Flamebait Friday Debate: To Black Friday or nah?

Woah, it’s Black Friday! What a wild, random event of hyper-capitalistic nightmares distilled into a single day that always falls after Thanksgiving…a holiday we don’t even celebrate here. Look, I know I’m a young bean around these parts (as I’m constantly reminded, despite numerous examples of my back being as frail as some of the dinosaurs plodding around this site) but if I had to really think hard about it, I can’t remember hearing about Black Friday in South Africa before 2014. Maybe it’s some kind of Mandela Effect thing, but Black Friday always feels like such a new, unnecessary event in South Africa, no doubt influenced by the mass plague of media the day receives overseas.

That being said, it’s clear that Black Friday is here to stay, something that…well, it’s certainly a divisive topic. The majority of people I’ve spoken to have decried Black Friday, labelling it for what it is: An opportunity for companies to sell their outdated stock and still make some kind of revenue off it by driving the public into a frenzy. That being said, I also know many families operating on a lower income that look forward to Black Friday as a means to buy in bulk and stock up for a period of the year that can be incredibly pricey.

So while many people think Black Friday is an unnecessary cash grab, plenty of other people would say that it’s almost worth the fighting through throngs of people to make out with whatever you can. So I suppose that’s the question up for debate: What are your feelings on Black Friday? Is it something you engage in or avoid? Is there such a thing as ethical consumption under capitalism in a post-modern, post-ironic society?