Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

So how do we feel about Black Friday?

I'm personally a fan. I bought myself an 8 GB Samsung Galaxy Pad 3 7 inch for about 25% off. I'd been wanting an 7" Android tablet for a while, and this one happened to fit both the budget and the need.

Anyone else buy things for Black Friday?

Mr. Mico and I will go to Best Buy in a bit and look at the movies. That's it, though. I'm not really a fan of shopping ever, Black Friday is not an exception. I may buy a few things this weekend/Cyber Monday online.

ETA: Congrats on your shiny new tablet!

I'm more likely to check out Cyber Monday deals as well, not least because I'm cash-poor at the moment.

I'm a fan of Small Business Saturday. Probably going to go to a reading by the author whose workshop I'm taking.

Trampled by Turtles is one thing, but Trampled by Crazed Deal-Seekers is the opposite of my idea of a good time.

I bought a subscription to Crunchyroll because they always do a Black Friday special.

I happen to be doing a sale this weekend...

https://www.etsy.com/shop/QuietMischief

... so my feelings depend on how well we do. ; )

I think black Friday is an example of consumerism run amok. It constantly pushes into any sort of holiday celebrations, demonstrating once again that the unifying value in American culture isn't family, religion, God, or anything else, it is a desire to have the biggest pile of crap. It undermines attempts to reinforce feelings of love, unity, or appreciation, and encourages instead "spend, spend, spend" with no thought of tomorrow.

Needless to say, I did not participate.

Marduk wrote: ...and encourages instead "spend, spend, spend...

This commercial is one of the most blatant I've seen. To the tune of Deck the Halls, "Go go go go go, shop shop shop shop"

Or, in other words, capitalism?

mic0 wrote:Or, in other words, capitalism?

Unfettered and unbridled, yes. My original wording was "capitalism run amok" but I thought that might be slightly more offensive than my normal fare.

Marduk wrote:

mic0 wrote:Or, in other words, capitalism?

Unfettered and unbridled, yes. My original wording was "capitalism run amok" but I thought that might be slightly more offensive than my normal fare.

Poor, thin-skinned capitalism.

Apparently we have black Friday in Canada now, which doesn't make any sense. Last night I went out for dinner with my friend who has been gone for 3 weeks, and then I needed to buy something from the drugstore and then we thought, oh, maybe let's go to a movie. So we tried to go to the mall, because the mall has a drugstore and movies not even realizing this whole event was going down, and there was no parking anywhere, but plenty of people driving around like maniacs and coming out of the mall with ridiculous amounts of stuff.

I don't usually participate. I hate standing. Ever. So the idea of standing in line for hours is a miserable thought to me. But this year I participated far enough to gift my sister some money to go buy her and her husband iPhones for cheap, because they really want them, and they live in the middle of nowhere and are joining my parents' plan, so it seemed best to do it when they and my parents were together here where there are stores. They went to Best Buy at around 9 am, had about 5 people ahead of them, and my parents were home within 2-2.5 hours of leaving. My sister and her husband were out for another couple of hours doing more Christmas shopping while we watched their kids. A much needed break for them. And they said the crowds weren't horrible anywhere they went.

Sometimes I'll wait to buy stuff that I was going to buy anyway until there's a big sale like Boxing Day or Black Friday, but only if I can buy it online.

I vaguely remember hearing a story on the news a couple of years ago about a Walmart employee being trampled to death after being the one unlucky enough to be opening the doors to a stampede of shoppers early in the morning on Black Friday.

Yep. Looks like it was Long Island, NY, 2008.

There was a customer trampled up in Clinton this year at Walmart. They reported today that she's fine now. I actually suggested avoiding Walmart to my sister, because honestly, Black Friday at Walmart scares me, even though they, by far, had the best iPhone deal. She ended up stopping by, but only briefly, and said it actually appeared like a normal shopping day inside with slightly longer lines. So apparently Walmart isn't so scary after the initial rush. (She went around 9 am.)

What I hate most about shopping this week is that I don't want to make people work on Thanksgiving, so I avoid shopping on Thursday, Friday scares me, Saturday is maybe doable, but a little scary, Sunday is out because of the Sabbath. Which means there are 4 days in which I don't want to shop. Which really stinks when I think of something menial I want right now, but really don't want to go buy.

My in-laws (who live in a pretty small town) really wanted to try out the whole black Friday thing this year, so we went. Well, we went on Thursday night. We had a decent time at the Target in Orem. It was crowded, but people were nice. We probably waited an hour to check out so that kind of stunk. But I got a couple things for my kids and husband.

Mostly it was just fun to see the in-laws' reactions to so many people.

I got some need-to-have luggage, and nice-to-have accessories and a sweater on Cyber Monday. No one got trampled, and I hope that warehouse workers and UPS drivers are paid a living wage ...

Anybody get any interesting Black Friday things? I bought a few games on Steam (Child of Light, Endless Legend; already started Child of Light, it is pretty good!), some clothes, and then today Barnes and Noble FINALLY put their ebooks on sale so I bought four. I am a sucker for book deals.