You’ve probably seen pictures of consumers elbowing their way forward in blind desire to be first to the Black Friday deals, and thought that’s primitive herd behavior you don’t want to be associated with. Then it’s better to go to Fretex or Finn.no to buy old gramophone records, used clothes and maybe eat a vegan hamburger with politically correct friends before cycling home. Last year, Black Friday sales broke all previous sales records with a turnover of 3.6 billion kroner. On this one Friday, we shopped for over 2.5 million per minute. This year, there are many indications that there may be an abrupt end to the turnover records that we have seen on Black Friday every year since 2015. Consumers on a savings flare shop at sales Ordinary people cannot do anything about increased interest rates, electricity bills, fuel prices and shop prices. Instead, they can do something in the shops: buy less, and buy cheaper. When the head of the World Bank, David Malpass, says it will be even worse in 2023, people hit the brakes: they postpone purchases, and they look for cheap alternatives. This means that climate and environmental activists no longer have much to worry about when it comes to unrestrained consumption. It is the low-paid who most often make use of the shops’ sales days. Today, many of them have such major financial problems that they can barely afford to buy Christmas presents. Not on sale either. Condescending criticism of Black Friday The question is whether the highly educated climate activists’ protests against Black Friday are not an arrogant criticism of those who can barely afford to buy Christmas presents on the cheap. When ordinary people with ordinary incomes have to make use of offers, Black Friday is no longer a tailor-made opportunity to flag oneself as a privilege-blind green apostle of kindness who will save the world from buying on offers. Then they have forgotten that it is precisely capitalism’s growth and prosperity that has created them themselves as environmentally conscious consumers. That is, consumers who, in contrast to “environmental pigs who spend their money on all sorts of knick-knacks they probably don’t need on sale”. Buying a cheap Korean-made cell phone on Black Friday is vulgar and American. Then it’s better to put on the green windbreaker from Fjellreven, and use the electric bike to the Apple store. There you buy a shiny new MacBook or iPhone at full price, while shaking your head watching the Black Friday hysteria at EL-kupp on the other side of the street. The new upper class In 2017, the book The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class was published. Here, Professor Elizabeth Currid-Halkett describes “the new upper class” as an elite group that abhors phenomena such as Black Friday, Black Week and Halloween. These are people who are determined to distance themselves from “the irresponsible herd culture that runs amok in the shops on Black Friday”, she believes. And further: These people constitute an urban herd culture that lives in a self-glorifying echo chamber with a preference for specially imported coffee beans and vegan products. It is primarily this group that campaigns to slow consumption and the speed of vulgar capitalism. And here we are, whether we are the children or the parents of the new idealistic upper class. But what kind of idealism are we talking about? Yes, whoever says that materialism, advertising and consumerism are shit, and that Black Friday offers are harmful to the climate and society. Which is fair enough to say when money is not an issue for those of us who can buy what we need at full price. The environmentally conscious winners have replaced economic capital with cultural capital. But cultural capital is expensive. Measured in the time that environmentally and climate-conscious self-realization costs in kroner and öre, they consume far more environmentally friendly products than the fools with designer capsule coffee machines from Italy. Black Friday was invented for “those who go crazy” (the poor don’t know any better), and “we” who take responsibility for the environment and climate. This way we all feel better about ourselves. In these difficult times, how can we ensure greater equality between those who do not go on sale and those who do? I do not know.
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Over and out for Black Friday? – Speech
