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'Twas the Week Before the Week of Black Friday
theodp writes: It's almost time for America's answer to the Running of the Bulls (YouTube), kids. So, if you're dreaming of a cheap tech Christmas, it's time to peruse the 2015 Black Friday ads and make your game plan. Get lucky at Best Buy this year, and you could score a $299.99 Dell 15.6" touchscreen laptop (i3, 8GB memory, 1 TB HD), a $399.99 Microsoft 10.8" Surface 3 (Atom x7, 2GB memory, 64GB storage), $899.99 MacBook Pro 13.3" laptop (i5, 4GB memory, 500MB HD), $99 Acer 11.6" Chromebook (Celeron, 2GB memory, 16GB storage), or, for those on a tight budget, a $34.99 7" Amazon Fire tablet. Fight the crowds at Walmart, and you could snag a $199 HP 15.6" laptop (Celeron, 4GB memory, 500GB drive) or $199 iPad mini 2. And for stay-at-home shoppers, Dell's Windows 10 price-breakers include a $149.99 14" laptop (Celeron, 2GB memory, 32GB storage) and a $229 15.6" laptop (i3, 4GB memory, 500MB HD). So, in your experience, has Black Friday been like a claw machine — suckering you with big prizes, but never delivering — or have you actually walked away with a great deal?
Wow - this is the future right here guys!
In general I have what I need. So nothing on sale on black friday interests me as it is all an expense above what I need. Whatever the price, it is too high.
Most of us, we don't need more stuff.
This story reads like a pure ad, annoying as all get out. It makes me wish we could down-mod a story in order to save our /. sisters and brothers from exposure to it...
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Go take your "Black Friday" and shove it up your ass!
Maybe we can have a 'White Friday' where people get together and hack up some really interesting thing you can only make. but not buy buy bye. It just seems like the same shit in a different bucket all the time and just a bit boring. Can we skip christmas this year - but keep the holiday?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Brothers and sisters, grace and peace to you from our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us remember that Thanksgiving was set aside as a holiday to thank the Lord for all of our blessings as a nation. It is a time to be with our families and a time to thank Jesus for all that we have. Let us choose to remain home on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, rejecting the allure of possessions that will never bring the true joy that can only be found through a relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a time for charity, giving for those who cannot repay us, and a time for generosity for those in our lives. But we need not rush out to the stores at 6 PM on Thanksgiving. Let us spend that weekend with our families in prayer and find other time during the Christmas season to find the gifts for others in our lives. May our Lord Jesus bless each and every one of you, share his infinite wisdom and blessings with you, and bring you to eternal life. God bless you.
So, in your experience, has Black Friday been like a claw machine â" suckering you with big prizes, but never delivering â" or have you actually walked away with a great deal?
If you's po and you want a good deal on a flat TV, then there may still be something for you in a store on black friday. IME, though, most of the prices now are pretty lackluster. You are likely to find the same item on sale for the same price or cheaper some other time of year.
A lot of this crap is just crap anyway. I really want to like the Amazon Fire tablet, but the time when 1GB was enough RAM is past. The fire TV stick is fine for what it is; the Fire tablet ain't. Devices are starting to come with 3 and 4GB now...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Who actually wastes their time on this shit?
I'm almost 40 and have never gone shopping on Black Friday. Why? There's never any actual good deals on anything. Hurrah! I can get a shitty broke ass low-spec flat screen for a hundred bucks from a company that nobody has ever heard of that will break in a week! But only if I'm one of the first five people through the door at 4am!
Yeah, no thanks. Black Friday is only worth it if you're extremely poor . . . (not making light of that -- it is heartbreaking to see the hurdles parents will put themselves through just to try and make sure that their kids grow up and don't have a shitty childhood full of empty holidays to look back on when they are adults . . . which sadly tens to mean buying them lots of shit).... but even then... IT STILL ISN'T WORTH IT, because good quality decent stuff is never on sale on that day . . . and if it is, only in the most minimal quantity so they can advertise it, but not have to provide it to more than the first few people in the door.
