Everyone had the friend, or was the friend, who would wake up before dawn the day after Thanksgiving to stand in line for “doorbuster deals.” Who would’ve guessed we’d ever miss those caffeine-fueled Black Friday mornings? The ones when you’d size up a stranger by how they behaved when confronted with the last two PlayStation 3 consoles in the state.
But here we are. Across the internet, folks like Cody Martin (@codymartin), Denita Barr (@denita), Maria Carolina (@carolinawilli16), and Cassie (@cassie) are lamenting the loss of the elbow-throwing, heart-pounding sprint for the best deals.
“Bring back Black Friday,” shouts Barr in a video that’s been watched thousands of times. “I’m talking about the Black Friday where you had to get up at butt-f- – -am to go get in line at Kohl’s or you’s finna miss that f- – – – – – deal.”
Do you remember?
And sure, it might be a tad absurd to be nostalgic for retail madness. But watching Martin’s 16-second 2011 throwback video of Black Friday does tug at something for about 2.2 million of us.
Perhaps it’s not just because these days, as Carolina notes, stores roll out their Black Friday deals weeks ahead of time. Perhaps it’s because it was once kind of fun to squabble over subwoofers with a stranger. As Carolina says in her TikTok, “If you can afford to have the deal for more than one day, it is not a Black Friday deal.”
Martin’s video looks like the kind of footage you might once have seen on the 6 o’clock news back in the day. “We used to be a proper country,” the caption reads. The video pans over a crammed-together crowd of folks who’re jockeying for space. They are passing boxes hand-over-hand and generally getting their joyful consumerism on.
“No phones in site, just people living in the moment,” Martin captioned the video. He makes it clear: This is more than just shopping; it is rowdy togetherness.
The downfall of the inside mall
In 2014, the New Yorker ran an article that forecast the downfall of the American mall. Yes, it was tied to online shopping. But it was also tied to the physical space of the typical indoor mall. Developers have a shorthand name for it: “Classic greybox.”
That sounds about as appealing to shop in as it does to struggle to find parking there during the high season.
The solution, for developers, has been to turn toward outdoor malls.
Camaraderie in the chaos?
Struggling to find a historic or academic explanation for this nostalgia might be an exercise in redundancy. That’s because viewer comments encapsulate the energy so many seem to feel is missing from today’s shopping scramble.
“I YEARN FOR A BLACK FRIDAY LIKE THIS,” Carly Gutierrezz (@carly/twinmama) wrote.
Tiana Coats (@tiana) remembered, “I used to go out for Black Friday just for the chaos.”
READ MORE: Our favorite Black Friday 2025 deals will leave you way cozier for way less
“Throwback to shouting “WHERE ARE YOU?!” To find your family members amongst the chaos,” recalled @beepbopteeptop, who says if her family couldn’t find anything else, they’d always snag some DVDs.
Inflated prices, deflated hearts?
One of the main complaints popping up across accounts and in comments is that the so-called deep discounts aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Shoppers are suspicious that prices are getting puffed up, only so stores can slash prices for sale optics.
The history of Black Friday
The whole idea of a huge shopping day the day after Thanksgiving can be traced to 1950s Philadelphia.
That’s when the city would be flooded by shoppers and tourists for the big Army-Navy game, reports History. Police officers had to work overtime and often deal with petty theft on top of managing hordes of crowds. So it was a bad day—a black day, a Black Friday.
Then, in the 1980s, the idea was co-opted by retailers as a way to encourage spending. Because it could be an economic milestone: the day when retailers, which often operated in the red, turned their books to the black (making a profit). Since then, it’s gone on to be an unofficial holiday.
@_codymartin_ We used to be a proper country. #blackfriday #memories #commercialism ♬ original sound – Cody
We reached out to Denita Barr, Maria Carolina, and Cassie via email. We also reached out to Cody Martin via TikTok messenger. We’ll update this if we hear back.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
