Why I’m Boycotting Black Friday

As a Brit living in Australia, I’m not sure how Black Friday crept into my life. It was always a spectacle viewed from afar, a foreign affair like Hallowe’en smores and the pledge of allegiance. But the retail practice has metastasized, pushing traders who’ve never eaten Thanksgiving turkey to annually cull their prices in a bid to compete. Exclusive offers, early deals – my inbox is humming. But I won’t be taking part, either as a consumer or as a small business.

We have a thing in Australia called Hard Rubbish. Twice a year, the council collects any items too big for regular waste bins. Furniture, mattresses, fridges, books, all left on the kerbside and taken away. Some get recycled and salvaged (a lot of my furniture comes from the roadside), the rest goes to landfill. Every six months the streets swell with furnishings, broken and unwanted. It’s the defecation of consumerism, and it’s a confronting experience.

When I think of Black Friday I think of Hard Rubbish. All the products we bought on a whim but didn’t need. That lost their shine and wound up hidden in some cupboard, destined for landfill on the next decluttering spree. That are poorly made, designed to break on purpose so we’d buy more. According to a 2019 Green Alliance report, up to 80% of electronics and clothing - and their plastic packaging - are thrown away, sometimes after a very short lifespan. 

A typical Hard Rubbish offering

There’s a mental wellbeing issue, too. Maybe you’re the kind of person who can ignore the endless pop-ups typical of online sales. But for some people, especially those with anxiety or heightened sensitivity, this can be overwhelming. According to The Universal Score, an initiative by Idean to create more inclusive design, “playing on scarcity, urgency and fear of missed opportunity creates unnecessary pressure. This can increase anxiety and push people to make decisions that might not be in their best interests.” 

So despite pressure from Etsy, I won’t be running a Black Friday or Cyber Week sale. I’m not alone – according to a recent piece by the Guardian, up to 85% of smaller sellers are ditching the event. Some are protesting by planting trees, closing their sites, or donating to charity. It’s a show of support for small businesses that have suffered during the pandemic.

The giants like Amazon, Ebay, Apple, etc, can afford to include sales as part of their business plan. But they also rarely pay taxes, destroy vast amounts of returned or unused stock, and treat workers terribly – I’m sure you’ve heard about the Amazon workers urinating in bottles because they can’t take toilet breaks. So it’s a discount, but at who’s cost?

This man does not need your money.

As an independent artist, I price fairly year-round. I handmake all my products and put hours of work into each design. I strive to create beautiful items that people love sending and receiving. I’d much rather someone bought something from me at full price and loved it, rather than ten customers who bought items ‘because they were on sale’, and ended up throwing them away because they never used them. I win, you win, the environment wins if we all slow down and buy products we love. 

If you can’t give up your Black Friday bargains, remember the easiest way to save money is to not buy anything. So thrifty humans, on Friday I’ll be sharing TEN FREE JOYS that are better than the latest kitchen gadget. 

BACK IN BLOG

Return of the Blog. The Blog Awakens. The Empire Strikes Blog.

However you want to brand it... it’s me. I’m BACK.

Earlier this year, I conducted an experiment. I deleted Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and a whole host of messaging apps off my phone. Just… to get some peace. It was weird at first. Then it was OK. Then it was hard. Then it was OK again.

I’m now using social media once or twice a day, but it was great to break the spell of hyper-connectivity. Some time to reflect on technology and my life.

I remember when THE INTERNET arrived at our house. Excitedly my family gathered around an awkward laptop to marvel at this invention, the height of human technology. What did we watch? We watched the hampster dance. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the hampster dance but it’s a bunch of GIF hamsters spinning around in circles, set against a white background with a catchy little ditty. This, my stepfather proudly told us, is it. This is what it’s all about.

We cranked the Logitech speakers until the dial-up dropped out.

And swiftly into the web we fall. Scattered over the internet you will find various stages of my development. Little parts of me in unanswered Yahoo emails, abandoned Neopets, frozen Bebo profiles, comments on Weebl and Bob. Somewhere along the line Blogging was a thing, and then it wasn’t. Somewhere ELSE along the line, we decided we were OK with our data being sold to shady third parties. We decided we’re OK with every second post a sponsored ad. We decided it’s OK our lives are an endless stream of notifications. We decided we’re OK with fake news, fake butts, fake connections.

I mean it makes sense. All those amazing services were never going to be free, duh. But I’m wondering how much value they add. Is my schoolmate’s dad’s dodgy opinion really worth those relentless baby monitor ads? Is my brother’s 90^th meme for the day worth the sale of my personal data? Do I need a reminder of my ex-boyfriend’s birthday? For every friend I keep in touch with, I have to suffer twenty impossible models I’ve never heard of, selling me a lifestyle I don’t even want.

I dunno, maybe we’ve reached a point where we could just…  talk to each other. Without all the BS.

In saying that though, I like to share art and see what others create. The internet is awesome for birthing ideas – both good and bad. So, I’ve decided to breathe life back into the old blog. I’ve poked around and it’s working OK, bit dusty but she’ll be right. In social media terms, think of it as the quiet bookshop next to the rowdy nightclub. It’s not quite the Hampster dance but it will be fun. I promise.

For posterity's sake. The closest I could find to the Hampster dance.