We’re seeing a very rare media trend this fall. Story after story in the style, living, home and even business sections of newspapers and websites are advising people to imitate individuals who aren’t famous and don’t earn a lot of money, maybe $30,000 to $57,000 a year.
The envied group we’re supposed to imitate consists of
professional shoppers. At least that’s the conclusion I draw from typing “Black
Friday shopping tips” in the Google search box.
Of the 1.24 million results that come up, the first few pages are filled
with articles that are going to teach us how to “shop like a pro,” by which the
writers must mean a professional shopper, those low-paid gofers of party
planners, marketing departments and rich folk.
Here is a sampling of articles in which we can learn how to
“shop like a pro”:
- “How to Shop on Black Friday Like a Pro” lays out three steps and three tips for shopping like a pro the day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the writer and editor are less than pros and make a number of irritating syntactical errors, such as writing “your” instead of “you’re.”
- “Shop Black Friday Like a Pro” starts with the premise that the readers—like the writer—love to shop for the Holidays.
- “12 tips for shopping Black Friday like a pro” is a graduate seminar in how to shop during the Holidays. The last tip however, places a dark cloud on the whole process (I write “process,” since when there are 12 steps, there must be a “process“): “Plan a nice brunch or other social gathering at the end of your trip, so you’ll have something to look forward to.” Wait a second. If, as the article claims earlier, you are so excited about shopping that you “are already salivating,” why do you need something to which to look forward? Maybe professional shoppers are supposed to end their work days with a snack, kind of like reverse carbo-loading. I guess I was too busy taking humanities and science courses in college and I missed the “advanced professional shopping” seminars.
- “5 Steps to Shopping Black Friday Like a Pro” advises people to have a Holiday shopping strategy.
- “Black Friday Survival Guide – How to Shop Like a Pro” compares Black Friday to the Superbowl, but warns that on the “potentially dangerous and stressful day” you better learn how to shop like a pro. Football serves as the appropriate analogy for the grim picture of waiting on line, running towards products and pushing and shoving painted by the author.
- “3 Ways to Shop Black Friday Like a Pro” boils it down to the essentials of planning your route and coordinating with friends, so that one of you shops for certain items while the other looks for other things.
- We like to shop
- Winning is fun
- We like to aspire to the pinnacle, such as the pinnacle of shopping professionalism, that exalted point at which others laud you as a “master.”
Interestingly enough, no one mentions products much in their
advice on shopping. There are occasional references to tablets and video games,
but mostly the products don’t matter—it’s all about the act of buying.
Traditionalists shouldn’t beware just yet. My Google News
search of “Thanksgiving” yielded 158 million stories, as opposed to a mere 136
million for “Black Friday.” If we measure significance by number of Google
hits, Thanksgiving is still the top Holiday of the last week of November. There are many how-to-articles for
Thanksgiving, too—how to roast a turkey, how to make a turducken, how to make
gravy, how to plan a vegetarian Thanksgiving, how to address family disputes,
how to decorate in a festive way. It all
seems to mundane and old-fashioned, though, compared to the thrilling rapture
of pulling a credit card out of a wallet and handing it to a cashier.
But give it time. Black Friday is relatively new as a
holiday. It is still developing its
traditions and its history. In the future, perhaps, certain food will become
associated with Black Friday, like Mexican food with the Superbowl (My money is
on hot turkey tacos). People will start telling stories of Black Friday the way
they remember it in the good old days. The year Mom wrestled a PlayStation away
from a 400-pound man. The year we roasted turkey on the portable grill in the
Wal-Mart parking lot. And sooner or later,
someone is going to figure out that like most other American holidays, the best
way to celebrate Black Friday is to buy something for someone and give it to
them. Yes, I can see the glorious day—glorious for retailers—when people
exchange presents for Black Friday. And at that point, we’ll have to create a
new holiday—the one on which we shop for Black Friday presents.
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