We're hurting innocent people...but we're helping the economy

November 23, 2014 8:03 PM

"Black Friday", a new flick from the makers of "Daylight Saving"
posted by Renoroc (16 comments total)

I know that's supposed to be funny, but the gun images were actually really sort of scary and triggery in a "Americans mass murder each other with guns all the time" way.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:13 PM on November 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

Eh, we let twenty kids get massacred and no one blinks. Shop 'til ya drop, folks.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 8:16 PM on November 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen: You make it sound like Americans don't mass murder each other with guns all the time?

(Sorry in advance, just feeling highly cynical this evening.)
posted by jferg at 8:30 PM on November 23, 2014

I just got done watching Zero Theorem and this video as a follow-up seemed oddly appropriate.
posted by surazal at 9:01 PM on November 23, 2014

"We're hurting innocent people...but we're helping the economy"
Where does this NOT apply? (yeah, I'm feeling highly cynical myself tonight)
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:10 PM on November 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Not very realistic.

Seriously, half off a 70" LED TV? The sales aren't that good.
posted by el io at 10:26 PM on November 23, 2014

Seriously, half off a 70" LED TV? The sales aren't that good.

i know you might jest, but that was an actual deal ast year. a people crushing eachother into the doors and breaking them off at walmarts kind of deal.(i think it was at sams club actually...)
posted by emptythought at 11:21 PM on November 23, 2014

And that said, i went to a black friday sale exactly once, when the frys in my state had just opened and they were offering a low end but respectable AMD desktop with a shitty version of linux for $99.

I didn't get one, there were only like 3. People physically fought over the boxes. Like shoving eachother over, ripping them out of eachothers hands. The store clerks were woefully underprepared and there seemed to be only like maybe 4 or 5 security guards total for the entire costco sized store.

I got body slammed face first into a pegboard of flash drives and actually got cut up. There was a serious, actual, world war Z type human pile complete with screaming... over a pyramid $9 canon photo printers. Some lady was so adamant about cutting in the >1.5 hour register line that she backed up and rammed my dad repeatedly in the ankle as hard as she could until he shoved her cart and she wiped out screaming like a baby about how she was going to kill everyone or something. Everyone in line cheered.

Someone tried to ram my car over a parking spot.

All i wanted was a cheap 500gb hard drive and that budget tower. I got the hard drive, since no one else rushed for that, but it was defective and they refused to exchange it for anything but an equivalent price not on sale model... so i ended up with a 300gb(and seagate was lole "lol its so new just return it", this was before the days of those "do not return to store!" stickers). The $9 printer lasted all through college, so almost 10 years. I guess that was sort of worth it. It took really cheap ink too, at least.

I never went back. I think i still have a tiny scar on my arm from that pegboard.

A lot of the people there looked like they were the types that in an actual end of the world scenario, would beat someone to death with a tire iron over the last can of beer or bag of chips at the store. Not the essentials, just something you had that they wanted.

Scared the fuck out of me.

I just buy shit on sale online now.
posted by emptythought at 11:31 PM on November 23, 2014 [12 favorites]

I hate big box stores on a good day, there's absolutely nothing that would get me in one on black Friday.
posted by octothorpe at 4:19 AM on November 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

It would have been better without the guns. It's an artificial elevation of the stakes into faux-horror which takes you out of the satire of commercialism.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:26 AM on November 24, 2014

Eh, we let twenty kids get massacred and no one blinks. Shop 'til ya drop, folks.

Dredd did that a couple years ago. "The lower food court is closed for the next 30 minutes. The following locations are available for your shopping needs..."
posted by happyroach at 6:57 AM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

It would have been better without the guns. It's an artificial elevation of the stakes...

Not so artificial, just google "black friday shooting" and see how many hits there are. Or preruse blackfridaydeathcount.com
posted by 445supermag at 7:17 AM on November 24, 2014

I keep thinking every Black Friday that we managed to bring back human sacrifice, and nobody seems to care. The Economy is our new god, and it is a heartless and hungry deity indeed.
posted by starbreaker at 8:08 AM on November 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Black Friday is basically our Two Minutes Hate.
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 8:35 AM on November 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

God please if you can hear this, see this, please.

I'm in Radio Shack. No one is left alive here. I managed to save some chihuahuas from Pet Express and we're doing what we can.

It was horrible. I came for bargains, for my family. NOT FOR THIS.

Please. Just text if you can. I have one bar left.

p.s. The chihuahua's name is Sorry.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 2:56 PM on November 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

South Park has its "Black Friday" trilogy on Hulu right now, should anyone be in the mood to watch cartoons about blood sacrifices.

I go to craft fairs on that weekend, not Black Friday. Fuck that shiz. Also, coincidentally, some places are *gasp* offering the same sales starting this past Sunday and going on till Saturday, so you can buy your cheap shit without fighting people!
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:40 PM on November 24, 2014