Doomed to Fail - Ep 229: The downfall of society - Black Friday

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

We love stuff, but the idea of going to a store for that stuff sounds insane. Today, Farz will talk through the history of Black Friday - why do we do Thanksgiving when we do? Why do we like sales so much? Would you murder someone for a PlayStation (say no)? Happy Franksgiving & Merry Christmas! Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A. 019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Hello, hello, Taylor. Happy whatever today is. How are you? Good. How are you? Doing pretty good. It's a little late over here. But thank you for giving me time. I had to wrap like, I wrapped a bunch of Christmas presents today. did a bunch of that kind of stuff. What a great day.

And now you're going into the more chaos of the holidays. Yeah. The continued chaos. I have like several school things to do this week. And then we leave on Saturday for the East Coast. It's fun. Okay. Maintain the energy.

You got to. I know. I don't have it in me. I do, I did put in the kids calendar the day we get to Baltimore, but we're going to relax like hysteric because my, my, family relaxes even though my husband's family wants to do stuff so really fun yeah so old saying um what family you marry into do they go for turkey trot on thanksgiving or do they sit at home in their pajamas all they honestly thank christ they don't go on runs they definitely go on like 40 mile back rides and i'm like no that's that 40 miles of text um cool let me you want to introduce

us yes hello welcome to doom to devail i'm Taylor, joined by Fars, and we bring you historical failures and disasters and fun stories. And today, it's Fars this turn. And I'm going to bring one of the biggest failures, disasters, and disappointments in human history. I am, of course, talking about Black Friday. Oh, how fun. I hate the fact that we call this like a pseudo-holiday. I feel like I haven't stepped inside a store in a very long time.

So I don't even know. I don't even know. When you were a kid, you remember seeing the videos of people who were like camped out, intense outside of a Best Buy. You know, if this, okay, I'm going to get a lot more hate mail after my therapy thing when I say this next part.

I feel the same way about Costco. I feel like at Costco, all these people just beating each other over the head to try and get something. And it's like, okay, so you save 15 cents on your ham. Like, I also don't feel like I need a Costco membership. What's your piece for? I want that much stuff. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, yeah, exactly. I don't, I'm not into that. Did I, oh, my sister and brother-in-law live in Valley Stream. Were you talk about that particular town? Is that where that one kid got shot and killed? Someone died. It was on Long Island. I didn't get shot. I will talk about that.

But that was like their Walmart. I'm going to go into details about that one. Yeah, yeah. I figured. But it's a horrible, by my estimation, a horrible holiday. And I'm glad that it's kind of fading away in prominence. As stores start to collapse. I also, I'm curious for you to tell me, like, how much, like, I know that, like, the way that things are priced, you know, like, corporations don't really care.

Like, they want the, they want, as soon as they make their, their money back or what they wanted the profit to be, then they can, that's how things can go on sale, you know? Yeah. It's also, it's also a bipartisan of artificial inflation. So, like, if you say something. So it's, um, I learned this. I listen to some pre-conomics episode about how J.C. Penny, they're like, why does, like, why do stores like Dillers and J.C. Penny and all these stores, I don't know if those are still around

anymore but why do they always have things on sale and they're like because it's always marked up and so they always mark it down because they think people are so insane they'll just buy it it because there's a different tag on it so they do that who who lost a bunch of money because they stopped doing that like one of those stores was like maybe one of those stores was like okay we're going to have like every maybe it's j max but like we're going to have everyday low yes yes yes every yeah they marked it down consistently so they took the sale thing off and just kept the price the same and people were like I don't want that. That's not as fun. No, you want your cold cash. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to go

even one step further and get even more hate mail. I'm going to put outlet stores in the same category. Yes, I agree. I was like, we have an outlet mall by me and I also don't ever want to go because I'm like, what are we going to do? Find junk? It's all crap. Like none of it's as good as the real. There's one close to me that that's like a Ralph Lauren store. It's the only, like, Ralph Lauren store in the Austin area. But you go in, it's like the crappiest version of their nice stuff. Right. Why do I want that? Like, whatever.