(Also, a tip such parents who feel like they have to go into debt and wake up at 2am on Friday morning just to provide a good holiday for their kids, because they don't want to let them down or feel they shortchanged their kids . . . . . . . as a kid from a super poor family where mom worked way too hard to care for three kids and desperately try to not let them down on the holidays . . . . . YOUR KIDS ARE GOING TO GROW UP TO BE GRATEFUL FOR ANYTHING THEY HAD AS LONG AS YOU WERE THERE WITH THEM. . . . Your kids are going to grow up and feel guilty for how hard you worked to provide extra things for them. You are not going to let them down, no matter what -- so don't kill yourself trying to do something).
OK, so we now know what Best Buy, Walmart and Dell are offering on Black Friday. Why not fill the rest of the front page with advertising and finish the job of killing the damn website?
Will this be the post that buried slashdot?
I'll be buying something from REI this year. Specifically because they're closed on Black Friday. http://www.rei.com/black-friday
Having worked in retail while in school. I would like to say on behalf of those still stuck in retail hell, "FUCK YOU" to everyone who goes out and shops on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. You're what's wrong with this country. (Nothing against consumerism, but the people who shop on these days are just mindless!)
Answer: It ain't worth it to me.
Reason: They fail to profit or maybe even lose money on a few deals that people have to resort to low animal behavior to get their hands on. That gets in my way of shopping and stress, like it or not, rubs off. I feel that by the time I get to a store with some awesome deal, there's already a camp-out line or running line of people headed for it like hyenas. Since I'm a passive non-asshole, it's going to be gone (most likely) by the time I get to it. Sure, it's my fault for being passive, but that's my choice. I prefer that over aggressive competition for minimal gain. You can tell me that $100 off of something that costs $900 is a great deal, but it isn't. $100 off of something that's $200 tells me that the profit margin is too wide, and it will come down in price later anyway.
Additionally: I'm antisocial, and shopping is one of the worst things for me to have to go through. If I weren't single, it would be easier to have a copilot to keep my mind off of everything around me. I am, so it's hell. Watching Human behavior and competition is something I want to laugh at and make fun of in stores, so not being socially acceptable to do that, I have to bottle it up. It leads to stress. The worst part of if, for example, is seeing people push to be first in lines where there is almost no one ahead of them. They see you with one or two items and feel that somehow pushing ahead to be first in one of the three checkout lanes with one person in each, only 5 items with all of them, makes them a Winner(tm)or some s#^&. I want to grab people's hair and tell them how effing stupid they are for acting like dumb animals with childhood-imprinted behaviors at their age, when they are living in a society with places called stores that STORE things for you to come and get at your leisure. It isn't a survival competition. I thought we had evolved above that, but only in my 20s did I realize that we haven't; we just have groups of people with different levels of intelligence / want ratios. I prefer the intelligent who talk about things to share information and help each other as a whole. I'm not going to find that at a store where people are pulling hair to say "[they were] first to get to the item", knocking out teeth to say that "[they] worked hard to get this thing for a low price for [you]", or "[they were] first in the checkout lane and didn't have to wait".
What, am I supposed to (I'm speaking third person here) think they are superior for doing something that anyone else can do IF THEY CHOSE TO (camp out for a deal), that they would prefer to get something that's cool for me at a lower price because it's about the money and not the other person's happiness (got a cheaper item that does the same stuff or better), or that they are praised for being first in line to get something at a lower price to give someone else (first at checkout)?
How about this.... How about I give them the bird.......and I purchase something for a loved one that I spend time trying to fit to their want as well as I can, and something that isn't some special quick-cheap buy, and put myself and them in a different social group than the above-mentioned hyenas?
Hey, the post asked for answers and I gave 'em. ;) Wait, no I didn't.. Here's the answer: It's an unreliable situation with Humans degrading themselves to lower animal tendencies, and I have never (the few times I tried in earlier years) gotten a great deal on Black Friday.
P.S. It's almost humorous that there is a day with a warning-name, that said day has a detailed explanation of what to expect, and that said say has horror stories of failure and success but all with a stress'n'aggression cost, and that people still buy into the BS and go for it year after year after year.... Is that insanity or.... 'I ain't got no better way to compete'?
You and all the people you know do not need more shit. Stop buying more shit and pay off your credit card bills.
Black Friday is usually full of aggressive jerks, going to get a good deal so they can resell the item and make some cash. Instead, I sleep in on BF, wake up later in the day and check Craigslist, where the thugs are selling their bounty. If you give them $20-$50 more than they paid for it, they are happy because they made a profit. Also, CyberMonday tends to have equal or better deals. The sad fact is that inventory comes over by the container full and it has to go somewhere.
