The RISE and FALL of Black Friday

Black Friday has long been the biggest shopping day of the year. But times are a’changin’, and the things that made it the cultural phenomenon it was (the midnight lines, fist fights, and the cheapest T.V.s anyone’s ever seen) are no more. And things have changed for the worse.

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Script: Jaz Papalapoudos
Editor: Kirsten Stanley
Project Manager: Lurana McClure Rodríguez
Host: Levi Hildebrand

[BlackZynfyndel]

As a former retail employee who did many Black Fridays, I’m happy more workers aren’t having to deal with it.

[kevinvitale]

I thought the peak ridiculousness was when Black Friday started on Thanksgiving afternoon, thus disrupting typical family time togetherness… and then those workers who had to be at work essentially canceling their thanksgiving.

[DarkninAngeI]

I worked retail for....way too long. And Black Friday was my favorite day to work, purely because if anyone gave me attitude - it was way too busy so you could freely give their bad attitude right back to them and move on. It was the one day out of the year you could get some well deserved retribution with the angry masses.

[RetroMaticGamer]

I worked at a GameStop during Black Friday 2001. We didn't do a sale, we didn't have to - parents were dropping their kids off to get free babysitting and play games instead of giving them quarters for an actual arcade (cheapasses). We'd shut down the video game demo systems since there'd be kids fighting over who got turns to play what (this was back during the "try before you buy" days when GameStop was actually a relevant, decent business) and parents would get so pissy with us - "why aren't you letting my kid play the games? Why can't they stay, I'll just be gone a few minutes, they'll behave..." with us always tapping the sign my manager taped up that said: "We are not a daycare - ALL kids must be accompanied by a responsible adult" to the howls of furious Karens and soccer moms. What a shitshow...

[Onsokumaru]

I also remember when Black Fridays meant something. One day of crazy deals. Now it’s a month of 10% off. Like bruh

[joostkoopmans]

I work for a Dutch outdoor retailer and we stopped having black Friday deals. Instead we introduced for future fridays. This year we will repair your existing clothes for 50% off. You can also come in and get your walking shoes cleaned for free. Although we dont have any deals, we do get a lot of traffic into the stores, get to educate the consumer and also give a lot of clothing a second life.

[LillyxTopaz]

Our local mall is turning into more of a community hub and bolstering small local businesses instead of classic cookie cutter mall shops and this has really gotten it to turn around for the better the past few years. They're hosting more events, turning store fronts into activity centers like cyber cafes or TCG shops, so you have an incentive to be at the mall for a few hours and actually enjoy it.

I hope to see more malls follow this path; I think there's a lot more desire for places to go and enjoy one's self and malls still have the potential to fill that void.

[ddcd]

My family stopped buying gifs for adults. Makes the holidays so much better. Just get together and eat and not worry about getting people trivial stuff that they don't really need or want.

[pupu]

What killed Black Friday is also the sheer abundance of sales.All year round there are plenty of big retailers with good deals, you don’t have to wait until Black Friday anymore.

[leifmeadows]

My family was so anti black Friday growing up that if the milk went sour on Friday morning, we were eating toast for breakfast instead of cereal because my momma was NOT going to drive to the store for milk. The footage of people being trampled for a new doodad or gadget put the fear into her, plus she never did like dealing with heavy traffic.

[queenlex]

I still remember working at Walmart in 2016 during Black Friday. We weren’t allowed to taken any breaks all day to eat or go to the bathroom. Fights constantly breaking out. I saw a grown man and a grown woman get into a fist fight over a TV. I’m glad things have moved online.

[jschaibly]

The term "Black Friday" originated in the 1960s and was used to describe the day after Thanksgiving when retailers experienced a surge in sales, moving from being "in the red" to turning a profit or being "in the black." It marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season in the United States.

[yahyoubetchaa]

Yes Black Friday just isn’t what it used to be. The decline of the mall/ mall culture is def a big factor here. Stores used to have crazy sales like 40%-50% off everything. I remember as recently as 2015-2016 the malls being packed and people waiting in long lines for Black Friday deals. Can’t believe how much things have changed in less than a decade

[SmoothbassmanStudios]

I remember working at Best Buy on Black Fridays in college. It was the best time of my life in 2000. We had a buffet of food in the back for all of the people working we hung out and had a great time all day long and when the shift was over we broke out the alcohol and had a huge party in the store while we cleaned up. I loved it. Those 12-16 hour shifts flew by! That was the time before the fights, and all the crazy stuff.

[ArtJourneyUK]

80% of the "fun" of shopping was the social aspect; meeting your friends, having a coffee, trying on clothes.

[lucas.dillmann]

Here in Brazil, which is one of the countries where the Black Friday was "imported", we actually call it "Black Fraude", a wordplay that translates to "Black Fraud".

We do that because here we're paying for half of the double. Retailers slowly increase the prices on the months prior to the day (as clearly showed by price monitoring sites), enabling them to give a "huge discount" that is just the regular price.

[janetr]

I have never in my 60 + years shopped on Black Friday. I can hardly think of anything more torturous than being out after thanksgiving with hoards of shoppers.

[philiparonson]

Your quick comment about monthly payments for lower ticket items reminded me of my early trips to Brazil in the late 1980s. I married a Brazilian and we would visit her family in Brazil about every 18 months. Each visit would last for about a month and we would stay with her family so I really didn’t visit the country as a tourist, but lived more like a Brazilian. Brazil is a relatively poor country and one of the first things I noticed when we would go shopping was that nearly everything could be purchased via installments or lay-a-way plans. After visiting several other poorer nations I made a mental rule that one of the hallmarks of a poorer economy was the availability of such installment plans. After seeing this in the US I realized that our economy has crossed a line and that it was moving down the development chain. Installment plans are a feature of economies where consumers do not have cash or standard credit. I am also beginning to see this in Europe as well, something fundamental has changed and not for the better. Oh, by the way, we’re still married.

[ChristianBehnke]

I'm thankful that there is no crowd-rush on sales at the grocery store... (yet?) Those prices are getting insane. I might even finance some avocados next visit.

[hawkatsea]

For anyone curious, "Starcourt Mall" was actually my hometown haunt, the Gwinnett Place Mall. Indeed, it did close forever in 2020 due to crime, low attendance, and pandemic; and, like many shuttered malls across the country, is (slowly) being converted to a campus-style village with housing, shops, community center, and central greenway that the area desperately needs.