I guess having a lot of junk for most people is better than having a little bit of a good thing. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know. But we're going to talk about Black Friday, why we have it, and why it's terrible beyond. You know what? We actually covered a lot of why it's terrible. We're going to go into an anecdotal story that Taylor referenced earlier into more detail about why it's terrible.

Great. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree to agree. I learned something really interesting as part of this research. Actually, the whole thing is interesting. Keep listening. But the most interesting thing I learned is Thanksgiving wasn't always on the same day. Did you know that? It wasn't always the last Thursday of November. Yeah. Tell me more. Okay. So Black Friday and how it relates Thanksgiving. So in the 16 to 1700s, Thanksgiving was like celebrated on a different date based on what colony or state. you were in. George Washington set the date in 1789 as November 26, but it was just for that year and just for that date.

From the 1790s till the 1860s, states just picked their own Thanksgiving day. And there was like no national declaration on what day was supposed to be on. It wasn't until 1863 when a national proclamation by Abraham Lincoln set the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving. Fun. Yeah. then FDR gets involved and commercial interests get involved and that's when things got kind of interesting and wonky and political like it's one thing I also learned as I research it was like everything has been political always since forever it is not a modern time thing we just see it more because of social media and that's I think that that is our like thesis statement for everything yeah like everything's awesome and everything's always been kind of awful let's just power through power through yeah so fDR gets

involved and one thing that i saw was that apparently some years there's five thursdays in november which i guess kind of makes sense because every now and then some weeks have five weeks in them or some months have five weeks on them um traditionally the day after thanksgiving was known as like the kickoff the holiday shopping season for christmas and reach retailers hated when there was five Thursdays because it delayed the kickoff to the shopping season. And so in 1939, they approached FDR and was like, let's just change that and make it the fourth Thursday in November for everyone across the board. Okay. So that was not law.

That was a proclamation. It was a presidential proclamation. And again, this caused a rift between Democrats and Republicans. Democratic states, they went with FDR's proclamation. The fourth Thursday was Thanksgiving. In Republican states, who were trying to stick with Lincoln, they would celebrate the last Thursday of November. And apparently, if you were in a Democratic state,

it was called Thanksgiving, not Thanksgiving, because of Franklin, Delano Roosevelt. I'm chasing to that. Going back to that. Thanksgiving. Yeah, I don't have to talk about FGR than the Pilgrims. Yeah, well, you got plenty. He did a lot, so it took another two years after all this political stuff was going

on with the Franksgiving versus Thanksgiving f Thanksgiving fiasco. When Congress in 1941 finally passed a law that FDR signed into law, that's at officially the fourth Thursdays the nationally observed date for Thanksgiving. Ballme? Yes. following you. Retailers themselves hated the name Black Friday. Because historically, when you denote it, anything is black, like, think about like Black Monday, the stock market crash, Black Tuesday, the other side, Black Blake. Like, it just denotes, like,

things like aren't going right. Yeah. There's also, there were so many of these, actually learned that in Australia, they, they didn't call it Black Friday until pretty recently because there was another Black Friday, which was the biggest wildfire in the history. And the history of Victoria that just killed a ton of people. And so calling anything Black Friday was supposed to, like, it was foreboding to do that. Yeah, yeah, that one makes more sense to call it that. Yeah. So the retailers try to pivot the meaning of the name by referring to the balance sheet.

So when the balance sheet is negative, you're not making enough money. It's in the red. When it's positive, you're in the black. And so that's what they were trying to associate this holiday with. But why did they, why did they call that in the first place? I'll tell you. We're going to get to that. Okay.

The way they got the term Black Friday was in 1951, there was a publication that was called Factory Management and Maintenance. It was for commerce people. It was a trade magazine for commercial goods and sales and stuff like that. And they referred to the Friday after Thanksgiving as Black Friday because that's when everybody called them sick to work. work and nobody would show up for their jobs i think that that that yes that does track right that tracks yes i also don't want to go to work the other thingsgiving 100 percent 100 percent but that was the

starting point of it that's why it got that name to begin with they published that in 1951 and then people started kind of catching on to it got and the attempt of pivot obviously hasn't worked um i also think generally speaking as of today like the the whole concept of black friday kind of has like fallen out of favor with the public now you have like sales all the time You have Cyber Monday, you have Cyber Week now with Commerce sales from Monday onwards. Also, I just don't care about sales anymore. And it's all made up. Yes, no exactly what you're saying.

