BLACK FRIDAY IS THE MOST HONEST DAY OF THE YEAR

by Mr. Mean-Spirited

Surely Black Friday has got to be the most enjoyable day of the year.  That first shopping opportunity right after downing the Thanksgiving meal is not only endlessly entertaining, but Black Friday also furnishes some truly engrossing insights into the human soul.  The nature of the species is never on more honest display than when it is pushing a shopping cart.

The best of humanity is never seen in feeding the hungry, but in yanking that last pair designer sneakers off the shelf before another shopper might reach them.  The truest expression of human resilience is not in healing the sick, but in kicking a crippled customer out of the way so that you can reach the latest-model cell phone. You can always find the mankind’s greatest efforts not in being first on the scene to help survivors of a natural disaster, but in getting to a buy-one-get-one-free offer before anyone else.

Human beings will trample each other just to save a couple dollars on some plastic trinket.  Pregnant woman will slap someone else’s kids out of the way just to get the latest shrink-wrapped product.  You can watch grown men starting fist-fights over merchandise that has merely been discounted a couple percentage points.

No shopper will ever let another person get ahead of them – that aggressive purchasing is mankind’s true character.  No consumer will ever share the stuff in his shopping basket with any other Black Friday buyer. A customer will grab an item for no other reason than to keep someone else from getting it.  And the bottom line is that a human being really doesn’t need any of this mass-marketed crap anyway.

If you want to see Homo sapiens in its natural habit, just visit any Wal-Mart right after Thanksgiving.  The law of the jungle while clutching a glossy advertising flyer. Lex talionis with a maxed-out credit card in the wallet. 

If you do not yet hate all mankind, a few hours in a warehouse store around the Holidays would be enough to turn Mother Theresa into a snarling, snapping misanthrope. Black Friday: people behaving like brutes and nasty-ass merchandise … what’s not to love?