It's supposed to be the day when America shops its brains out. Hungry shoppers line up outside the Best Buy or the Walmart or the Macy's for hours until the doors open and the race to grab those annual bargains begins.
But why bother when you can do the entirety of your shopping online?
These days, you can get everything from oatmeal to a brand new a car, online. You don't even need a computer to do it. You can just use a smartphone app. NPR reported that in-person Black Friday shopping is down almost 50% from previous years. This doesn't surprise me at all. But what does surprise me is the vast hordes who still go to the bother of shopping in-person. Why bother?
I think what it comes down to is this: we are social animals and the need to hunt and gather in packs is something that's as ingrained in us as the need to propagate or breathe even. We might have all sorts of neat gadgets and toys these days, but in relative terms, we're not all that removed from our cave man ancestry. When it came time to hunt down that big ass mastodon which would promise to feed the tribe all winter long, you didn't get the option of staying behind to work on your cave paintings. You threw on your best leather robe and a hunting did you go.
As for me, I hate shopping. I love getting into the Christmas spirit, but shopping just makes me insane. There's no instant gratification rush for me. I love to buy for others, but I can do that from my laptop at Jeff Bezos's store.
That said, I won't be going to any stores on Black Friday. Call it a dose of the Black Friday Blues, but I'm staying behind in my cave and working on my stories, even if it means I go hungry all winter long.
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