Nobody's losing money on this. Like, it's not a, like, how much of a sale can it be if they're still making a ton of money off it? Yeah. I don't think I'm getting something of outsized value for my money when sales were happening. No. Also, one thing I learned is that the percentage of actual retail sales on Black Friday are like crazy low. like the actual like objects gone or the the percent of revenue generated like black friday yeah so like in the 1990s which is when black friday was like kind of a big deal you know when we're kids

they only accounted for half a percent or so of retail sales really that's so surprising yeah it was really low um mostly the concept though was to draw people into stores so if you think not like a grocery store for example they put all the stuff you really really need and want out of the way like eggs are in the back of the store milk is in the back of the store like yeah so you have to walk for the store yeah they're trying to make it so they would do this as a way to kind of get you in so that you could just okay sure you're going to get some crazy low price on a tv that tv's going to break in 15 minutes doesn't matter you're going to turn around and you're going to buy something else for the cables are going to cost a lot and all that stuff and so that's how they

would kind of get you. And back then, some of these deals were somewhat decent, actually. So you had DVD players going for sale for $13. You had TVs that were being sold for hundreds of dollars off. PlayStation's back in the day would be like half off and people would lose their absolute marbles at PlayStation deals. Like that's when a lot of violent stuff ended up happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I totally. I can imagine that. Or just gaming things in general. But those were kind of, again, there were edge cases draw people into the stores to buy those stuff. And Black Friday got progressively shittier as time went on with retailers having doorbusters, remember? And they would actually start opening the stores on Thanksgiving Day itself. Like, how do we all revolt against this?

Like, why are you taking people away from their families to... Exactly. It's so gross. Yeah, that's gross. Which actually is one of the blessings that COVID gave us. Because retailers were discouraged from having large congregations of people, it discouraged them to have these dwarves. buster black friday deals where people just lose our minds and infect each other and probably kill each other and trample each other for no reason i also kind of like there's stuff that my

kids want for christmas but i'm also like not raising assholes where i have to like get in a physical fight with someone to get them something i've never wanted anything that bad in my life never never and like yeah i feel like there's like stupid shit that people were like the kids like really want it they don't get it the kid's gonna lose their mind then like i don't know revisit your kid Yeah, yeah. There's so many stories I can go through here. But like, yeah, there's so many of those with Tickle Me Elmo's where parents were literally getting two fist fights with people to give their kid a tickle me Elmo. And it's like, raise your kid better. Give them a book. Give them a membership to Barnes & Noble or something. A thousand percent. And I can say that as a parent. Like my kids have never had to happen. Yeah. Good parenting. Thank you.

I thought that you had to hear that for me, but still. Yeah. Um, there's a fun thing I found called the, called Black Friday death count.com, which actually tracks every injury in death from 2006 till today. Oddly enough, there's only been 17 deaths directly related to Black Friday, which is probably still more than there should be for just 17 too many. 120 injuries were related to Black Friday. And I will say a lot of those injuries are gunshots. So like they weren't trivial like people just like broken arm or something.

from other shoppers. Yeah. Just fucking crazy, you guys. The story you're referring to was out of New York in 2008 and it was at a Walmart and involved this guy, oh man, I'm so, I'm sure, you know, actually butcher the pronunciation. It's, um, Jemitey de Moore. It's a hard pronunciation. There's a lot of consonants back to back with his name, which I should be better at,

given my, my ethnicity, but still, um, this guy was six foot five and two hundred and 70 pounds. He was being used as kind of a door guy to try and control the Black Friday crowd. He ended up getting trampled to death when the doors actually opened. And they put a sign in front of the store, like their genius marketing team put a sign outside the store that said, quote, blitz line starts here. So they're riling people up. They're getting them going. One of the thing that Walmart apparently did back in the day was they would have like the pallets of like these stuff people really want, like the Xboxes and stuff like that. Right. And they would have, like, you know, BF on them, like Black Friday.

