The doors open. A seemingly endless wave of stampede across the barely established barricades. Cries of excitement echo throughout the dimly lit store as the ravenous horde sees a major sale on flat-screen TVs. This is the great American tradition of Black Friday, originally starting in 1952 by american retailers in an attempt to increase revenue, but has since devolved into a celebration of two overweight people brawling over a Tickle-Me-Elmo .

“Black Friday is an event that retailers didn’t really think through” Senior Samuel Nussbaum said.

Ultimately, the primary problem that so many people end up having with the event is how the combination of relatively low prices with insane  can results in massive stampedes and fights. These kind of conflicts can be very serious and even results in death or severe injury. In 2008, a massive stampede of people killed a 34-year old worker at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York. Even despite the destructive ramifications of the event, questions have been raised about whether the sales are either authentic or worth it.

“(Black Friday) is a conspiracy to get us into the stores” freshman Reed Burgess said.

Despite all of the negative and self-destructive aspects of Black Friday, the spread of Black Friday-esque traditions to countries such as Canada and Japan have given American retailers ways to reduce the chaos of the event and increase the number of people at the gates. One of the more recent innovations is Cyber Monday. The event originally came from British retailers who were conducting Black Friday and enables more people to get involved and buy more things from retailers but not have to deal with the massive crowds and limited supply from the physical event. Since American retailers have introduced the concept of Cyber Monday, sales have risen 55 percent online and the prices are usually better than the normal event. Another trend that American retailers have introduced to keep the sale-hungry swarm at bay is to set up a quota for how many customers can be within the premises of the store at any one time. This tradition was introduced in 2007 from India and has thus proven to be a major improvement at keeping the hordes at bay.

In conclusion, even though the practice of Black Friday has sometimes had destructive and dangerous results, new expansions to how retailers structure and monitor the event are leading to lower prices and a safer atmosphere to go shopping.    

*In order to see how Canada conducts its own version of this capitalist tradition check out the link below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O62PLi9LBpw

*Photo obtained via Daniel Acker/BloomBurg via Getty Images