fa la la la la-ts of this stuff we buy will end up in landfills, here's how to (responsibly) holiday shop with your brain <3
also why do all NYC Marshalls have 2-mile long lines all the time
Last year, I wrote a post called “against black friday,” and I figured that given the moment we’re at in the year — a week out of from the American holiday of Thanksgiving and Black Friday — it’d be good to reshare and update some of my thoughts.
Thanks for reading!
If you’re American (and probably even if you’re based the UK or South Africa, nowadays), you know Black Friday. The day after American Thanksgiving fueled by “limited time” offers, stampedes of humans killing each other for televisions, and, now, (American) football.
We’re heading into the “holiday sales season” with Americans holding a record high consumer credit card debt (over $1 trillion in Q2 of 2023). But if you’re like me when I was 23, sometimes you “spend money like you have money.” 😜
what’s my relationship with black friday like?
It’s funny to reflect on what I wrote last year. In 2024, I find myself bracing for 2025. Economically, it’s been a really tough year (nationally but personally, too) in terms of having consistent work.
Recently, I went to a Marshalls to buy something that didn’t even work (so now I have to return it) and, I stood in line for 40 minutes to buy this thing. I saw so many people shopping—and I have no idea what they were all buying—amidst piles and piles of Christmas wrapping paper, little plastic and ceramic Christmas tree decor, and so much stuff. Like, now there are badly made electric robot vacuums that have Hello Kitty’s face on them. I love Hello Kitty, seriously, but that feels like the worst way to decide to buy a robot vacuum.
If someone buys that, they definitely have not planned on buying a robot vacuum, because anyone who thinks for two minutes about buying a robot vacuum knows they should do some research before buying one.
I mean, does this look sturdy to you? It even says “hard surfaces only.”
Again, I freaking LOVE Hello Kitty. I have a Hello Kitty figurine. I used to own a Hello Kitty sweatshirt that I bought despite knowing its arms and shoulders were way too big, so I looked really weird in it. (It had lots of extra gathered fabric, but only around the shoulders.)
So, my point is not to judge anyone who loves Hello Kitty. I, too, had a split second where I thought, “Oh my god that’s cute.” And I know it would likely break in a half hour of steady use.
Which is all to say… I have one single item I am planning to buy for Black Friday, and that is a set of pen refills I need for a refillable pen I have. I may get one extra item with the pens, but really I’m just waiting to see if there’s a deal so I don’t have to pay lots of money for shipping.
Here’s what I wrote in 2023: I’m not a big sale shopper these days, but I did the occasional Black Friday purchase in years past. I remember visiting my partner’s parents and briefly excusing myself to shop sales, buying a small, plastic food processor that I eventually gave to a friend.
I do have a really specific memory of this time last year, where I did participate in Black Friday.
this time last year. . .
Last year, though, Black Friday marked the beginning of my “no-buy”/”low-buy” cycle. The last purchase I remember buying during that time was a lot of yarn to make gifts for a few people in my life (which I’m actually making this year).
I was also thinking about how I could reduce my shopping impulses. I was looking at my budget, I was lurking in the r/nobuy subreddit (hi, Reddit friends!) and preparing my “rules” for my 2022-2023 year of only buying 35 things. (I’ll be doing a full recap of what I bought, my rules, what worked/didn’t, in a couple of weeks!)
I was also in the least “holiday” place in my life. My mom entered at-home hospice around October 7th, and I flew to Texas around October 14th and, other than three days in New York for a friend’s wedding, I was with my parents. I was working remotely (but at 100% productivity? hell no). I wasn’t sleeping well. I had a brief uptick in buying things because my life was falling apart — that’s actually what brought me to post on Reddit in the first place.
So, let’s dive into all the crap that this time of year can bring up.
the “holiday season” can bring up lots of feelings
I’m not going to make this whole post about trauma and loss, but I do want to say: I don’t think a little bit of emotional/retail therapy is the absolute thing in the world if you’re going through a really rough time and you’re not digging yourself a financial hole. I’m not saying go do the midlife crisis thing of leasing a sports car and getting a full-back dragon tattoo spending. But, like, a kombucha or a paperback?
I know this is a really hard time for lots of people, for many reasons, and that can trigger the desire to fall back into old patterns of comfort. For many Americans, that means being consumers. It can also be triggering to be around family, friends, or guests who are, perhaps, super into gifts, sales, deals, or things like fashion as a status symbol. The experience of being surrounded by people who live very different lives than you—even if you don’t want that life—can trigger a desire to “measure up” or prove yourself in ways that they might understand, like some handbag you know they’d be jealous of.
