Black Friday can offer tempting deals, especially in the run-up to Christmas. But with many Black Friday deals revealed to be anything but, a new Netflix documentary about the sinister tactics of online retail giants, the destruction of new, unsold items, and mountains of consumer waste, is it time we called and end to this questionable tradition? In this long read blog we explore the origins, the chaos, the backlash and the boycotts – and the fun you can have when you choose to opt out.
“The public are awakening to the idea that this level of consumerism is environmentally and economically unsustainable.”
Capitalising on chaos
Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, is very much an American creation, always timed for the fourth Friday in November, the day after Thanksgiving. Historically, “Black Friday” was used to describe a financial crisis, but according to sources including USA Today, the modern use of the term started in 1950s Philadelphia, where it was used by police to describe the chaos that happened in the city on the Friday after Thanksgiving. The overcrowding of holiday shoppers coming into the city led to traffic, accidents and shoplifting, giving police officers more work to do.
In the 1980s the term went national in the USA, and retailers tried to reframe it as positive, rather than chaotic, unsuccessfully trying to rename the day to “Big Friday”, and then, more successfully, explaining “Black Friday” as a time when shoppers helped retailers get “in the black” by purchasing their goods. Black Friday was introduced into the UK by online retail giant Amazon in 2010, popularised further with in-store promotions by Walmart-owned Asda in 2013, and was firmly established in 2014 as other big UK retailers followed suit.
Despite retailers’ efforts to promote the concept as positive, Black Friday chaos reigns. For many, Black Friday is synonymous with stories of people fighting over flat screen TVs, and increasingly associated with spiking air pollution levels in urban areas due to the increase in delivery vehicles shifting all those parcels.
In our streets, train stations and other public spaces, Black Friday adverts multiply throughout November, vying for our attention everywhere, and adding to the sense that our involvement is somehow inescapable. Our streets increasingly seem to be crawling with commercial ads. From Stroud to Sheffield, ads are creeping out of the shops and covering the streets with garish pink bollard sleeves, or blocking our walkways with so-called advertising ‘totems’. Across our towns and cities, these obstructive digital ad units advertise tech, burgers, fast fashion and Black Friday ‘deals’.
When it started, Black Friday in the UK seemed to be mostly about retailers offering us bargains on tech products. Nowadays, anything goes, and all kinds of products are offered, from pyjamas to parmesan. Even for those who want to take part, the whole thing feels totally overwhelming and confusing. Guides that claim to help you navigate this confusion and find the best Black Friday deals don’t really help the situation, offering endless lists you could spend days anxiously trying to find something relevant in.
And that’s the question: is there ever really anything relevant? These not-so-helpful guides seem designed to direct you to purchases you never wanted, or needed, to make. What’s more, you might even be paying more for those things you never needed anyway, than you would at other times of the year.
Too good to be true
Last year, research by Which? found that 98% of tech products in Black Friday deals were cheaper at other times of the year. Their list included products found at Currys. So it’s no wonder that Currys’ own commissioned research this year has found that 57% of people are sceptical about Black Friday bargains. In an impressive sleight-of-hand, Currys has managed to turn this into a selling point. Responding to Which’s “sobering” findings, not by opting out, but by putting thousands more products on sale for Black Friday this year, Currys is assuring customers that this time they definitely do care about the cost-of-living crisis, and they definitely won’t be duping you into a non-bargain. Not this time. They promise. Currys is also calling on other retailers to join them in making these assurances to customers, in a valiant call to “Save Black Friday”.
Meanwhile, Which? still can’t resist Black Friday either, and is merrily compiling shopping guides to help us all get the most of the collective retailer scam they unveiled.
Well, that all sounds fine then. Fetch me my credit card.
But wait! Maybe we don’t have to get swept up in the madness of if all. It seems that more and more people are fed up of the whole Black Friday sham.
Refuse and resist
The interrelated crises of climate breakdown, plastic pollution, global inequality and declining mental health are all exacerbated by consumer capitalism’s reliance on endless consumption. The adverts tell us that buying more things will make us happy; they reassure us that we can carry on consuming without regard for ecological limits. Black Friday is, in a way, the ultimate indulgence of the myth of endless consumption of the Earth’s resources.
