David Carr: "in his 32 years interviewing consumers in malls during the holiday
season, he had never heard what he did this year. 'People really have
no idea what they want'"
They want fun, meaning, collective joy, excitement, purpose, community. That's why they're hanging at the mall. Nothing new. Shopping & Black Friday, now "a kind of consumer sporting event", satisfies these basic human needs --- in a soulless, purposeless, corrosive way. (Corrosive not because someone gets trampled; Corrosive because it warps our sense of what's important.)
"A decade ago, [Black Friday] was barely in the top 10 shopping days of the year". Perhaps it's filling a gap... VC Fred Wilson notes this example of how technology pulls us from real-time collectivism: "In the world that Jeff Zucker grew up in, a studio created a TV show, let's say Friends, and then a network bought the show and ran it once a week at a scheduled time where millions of people would make time, all at the same time, to watch it."
As we lose Shared TV (good riddance), we'll fill the need for real-time collectivism somehow, National Shopping Day or otherwise. We need a culture with Shared Events that deliver fun, meaning, collective joy, excitement, purpose, community.
They want fun, meaning, collective joy, excitement, purpose, community. That's why they're hanging at the mall. Nothing new. Shopping & Black Friday, now "a kind of consumer sporting event", satisfies these basic human needs --- in a soulless, purposeless, corrosive way. (Corrosive not because someone gets trampled; Corrosive because it warps our sense of what's important.)
"A decade ago, [Black Friday] was barely in the top 10 shopping days of the year". Perhaps it's filling a gap... VC Fred Wilson notes this example of how technology pulls us from real-time collectivism: "In the world that Jeff Zucker grew up in, a studio created a TV show, let's say Friends, and then a network bought the show and ran it once a week at a scheduled time where millions of people would make time, all at the same time, to watch it."
As we lose Shared TV (good riddance), we'll fill the need for real-time collectivism somehow, National Shopping Day or otherwise. We need a culture with Shared Events that deliver fun, meaning, collective joy, excitement, purpose, community.