This time of year can also bring up feelings of the year ending and “who you are”/”what you accomplished” vibes, and that can also trigger a huge internalized thought for many folks, which is buying stuff for the you/the life you wish you had, but not the one you’re actually living/who you actually are. (And who you are is great!)
I’ll circle back to my personal thoughts on Black Friday, but some interesting fact-ish things…
where did black friday come from?
Like many traditions, the phrasing has morphed throughout time. The “Black Friday” expression dates back to the 1860s. In 1869, Wall Streeters Jim Fisk and and Jay Gould tried to buy out the gold market. They bought as much as they could, hoping the price of gold would shoot up. When then-President Ulysses S. Grant intervened, the stock plummeted, which actually caused thousands to experience bankruptcy.
According to one source, it was also used by factory owners who complained that so many workers called in sick after Thanksgiving, it was a shitty day.
Several sources I consulted say the term was used by cops in Philadelphia in the 1960s to describe the day after Thanksgiving to encompass their feelings about 12-hour shifts as traffic, tourism, and chaos were at an all-time high.
So. . . this is a phrase used by Wall Street bros, factory owners who probably did not win “Best Workplace” awards, and cops.
Yeah. Gross.
The idea of stores going from “in the red” (debt) to “in the black” (profit) doesn’t seem to have one moment where it became part of the national idea of the day, but it seems like it stems from the 1980s and 1990s.
Lastly, in 2005, Cyber Monday emerged, and here we are.
Fun fact - in the 1930s, then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, facing pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association, moved Thanksgiving one week earlier to extend the holiday shopping season! Eventually, Congress officially declared Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of the month.
is diners club responsible for the existence of black friday? maybe a little bit.
Allow me a brief historical tangent: the adoption of this shopping frenzy comes afterthe mainstream availability of credit cards.
While the first credit cards were introduced in the 1950s (ever heard of Diners Club?), they weren’t super commonplace until the 1970s, when the Fair Credit Act was established in the United States. Surprising to no one, discrimination against women and People of the Global Majority was rampant prior to then.
Did people shop sales before credit cards? Totally.
Could people do things like buying on layaway? Yes. (For the youngest of the young, this is where you’d put a deposit down on an item often, and pay for the rest either in installments or by a certain date, usually around Christmas.) That way, you could afford the latest doll/toy so your child wouldn’t scream and say “I HATE YOU!” in front of the grandparents.
Debt existed before 1970. People ran up tabs, had their belongings repossessed. Debtor’s prisons were a thing of yore. But I don’t think the 2020s, contemporary version of Black Friday would exist without credit cards.
Here are some other reasons I think that…
People buy more when using credit cards, and credit cards activate the reward centerof our brains (like slot machines). MIT did a fascinating study using fMRI to see what happens when people use credit cards. Basically, credit cards give you the dopamine hit of buying things while your brain doesn’t have to look at the bill yet, so it’s all the fun and none of the reality.
Speaking of that dopamine rush of spending, let’s talk about marketing (a.k.a. manipulation) tactics.
how they trick you into buying
The Fantasy Self
I mentioned the idea of “who you think you are”/the life you wish you had. I realize many people are aware that there is a fantasy self in our heads—mine gardens, speaks more languages than I do (1.25), sews a lot (something I do rarely) and rock climbs regularly. When we were in pandemic lock down, a lot of us ran away with our fantasy selves, and so I’d encourage you to reflect on what that fantasy self is like, and what you’re actually spending your time/days doing.
When you see an Instagram ad, an Influencer, or just a Hot Person in an Advertisement With An Object, especially if a part of that ad hits you in the Venn diagram of “who I am” vs “who I wish I was”, that’s peak opportunity to get you to buy shit.
“Limited time only” / “Selling out fast” / “Only 5 left!” / A false sense of urgency
Let me just say. . . if a sale is always happening, is it actually a sale? No. It’s manipulating a purposefully marked-up price to make you feel like you need to buy that foot spa now for Aunt Sandy or be damned to pay full price in two weeks.
