#Auspol #AusRetail #Crapitalism #BlackFriday

yeah… nah

while it almost makes sense for retailers to attach themselves to advertising for Black Friday sales, cos other people have already spent money promoting the idea, it is also rather short-sighted, imo

nobody/ no country has a copyright on the expression Black Friday, but does the average australian retail customer associate the phrase with the endorphin rush of spending money we don’t have on crap we don’t need, or on something more sinister? that is what retailers should be asking themselves

for me, it triggers a visceral response to stories i wish my mother had never told me — stories of the bushfires that plagued victoria in january 1939. (i’ll spare you the stories, but imagine a time when people were struggling with extreme poverty, high unemployment, conservative governments with FITH disease, few working class people had cars, few communities had great firefighting equipment, many rural people only had rainwater tanks, and fires were fought by frightened, desperate people repeatedly slapping at flames with a hessian bag)

what’s missing from all the pointless emails offering me black friday bargains is the date (well, okay, i don’t search for dates before deleting the emails, but 🙄 i don’t care)

here’s (a very small part of) what i think of crapitalism: why don’t you just charge me a fair price in the first place? if you think you need to boost your cash flow by whipping us all into a frenzy with a discount, do it once a year. in the absence of certain information about whether something is actually a bargain or not, i become frightened and don’t buy anything.

why don’t you learn something about human nature, you tools.