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11-21-2007, 12:38 AM
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 | Exalted Member | | Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: USA
Posts: 3,186
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clothes100one, perhaps you should explain to everyone what "Black Friday" is. I assume it's unique to the United States, and even then, most "non-geeks" don't know about it.
I'll go ahead and take a shot at it. On the day after Thanksgiving, many large U.S. stores offer some of their best deals of the year. People call it "Black Friday". The best deals of all are their "door busters", which are limited in quantity and available only to the first people who show up at the door. For example, an electronics store might offer ten laptop computers for, say, $200 to the first ten people in line. Some people start standing in line 15-20 hours (or more) before the store opens so they will be able to buy one of those laptops. "Black Friday" has been getting crazier every year, with more and more people camping out in front of stores overnight so they can get the best deals before they're sold out. Even after the "door busters" are sold out, the stores are still packed with people looking for other good deals. It's crazy, but it's fun for people who are looking for great deals.
Most stores don't want people to see their ads before Thursday or Friday morning, but ads have a way of appearing on the internet a week or two in advance. As a result, people begin planning what they're going to buy on "Black Friday" after looking at the "ad previews", and it is a popular topic of conversation on message boards that host "Hot Deals" forums. (Some stores such as Wal-Mart threaten legal action against sites that post their ads before they are officially published, but other stores accept reality and play along with the "previews", or even send "previews" by email to customers on their mailing lists, which are subsequently shared with everyone else who visits those "Hot Deals" forums.)
I doubt that clothes100one works for any of the stores or intends to advertise their merchandise here. He (or she) is simply a consumer who had hoped to find some great deals but was disappointed by what the stores are offering for sale this year. Speaking from my own experience and having seen many "ad previews" myself, I have to agree that this year's sale prices are not as fantastic as the sale prices I saw in previous years. A 19" LCD monitor for $99 or a 320GB hard drive for $60 or a 48-pack of batteries for $10 is a pretty good deal, but it's not as exciting as a laptop computer for $200 (that normally sells for $700-800). There aren't many deals like that this year, and that's what people have been complaining about.
I can see why Buck wouldn't want GameBanshee to host a "Hot Deals" forum, so perhaps this isn't the right place to trade information about such deals. But I'll let Buck and the moderators speak for themselves.
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