It really seems that most people go out that day to buy something for themselves. I guess you can call it a gift to oneself, but that doesn't really seem in line with the idea of the holiday.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I made the mistake of going into our local Frys one year on black friday.. I don't know WHAT I was thinking, or if I'd completely lost my mind, but just driving into the parking lot *should* have told me to GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE, with the parking lot full and my having to park waaaay out near the freeway... But nooo, stupid me walks all the way in, under that giant slot machine over the door, and terror immediately sets in. If you've ever been in a Frys, you've seen the 40-50 checkout "stalls" they have, where maybe 1/4 to 1/2 are actually in use.. Well ALL of the checkstands were in use AND the checkout line snaked down the normal line and then into the store proper and looped around the back... I don't remember WHY I went there, but I immediately did an about-face and hightailed it out of there.. Dunno WHAT THE FUCK I was thinking.. Found out later from a neighbor the wait to check out was nearly an hour, and I asked him what HE was thinking to go there on black friday.. Apparently he got a cheapshit laptop for under $200.
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
insert a bull into all that shopping and it would make it SO MUCH BETTER
you dont even need to hurt the bull, altho its recommended since it will slow it down a little, but the whole experience would be so MUCH FUN
generally speaking, if you insert a bull into anything it will make it instantly better, think red bull, the colour red is nice, but put a bull on it and you can start SELLING IT. How amazing is that
not only you would have electronics, you would have blacks, all would happen on a friday (allahu akbar indeed), and with a raging bull running around
heaven, thats the way i want to die
How dare you call the day where everyone goes crazy and acts like animals over cheap shit "black" Friday. Racist fuck.
Not being an American, I use AliExpress, there it's black Friday 356 days a year.
What the fuck is this shit
I know parent post is a standard frist psot troll, but I came here to say something much like it. Beyond the sport of hunting a "great deal", if you're spending hours waiting in lines in freezing temperatures, possibly spending your health as well with the physical and mental stress, just to save yourself $50 then you're doing it wrong. Your job probably pays better per hour, and the other intangibles are priceless.
If it's an event you enjoy, and your once a year hobby, go ahead, but don't let the advertisements convince you you're making a sound financial decision.
My bro wants a shiny new i7 and a good Asus or gigabyte board. I haven't seen any deals were any better than weekly sales.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I stopped treading the herds of stinky low-life schmucks years ago and do my shopping online, usually at Amazon.
Black Friday is extremely relevant to nerds. Lots and lots of electronics on sale. It's worthwhile to have a discussion on /., but a discussion means there has to be a story, and what the heck else is a story suppose to cover?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Two days after a terrorist attack we are talking about going to the mall. Why don't we talk about something important like the role of climate change in the unrest in Europe. Or the failure of conventional Economic theory in the West.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
you kinda need a computer for that, and getting a cheap, high power computer is kinda nice. Especially with VMs and such. I'm eyeing a faster desktop so I can run more VMs and maybe get back into coding for OSX on a hackintosh.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you's po
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that "if you're poor" written in the way a black person might say it? I don't want to be mean to you, parent poster -- honestly, that's not sarcasm -- but if you write that kind of thing, some people might think that you're mocking black people who are poor. That would be a racist kind of thing to do, and racism is commonly considered to be bad.
At least in America, black people are probably on average poorer than white people, and I think that's probably not because they are lazier (as some racists say) but because of problems like racial discrimination. So I would say that black people being poor is a problem that we should try to solve, not something to laugh at.
Normally I try not to post inflammatory things on the internet, but I felt the urge to state my opinion. I hope I managed to be reasonably civil.
In the late 90s, when I got out of college, I didn't have much money when I first started working. I had to buy low-end Packard Bell machines. The specs on that laptop are a dream for a software developer, for only 200 bucks. We live in a golden age. I paid about 1300 bucks for a Packard Bell Legend 125 486L in the mid 90s. It barely ran anything. It was obsolete when I got it. The HP laptop at Wal-Mart would run just about any modern software development tools like Python and Emacs. This is the golden age for disadvantaged people to be able to afford computers. We can't take this for granted. All I hear about is getting women and minorities into the technology industry. We should give Wal-Mart an award for having a decent computer that disadvantaged and poor people can afford. Find a black female buying one of these to run Python or something and set up a web site congratulating Wal-Mart for what they've done to bring computers to disadvantaged people. This is the kind of golden age I never thought I'd see back in the 1990s, when this powerful of a computer was 200 bucks!
