing about those older houses from “before the 1970s?” No. Engineered. Lumber.
Gonna put my firefighting hat on and lecture for a minute here. Engineered Lumber is that shit made of wood chips that have been laminated together with glues and epoxies to make new boards out of waste material. That’s a good thing, right?
No. It really is not.
See, there’s other things that “waste material” could go to make or be used as, that do NOT include filling them with toxic chemicals that reduce the burn time of a piece of wood. Also, those pre 70’s boards were real, full, complete boards. So not only do they not off-gas massive quantities of toxic fumes when burning, it takes a lot longer than 2-4 minutes to burn through one. More like 15-20 minutes to burn through one. Also, yeah, there was waste in the way they built those old houses. It was called OVER-ENGINEERING. So when ONE of those boards burned through, you weren’t at risk of losing the entire roofing or flooring or ceiling SYSTEM because the materials to construct a structure have been pared down to the absolute minimum and even less in places.
Roof trusses were nailed together with NAILS, not “gusset plates”. Nails penetrate INCHES into the wood. Gusset plates? ¼ of an inch usually. Know how quick ¼ of an inch can char and cease holding onto the teeth of those gusset plates? I’ll give you a hint: it’s measured in a couple hundred seconds, rather than the tens of minutes a nailed truss gets.
TL;DR? Yeah, there was waste. They used thicker wood and a lot more of it, not even taking into account all the beautiful little embellishments like molded plaster reliefs and tin ceiling panels… But that thicker wood saved lives. It didn’t burn toxic, and it burned for a LOT LONGER before it became unsafe to be in.
Modern house like your typical McMansion? By the time we arrive on a typical structure fire, it’s already too dangerous to enter, because too many of the engineered lumber pieces will have been compromised, thus endangering entire building systems. We’re talking if it’s been burning for 5 minutes or so, 10 at the outside, we KNOW it’s not safe to enter. (If there’s someone in there, we will anyway - risk a lot to save a lot - but we also know to be a thousand times more careful about putting weight anywhere). That 1900 farmhouse that’s been burning for 30 minutes? It’s still plenty strong enough to go in and do what we gotta do. And we don’t have to be paranoid about breathing the smoke in outside, either.
Long story short, not only does minimalism kill the soul, it KILLS REAL PEOPLE’S LIVES.