So you knew that was a Black Friday thing. Right. So you knew it was coming. And you weren't. In theory, you weren't supposed to be able to, like, check out with it until midnight. But people would just, like, grab them and start running out of the store. They were, like, lose their minds trying to get this thing for anybody else would. Man, that's dumb.

And so apparently in that situation, even after police arrived and announcements were made that somebody had been killed, like an employee would. was dead and the store was a crime scene, people kept shopping and they wouldn't leave the store. Like, that's how gross things were. Like, they're so gross. Yeah. That is, I hate that so much. Yeah. Um, one report I read stated that the deals that people were competing for was a TV that had a regular price of 798 that was discounted to 750. Ew. Is that insane? You could kill someone for that? So, so bad. Um, I read another report in, and, and, and, In 2010, a woman at a Toys R Us, she wanted to, she cut in line in front of other people waiting outside for the store to open and ended up pulling a gun on the people behind her

to start complaining about it that she cut them off. You're going to have a record. I mean, maybe, I don't know if she happened before, but like, what did you do? You almost certainly already had a record if you pull the gun on someone of the Toys Arrest. That's true. You've at least knocked over 7-Eleven. I don't think that that lady had like good stuff happening.

But still. You at least started a dollar general and working. hate. Oh, my God. Wow. And then there was another one in 2011 I read of a Los Angeles Walmart where a woman pepper sprayed 20 people in line to try and give her an advantage of the doors open to run in to get a discounted Xbox. There's so many of these stories. It's so fun. It's wild. That is so dumb. It's so interesting. I don't even know how dumb it is. I know. When you think about like how as a culture we're absolutely doomed. Like, I think this was a starting point. I mean, it's all something that's like, none of this stuff is necessary.

Does that make sense? Like, it's not something you need for your life. And like, oh, yeah, that sucks. I will also go so far as to say, like, I'm not, I don't think I'm, I don't think we're the same in this way. Like, I'm pretty, I'm like into consumer culture. I think it's great that people have money to buy things that they can then other people can sell to them and they can use that to send their kids to school and do whatever they want.

But like there's a level to it and I don't think I would kill anybody to say $48 on a TV. I think I'd cut it off at that level. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I like, like, I don't mind like targeted ads on the internet. I'm like, don't give me an ad for something I don't want, you know? I'm influenced on Instagram all the time.

like I'm always you know they know what I want and they like give me stuff for it like yes is that where you got your chaos goblin sweater you're wearing right now it is I'm wearing it says chaos goblin but this is from this it is from it's from Instagram but it's for a good cause so there's a woman who I just am obsessed with her name is Terran what is her last name um I think it's yeah Terran Delany Smith and she used to be like Miss New York for like Miss America. She does, she's really funny and she has like, she's like a really funny bit where she's like a receptionist in heaven. And like it's hilarious. She wears like a towel on her head and like

a bathrobe as like her like angel outfit and just look really cute. But anyway, she has, she sold some stuff and this proceeds from these chaos goblin sweatshirts went to the food bank in New York. That's great. That's great. But yes, all my, all my shit's from Instagram. I also want to use this as an opportunity to, if anybody at Walmart's marketing department is listening, we will put your advertisements on this show. So like, 10,000% don't let all the negative stuff I just said. I'm not saying that I won't take your money because of it. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Absolutely. So the next Black Friday, feel free to advertise. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate you making that thing. man what a shit way to die or a shit way to like i don't know do something i have a oh you can see all the presents i wrapped today i guess that was totally on brand for your story yeah no kidding um yeah i like read off like one 50th of the amount of people who were like trampled to death outside of a walmart or best buy there's a lot more of those and if you want to know what to do in a crowd crush listen to our other episode yeah in the hill

