Black Friday Sucks 2020
As we begin to reflect on what’s been a real stonker of a year, with unemployment hitting record highs, the government paying peoples wages* of those lucky enough to still be in a job but furloughed, a cluster fuck of Brexit on the horizon where it seems compromise is impossible and food shortages possible, a probable post-Christmas Covid third wave and that’s before we mention the however many unnecessary excess deaths caused by incompetent governments worldwide and all those grieving for loved ones, it doesn’t even leave anybody the time, emotional, mental or physical energy to attempt to address the existential crisis that is global warming.
Yet in spite of all of that, consumerist driven capitalism ploughs on, undeterred. The rich get richer, whilst the poor get poorer. Email inboxes get bombarded with the latest Black Friday deals, 9 out of 10 of which were actually cheaper or the same price beforehand. Buy things using money you probably don’t have, that maybe you need but really it’s just to brag to your mates about the money you saved on that new Sonos speaker set**.
The Black Friday screaming gets louder, earlier and more obnoxious each year. A cultural adoption from the States, that exists for those spending money feeling free and easy the day after thanksgiving. Amazon has been sending me push notifications all week, just trying to get me to open that app and buy that kettle that was 20% off last month when I decided not to buy it then, but cheers Bezos anyway. As much as I enjoy loathing about in my own hypocrisy when I order stuff from you*** and do my best to make a persistent amount of conversation with your increasingly stressed Prime delivery drivers, who are paid well below the market rate of similar couriers, the gist of my conversation is "it’s not that bad is it?" and "you don’t have to pee in a bottle do you?" unfortunately they rarely have time to answer as they are given approximately 3.6 seconds per delivery.
Anyway, we hate Black Friday. Like actually hate it, if you couldn’t tell already. So we have always tried to do it a bit differently. We started just doubling donations on hats and socks a few years back, which seemed like a good thing to do.
This year, we’re doing something similar, but creating some weird system that sort of equates to doubling the donation to those less fortunate, but spreading it across a load of different stuff. Some of which was already on sale before, some stuff might be newly on sale. Who knows. We’re only human and exist in this stupid stock driven business, where sometimes we order a bit too much of something. You can view the details on the Black Friday collection page.
Oh, we’ve not even mentioned the Sale Guarantee thing we introduced a while back, mainly because we’ve just tested it on a small scale to check it works OK. And it does. So basically the sale guarantee is pretty straightforward, if you buy something from us for full price and it goes on sale at any point after you’ve bought it, we’ll issue you a gift voucher for the difference.
After all this moaning, are there Reasons to be positive? Well it seems the sane and seemingly sensible government in Scotland have made period products free for all. If only the rest of the UK could devolve itself further away from those incompetent, crony enriching Tory c*nts.
Another reason? Universal basic income is getting a bit more coverage, after being completely fringe a few years back. The pandemic has clearly illustrated a huge issue with our current benefits system and general economic structure. Fingers crossed it accelerates the case, with some MP's calling for pilots to be run.
A further further reason? Apparently there’s some vaccines that all are 90-95% effective.
Remember gigs? Yea, gigs were great weren’t they…imagine going to a gig and listening to some actual live music. Dream a dream.
SUMMER 2021 THE SUMMER OF LOVE WHERE WE CAN ALL HUG AGAIN! BE POSITIVE. WE CAN DRINK CORONA AGAIN NON-IRONICALLY! MAYBE THE VACCINES WILL DO A COMEBACK TOUR. THERE ARE SO MANY POSSIBILITIES AND THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO!
Enjoy your Black Friday. Get some of those sweet, sweet 20% off kettle deals.
*(but not really paying them, but actually really paying them. Got to try and keep that unemployment figure as low as possible)
**(come on Sonos, do us a solid, really need all the music to link up as we walk around and ask google to play music rather than go through the rigmarole of playing it via a phone and that old technology, bluetooth. 20% would be nice but 30% off would be nicer)
**(I really enjoy watching The Expanse on Prime, thanks for saving that from cancellation. Also Vikings isn’t half bad and some of the films you’ve funded have been enjoyable, not so much Borat 2 but it had it’s moments)
****I also try and order as much stuff as possible from small businesses. But sometimes you need that parcel to arrive the next day. I’m not proud of it.