Culture

Black Friday: Enjoying It By Not Being There

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I took a drive this morning, mostly as the last few days have been uneventful and I like to start the car every day or two.  I didn’t go to any major retail chain, beyond a quick trip to the grocery store.

I’m avoiding Black Friday.  Of course now apparently there’s the fear of Brown Friday, which I guess is a thing now where people have rather . . . fecal abuse heaped upon a retailer.  I’d like to make a witty comment, but really, it’s difficult.

If you’re morbidly curious there are roundups of Black Friday madness all over.

I’ve decried Black Friday for some time, and I just did again.

However, something has struck me – I think we’ve made Black Friday a reality show.  We discuss the horrific excesses, we show the video clips of the insanity, and it all feels a bit too familiar.  It’s another case of morbid curiosity, and the peculiar rush we all get from talking about how bad it is.

Look, if people hate Black Friday madness – and I do – maybe it’s time to come up with a positive alternative.  Not an anti-Black Friday statement or whatnot, but some post-Thanksgiving holiday.  A day of giving, a day of greatfulness, a day of sanity, a day of donating our leftovers, something.

It’d be a lot more functional, because I’m tired of criticizing Black Friday, and Istill haven’t gotten all my bile out.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Pick Your Passion Portrayal

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Passion is a powerful thing.  When given channels it can lead to miracles and amazing achievements.  Admittedly it can lead to terrible things, as any surfing of obscure movies on Netflix reveals,  but let’s focus on the good stuff for the duration of this column, OK?

We’re fortunate to live in an age where so many of us can leverage our skills and creativity on our own to create wonderful works, to manifest our passions.  Well, by “on our own” I mean through software and services like Photoshop, Lulu, Amazon, Bandcamp, etc.  But you get the idea; we can do publishing, composition, programming, etc. that we never could have a few years ago, and in ways that would be unthinkable a decade or two ago*.

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Tribalism Trumps Cash In Politics?

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The campaign is done, over, Nate Silver can go get drunk, and the formerly confident members of the Republican Party are asking “what happened?”  Also they’re asking “What the hell did all that money go for?”

Now I could go deep into some of my own theories about political groups, which are roughly that a lot of lobbying and political organizations are just lucrative fronts to part donors from cash.  But still there was a LOT of money sloshing around this election, and many is the time I hears someone predict it would break in the Republican’s favor.  Doesn’t look that way.

I think there is an issue that money can only buy so much, and it’s worse in a time of highly “tribal” political divisions, as explored by Salon.

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