Hillsborough disaster because that was a crowd crush. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, guys just order your stuff on Amazon. Like be normal. For real. Like, even like, like, I feel like I don't do anything. I don't do, I do very little like chasing a sale. Even like Amazon Prime Day, like I don't, it's not like stuff I need. You know what I mean? It's just like maybe something shitty will be on sale and I'll buy it. But like it's never like the things on my list. Yeah, like this fidget thing I use, it was a deal day. thing that was on Amazon. I wasn't looking for it, but it was there, like, whatever. It's like, it says it's cheaper now that it's made out of paper. I don't know how much cheaper could have gotten, but still. I like those things. I, it's like the, even like going to the mall

like, with like no purpose, so weird. To be like, oh, I'm like, I need a new shirt. Like, you need a new going out top because it's 2010. So you go to the mall. I think, you know, one of the stories I didn't read off was the murder of this one kid and it was it was a mall thing where two groups got into an argument people had guns cops showed up shot someone killed them it's all within it sounds like it's still within contention of like whether

they even shot someone that they should have been trying to shoot or not like it turned into a whole thing but it also reminded me when I was a kid of like the mall that was by my house growing up like there was always a shooting there and I know yeah and when I read it read about this kid I was like I was I remember when I stopped going to malls. Like our parents like malls aren't safe places anymore. We're not going to go anymore. I mean, you know what was so interesting. So I was in downtown L.A. this week and you know how we feel about it.

Everyone knows. I like sent a picture of me cleaning my shoes to everyone I went with. I was like, don't forget to wash your shoes. Like, you know, I feel my downtown L.A. But we were at the Intercontinental, which is like a expensive, nice, fancy hotel. And the all of the shops like in that neighborhood, which is like one of the nicer neighborhoods of downtown. had an armed security guard like the Chick-fil-A, the Starbucks,

the California Pizza Kitchen, the Uniclo, like every single store has an armed guard. You're like, that is bad down to an L.A. Like, that's really bad. I don't know. I don't feel safer. I feel much less safe knowing that every store has to have an armed guard, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's not good. It's not good. And you, I don't know, I thought about this a lot because you text me earlier about that shooting that happened at that... In Australia, a Hanukkah celebration? Yeah. And man, I felt myself going the direction of maybe we should be arming teachers and babies at schools.

Like, even Australia is having mass shootings, like, I thought they solved it. They didn't solve it, but I mean, in the past years since the, what was it called the one? Yeah, I can't remember the name now. When you did an episode on this, yeah. So in the years since that, Fort Arthur. Fort Arthur Massacre, yes, there's been like 50 shootings. like 50 people have died in mass shootings in Australia and in the United States it's been about 4,000 people you know so they didn't solve it forever but they sure shit made a big dent

in it you know yeah like so that I think is good I do think that this one that happened today today is the the the 16th and there there was that shooting in Australia someone did or 14th whatever the 14th someone tackled the gunman which I've never fucking heard it when doing in America so good on that guy Here people are shooting shooting back which also made me think that like I've never heard anyone shooting back

have you really yeah maybe there's just so many that I just don't know but I've never heard a good guy with a gun story we'll track some down and do an anthology to this

but my theory of this also was like people here in Texas tend to not be unreasonable dicks to each other because I think everybody's afraid that the other guy

has a gun on them yeah I don't love that as a solution. There was an onion article that was like, Texas makes it legal to be able to hold your gun out at arms length when you're at the grocery store. And it was just people like waiting on the age of the grocery store. That could be fun.

That doesn't make me feel better. I don't know, but maybe that's me. Yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, sorry, we took a weird. But you know what? It actually isn't a weird aside because we're talking about shopping, in a continental. We're talking about Friday.

So it all kind of ties them together. So good for us. No, totally. Yeah, no, this week on CNN right now, there's a shooting at Brown University this weekend, this big shooting there. I mean, it's bad. You'd stay with Browns. To stay home and build a bunker, all of a sudden the cycle starts again. Yeah, I don't know.

There's no place safe. Merry Christmas. I don't know. Where you live, like, come on. No, what do you mean? Even like last year, we were woken up to gunshots because someone was like, on the tear across the mountain from me. Oh, yeah, that's right.