Alec Leach wrote a great piece on Black Friday in the fashion industry, and he discusses fashion’s specific problems much better than I, a fashionless goblin, could, but I loved/was horrified by this quote too much not to share it:
“This year [Black Friday has] come straight after a “mid-season” sale, which might just be a subtle way of saying that pretty much the whole season is a sale. And if retailers don’t hit their targets this week, there’s always Cyber Monday, and if that doesn’t work out, then we’re only six weeks away from January.” - Alec Leach, “The broken economics of Black Friday”
“Hey, you forgot something in your cart!” emails
We call this “cart abandonment” in the ecommerce world. (I work in marketing—I know, I know— and I find this phrase a little dramatic, but whatever.) These emails are like a person you had a “just okay” one-night stand with texting you and being like “u up?” and you’ve had one beer, and you’re like “hmmm…do I want to?”
Remember, you abandoned the items in that cart for a reason. This email is sent by an automated process, it’s trying to draw you back. Just delete them. Better yet, go ahead and use an email alias when you buy anything so all that marketing shit just goes to your spam.
You get this free thing you didn’t want till I mentioned it if you spend $50! / Free shipping if you spend $25+! / Minimum spend rewards
Ever see the little banner at the top of a page that’s like, “Buy $50+ of product, get this dozen eggs for free?” In marketing, this is called a “minimum spend reward.” They are offering something that is cheap for them to give you—the profit margin is high—because they know people like free shit, but it is not actually free because you’re buying $50 worth of stuff! and if you only wanted to spend $20, you’re totally losing out.
Subscribed
black friday’s impact on the labor force and the planet
According to Forbes, “British Black Friday home deliveries this year will churn out 429,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions—the equivalent of 435 return flights from London to New York (or, apparently, the same weight as 61,308 elephants).”
Ethical Consumer, which is biased against non-ethical shopping but which I’ve found to be a good resource, says “According to a Green Alliance report, 80% of electronics and clothing, plus the plastic packaging they are wrapped in, end up in landfill, incineration, or at best low-quality recycling after a very short life.”
And this National Geographic article features a great quote as well:
“For people who don't have purchasing power, the ability to be able to buy something that is a necessity at a discounted price is obviously a benefit,” says Nicholas Ashford, a professor of technology and policy at MIT, where he also teaches environmental law.
“For other people with more than enough, it just perpetuates a consumption-oriented society, which has an adverse effect on the environment,” he says.
what to do instead
Consider the following:
Donate funds to an Indigenous-lead collective like NDN, Water Protectors, or one in your local community.
Spend time educating yourself and your family about Native and Indigenous communities in your area, both in the past and in the present.
Spend the time you’d spend shopping doing something meaningful for your community, like volunteering at a soup kitchen.
Don’t buy anything if you don’t need it.
Can you spend the money you were going to spend on something new repairing something that’s “almost” usable? Alternatively, can you buy this item used in a local thrift shop and avoid adding to the production pipeline?
Shop, but only at local, small businesses.
Listen to How To Resist Amazon and Why and read up on the working conditions of Amazon warehouse workers — like that half of Amazon workers are injured after just 3 years on the job and took unpaid time to recover from injuries.
Put the screens away, read a book, and hang out with family or pets or nature.
what to do before you shop if you are participating in black friday sales
My advice?
Still give what you can to an Indigenous-lead collective like NDN, Water Protectors, or one in your local community.
Spend time educating yourself and your family about Native and Indigenous communities in your area, both in the past and in the present
Before you start shopping:
Make a list of any items you actually need and could get on sale, and stick to it before looking at any sales. Next to each item, write down your maximum price point.
For example: Those pen refills I want to buy are $8 for 3 refills. I doubt they’ll go down in price, but if I add anything to the order (depending on the cost of shipping) I don’t want to spend more than $20.
Pick the amount of time you plan on shopping (in person or online or both) — 2 hours? 30 minutes? And set a goddamn timer.
Get the eff off of social media—the ads are crazy and you don’t need more pressure for stuff you don’t need that’s all some kind of “limited time only” deal.
When picking your items and shopping:
Pick the slowest shipping method possible and, when you can, have the items consolidated into fewer packages. In general, online purchasing can have lower carbon emissions than in-person shopping, but choosing fast shipping cancels any of that out.
If you’re buying something and you can afford to be a little discerning about, try to buy a version of an item that’s high-quality, that you see yourself using for as long as possible.
Ultimately, the most environmentally thing you can do is not buy stuff you do not need. Try to get that dopamine hit some other way, and feel good that you’re doing one small thing to help the planet (because we need the small things, too, even if carbon footprints are kind of bullshit guilt-traps invented by BP to distract us from their mass destruction).
Are you shopping Black Friday or holiday sales?
I’d love to know! Please connect with me in the comments. Godspeed to you and your willpower, and please please please make a shopping list, if you’re going to shop at all.