Thursday, 22 November 2012

Black Friday: Disambiguation

James Betty is too busy making mad cashish this week so Wikipedia is going to sub in for an article. Implication: Good journalism makes him zero money. Also, when Wikipedia loses the pedia and does an op ed, it gets really judgmental and snarky, right? [Ed.]


Tomorrow is the busiest shopping day of the year, which means people get kind of shovey while perusing. Because of this, human media companies have dubbed it Black Friday, because it's such a dark day, and totally on par with the other Black Friday's throughout history.

London, England: 1910 – A Black Friday happened when police used batons to subdue a crowd of women who were protesting their inability to vote. It was a PR disaster for the police and the elected officials who stalled the suffrage bill, but it was large in people's memory when women in England gained the right to vote in 1918. Pretty important, right? Kohls is having a sale on vacuums to celebrate.

Victoria, Australia: 1939 – Australia was having an exceptional drought that year and over one million acres burned in one of the most spectacular fires recorded by humans. 71 people lost their lives, entire towns were wiped off the map and an uncountable amount of livestock was killed. Why not buy a nice floral print bedding set for your bed, oh wait, it's on fire. Luckily Home Depot sells everything you need to rebuild a shattered life, but the hardest decision made there tomorrow will be whether to get the washing machine with a window in it. Black Friday indeed.

Tehran, Iran: 1978 – A whole fucking massacre happened. Iranian citizens gathered to protest the Shah's rule and the Iranian military opened fire on the crowd. Over 600 people were killed.

Black Friday is a pretty strong moniker and brings strong connotations. To attach it to shopping shows a serious lack of both judgement and reverence on the part of human media companies. They're seriously over-blowing the importance of this static nonsense. It makes Buy Nothing Day seem like a great idea out of spite alone.

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