I'm tempted as hell to get one of those.
I recently took a job that pays a lot more than my last one, and online prices have already dipped by $2k, putting them in line with standard LCD TVs. ...But part of me says to just keep saving (not to mention, wait for native 4K content)
I like the part where you can't see the ads linked in the OP without DISABLING YOUR ADBLOCKER!!
WTF /.?
you can buy a i3 laptop for 299 or less any day of the fucking week at best buy
Second, and in the spirit of my frustration, I'll encourage everyone just to hit Amazon or eBay and get better deals than big-box black friday deals. Oh, and on eBay and Amazon you can get them year-round and without having to battle large-muscled, tracksuited, crooked-teethed thugs that are in stores at 12:01 AM scooping up the total four items actually available at the uncompetitive but somehow alluring price that was advertised to millions.
Black friday is a scam. Also, Best Buy is a scam. Also, Wal-Mart is a scam.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
fuck consumerism!
Want you own Black Friday any time of year? Find the thing you want to buy on Amazon, go to CamelCamelCamel.com, set the price you want to pay, and then wait until you get an alert that your price was reached. ....
Profit?
The whole 'consumers drive the economy' thing pisses me off. It's like my only value as a person in a capitalist, consumerist society is to buy shit, any shit, just buy stuff. Fuck that. Plus, it's just NOT sustainable, period.
I tried Black Friday once many years ago, never again. For several reasons, I think blue collar people should have the day off with family friends, not stuck selling crap to the mindless horde. Also, from a purely economic standpoint, I think each year the sales are crappier and crappier (old merchandise that's really not that steeply discounted)
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
I wait a few hours after the stores are opened to see human nature at its best. My father and I in 2005 arrived at Wal-Mart at 6:30AM to find 16 police cars surrounding the store. A riot broke out over a low-priced HDTV that the store only had three in stock. Things looked pretty normal inside except for the police officers patrolling the store. I'm always amused to find HDTV boxes out in the parking lot, as people buy big ass HDTVs to put into their small ass SUVs and try to figure out how to get them home.
Funny. The real black Friday, Friday 13th, is two weeks before "Black Friday"
Screw Black Friday. I'm going outside to play on my mountain bike all day.
My wife talked me into going to Walmart 2 years ago on BF. We went to Walmart to try to get a cheap laptop for my kid. When we got there they had handed out tickets ahead of time for the 2 laptop deals. (tickets were gone when we got in the store) We divided up and each got in the line for the laptops anyway. The lines wound around isles that were blocked off. The thing is that some people in line actually left and decided not to buy. We ended up with 2 laptops for around $200 a piece. I sold one to a friend for what i paid. The actual laptops were terrible though. Loaded with tons of junk and even when that was removed the slow AMD processors were underpowered.
Another interesting thing was that they kept covers on a whole pile of deals until midnight. When they removed the covers people went nuts. I saw a Walmart employee get a human bite in the arm by some crazed shopper trying to claw his way to the front. Totally not worth it.
There are good deals to be had though. I once waited hours to get one of the first reasonably priced GPS units for the car. (before smartphones) It was a MIO brand device made for Canada with US maps that were one year old loaded. It worked fine and was cheap. (though not great)
I have bought TVs on BF or the next day. Those were good deals but if I had waited 6 more months or so I could have had the same deal.
Cyber Monday is more interesting to me really. Deals without the pain.
Here's an example of how deceiving those ads can be. Best Buy will have a 128GB flash drive for $19.99, discounted from the regular price of $99.99. Great deal, huh? Not really, as Amazon has the same drive right now for $32.44, and the list price is $52.99. Meaning, Best Buy had marked up their price to make the discount look much better than it actually is.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Don't care. Never have. The maniacs can go knock themselves out.
bullshit but the whole world has been trying to sell Christmas shit since before Halloween. Also, fuck crowds.
For the love of society.
So, on that basis, I would not be in the least bit surprised to see "Black Friday" become the date of another terrorist massacre.
There's a good chance of general purpose gun nuts going on a shooting spree too. If you're in a country that arms it's gun nuts.
Feb 11th (11/2) would be another good day to avoid.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"