But whether through concerns over environmental and human impacts of consumerism, or a desire for more genuinely rewarding experiences, many are choosing either to actively resist Black Friday, or simply turn away.
Research by Keep Britain Tidy this year has found that 31% of people “hate” Black Friday, and 27% would join a boycott. 70% of people think the event promotes excessive consumption, and 42% agree it’s bad for the environment. 8% of people even admit that, after buying a Black Friday purchase, they didn’t really need the item. Throughout November, Keep Britain Tidy has been encouraging people to “make better choices for the environment in the face of the Black Friday marketing onslaught”, by joining its Buy Nothing New Month campaign: to boycott Black Friday, waste less and make the most of what we already have. On launching the research, Chief Executive Allison Ogden-Newton shared an optimistic take on the shifting public mood, believing that: “The public are awakening to the idea that this level of consumerism is environmentally and economically unsustainable. Today’s figures show that people are ready to take up the challenge to ‘buy nothing new’ for a month – and that could make all the difference to our planet”.
Ethical Consumer has had a long running campaign to boycott Amazon, the architect of Black Friday in the UK, due to the megacorporation’s colossal tax avoidance and exploitation of workers, and is one of over eighty organisations in the Make Amazon Pay campaign, a coalition of organisations around the world fighting for fair treatment of workers and the planet. Ethical Consumer estimates that Amazon’s annual tax avoidance in the UK is enough to pay the poorest 1 million households £500 each to help with rising heating costs.
They are now calling on people to Boycott Black Friday (and its evil twin, Cyber Monday) more broadly. They say that electronics and clothes are among the most popular items bought, most of which end up in landfill or incineration. Online retailers like Amazon benefit most, and Amazon routinely destroys new, unsold items. “Black Friday is taking us in the opposite direction of where we need to be heading, encouraging the purchase of brand new things we probably don’t even need.” says Katalin Csatadi.
These problems are evidenced by a new Netflix documentary, ‘Buy Now’, out this week, which reveals that waste is rarely considered when products are designed, and planned obsolescence is the norm. The documentary follows waste electronics to Thailand where workers are exposed to toxic chemicals when they dismantle the items for disposal. Waste clothing is followed to Ghana where the millions of garments are simply too many to be used, and piles of clothing cover beaches. Meanwhile, the business model of the online retailers is to churn out thousands of new clothing lines every year, and to find devious ways of maximising the chances of you clicking the ‘pay’ button. An ex-CEO of Unilever is clear when interviewed that the blame lies with the retailers’ marketing tactics, not the customer.
Many smaller businesses already boycott Black Friday, as this frenzy of shopping dominated by the big retailers is also bad for small independents, who do not generally see Black Friday as an opportunity for them. In 2023, the British Independent Retailers Association (Bira) reported that 86% of independent retailers would not be participating in Black Friday. This year, Bira has been promoting ‘Love Your High Street Week’ for the second year running, with the aim of “shining a spotlight on the diversity, uniqueness and community-focused offerings found on high streets nationwide”.
Taking action
Some choose to actively resist Black Friday by creatively responding to the clamour of unwanted, intrusive and increasingly bright commercial ads in public spaces. In 2023, activists across the UK and Europe took part in the ‘ZAP Games’, taking over ad spaces with alternative messages: to spend time with friends, appreciate nature or to appeal for freedom for Palestine. Organised by the Subvertisers International, the ZAP Games (from the French ‘Zone Anti-Publicité’ / Anti-Advertising Zone) is happening again from 15th-29th November 2024, and sounds much more fun than anxiously trawling the big retailers’ websites only to end up with an air fryer or mattress you never really needed, and wasn’t even a bargain.
Saying no to Black Friday doesn’t mean saying no to consumer bargains. It means saying no to corporations that exploit workers and the planet in their search for ever quicker profits. Saying no to endless advertising telling us we are not enough unless we buy this and that. Saying no to products that provide a cheap thrill at the expense of our physical and mental health. It means saying yes to a healthier, fairer world outside the machine of corporate capitalism.
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