You did have some steal a car and take cops on a high-speed chase of the canyon. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So it's not, I mean, it's not nothing. Then, like, another guy who lived in 29 Palms went to Palm Springs to blow up a fertility clinic because he was, like, the kind of guy who thinks that no one should be born because life is suffering. So, I mean, the crazies are out there. Very nihilist of him. Yeah, like that everyone else's a problem.

well fun fun way to end it cool thank you for sharing that that's a lot of stuff that I didn't know and I am going to be calling it Franksgiving Franksgiving from now on what do you do next Franksgiving

come over you're going to choose whose side you're on if you're on Lincoln's side it's Thanksgiving it's FDR it's how dare you that's literally what the battle was over.

How dear, but I just don't feel like I'm willing to choose. I'm not willing to choose between those two, but I am willing to choose between talking about the pilgrims and talking about FDR. Call it Taylor Gibbing. Is it, I mean. Yeah. I mean, everything's made up. Yes.

I think, I feel like, well, because I think I maybe said this before, with the way I feel about the elf on the shelf is I feel like the way that single people feel about Valentine's Day when I'm like, this corporate bullshit holiday. I mean, even non-single. I don't think Valentine's Day should be a thing. Yeah, yeah. I was like, New Year's Eve? That one's real.

But that's just math. I don't know. I don't know any others. Yeah, we don't need to celebrate a lot of stuff we celebrate, but it's fun. It gives you a reason to decorate things and wear different colors. It's okay. It's true. I don't hate it.

we have a Christmas trip. I like it. Yeah, there you go. You know. Well, so do you have any listener mail? I do. I have one for you. Oh, I'm not mean. It's funny. I was talking to my friend Nicole. We had lunch yesterday. And she was listening to our like Gypsy Rose episode from forever ago. And in it, you said that your gums were bleeding. You tasted copper. And she wanted to if you were okay. And I said, I assume he's fine. But are you okay? Did you get that checked out?

I don't know why that started, but I know that it stopped. And so I think it was just a phase of my adult development where I just tasted copper and blood all the time. And now it's luckily gone away. But thank you for all that. Great. Great. I was like, I don't know. That was a couple years ago.

I know if he wasn't fine, but I don't know. I laugh and just blood splatter goes on the. like I'm fine gums are like gushing blood I'm going to call you're going to call your mom and talk yeah that's it

thanks Nicole thank you for your concern thank you very much we're probably okay but please write to us more things at duneafelpont

at gmail.com find us on the socials let us know if you have ever killed someone to save 7% on a TV. You know, what's been worth it for you to get into a physical fight with someone

or, like, at least wake up at, like, four in the morning and get it. Because, like, I do get, like, I'm sorry, I know we're at the end, but I do get, like, we used to, like, remember my husband made a movie about people who played, like, World of Warcraft? And it's called Second Skin. It was, like, from 2008. And, but those guys would, like, go and get, like, the special expansion of World of Warcraft at, like, midnight, you know, which I think is fun because you get to go home and play it. and like meet your friends in like the new world or like whatever um but they didn't like

get in fights over it but they were like they would they would wait in line for it but it felt a little bit different because it was like a timing thing not like a sale thing you know well that would that's also an affinity thing you're in there with the bunch of other nerds you're not like you know remind me do you remember when when it was someone in florida where they hosted a thing where they were going to give away some like rare like thousand dollar boa constrictor but the person had to win it and the way to win it was they held like a cockroach eating challenge and someone died because apparently there's a specific bacteria in cockroaches that on at scale will just like shut down your entire neurological system remember that you know i think so

for a thousand bucks right i know there's like a guy who just who just died in this year i think but he ate like a lizard or something as a dare and in his frat and he was like totally incapacitated for like 10 years before he died it like he was like a vegetable geez you know what I did that with my roommate in college where I bet him if he would eat this like June bug that was on my windowsill I would pay for Texas Roadhouse steaks and he actually ate it he's a doctor now wow so now we got there but that's gross story time i guess um all right cool thank you thank you we'll go ahead and cut off there thanks taylor