Black. Fucking. Friday.

[The Curmudgeon]

It's safe to say that the UK steals what it can from America. Glossy, terrible reality TV shows? We'll have some of that shit. Exploitative sensationalist news? Bring it on. Trick or Treat? Enormous car-park type shopping centres? Yes, yes and aw yeah.

So it is that Black Friday, a 100% American invention, is now officially A Thing in the UK now as well. No idea how this happened, as it's supposed to take place after Thanksgiving (we haven't started doing that yet, maybe next year) but Black Friday was a depressing, embarrassing affair that saw us Brits throw away things like common sense and dignity and trade them in for fighting in supermarket aisles over a TV with a discounted price. There are videos of people lunging over crowds of people to get to flat-screen TV's, of fighting at tills.. ugly, ugly scenes of stupid, stupid people.

I have no idea HOW this happened. Black Friday wasn't a thing, then for some reason it now is. And I guess we now have a new annual tradition of behaving like fucking animals to buy shit we don't need. God bless us, one and all.

[Ben]

Us Americans have started the BF festivities on Thanksgiving evening now to decrease the chance of anyone being trampled to death. I've always despised Black Friday and the shitheads who become savages at the sight of $20 DVD players and discounted Apple products. I'm sorry your country has adopted it too.

[trashcanman]

I'm.
So.
Sorry.

The funny thing is that they really used to have really amazing deals. That's what started all this. But now I look at the ads and it's all ticky tack shit. Ooh, a $60 video game is now $50? GET OUT OF THE WAY AND GIVE IT TO ME OR I'LL KILL YOU!!!!! $10 DVDs? I'm camping out all night for that shit! There's maybe a good deal or two on big screen TV's, but even my wife agreed that most of the stores just had one really good deal and a bunch of the usual sales they have like every month. At this point, it's all media hype. But that's what people respond to. All they see and hear is Black Friday and how everybody else is camping out and physically fighting over stupid shit so that's what they do. And even having acknowledged that with me, my wife went full crazy and obsessed relentlessly about Black Friday. I refused to participate, as I always have. Last year, South Park had a full trilogy/GoT parody about Black Friday. That's how ridiculous this has gotten.

[The Curmudgeon]

Dunno about where you are, but over here not only do we not actually know what Black Friday IS, we also don't understand the actual concept of it.



What the actual FUCK does that even mean?

[trashcanman]

It means that our corporate overlords looked at the most massive shopping day of the year and thought "why not every day for a week?"

[The Curmudgeon]

A friend of mine lined up in the literal freezing cold at midnight for the Black Friday sale in a game store because he wanted a Wii U for cheap. It was twenty pound more expensive than the day before.

On a humorous note, it was reported that some of the scumbags who fought over the "bargain" priced TV's have put them on eBay ... And Can't get anyone to buy them. That was well worth it.