Black Friday Blackout

Submission 5,141

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Overview

Black Friday Blackout, also known as Buy Nothing Day, refers to a mass protest campaign that centers on the organization of customer and worker strikes on Black Friday. This is due to the movement's perceived unfair wages and hours imposed on workers, as well as inspired by growing concerns surrounding Late Capitalism. The first "Black Friday Blackout" was held in 2014, but the concept was further popularized on Reddit in October 2021 within the /r/Antiwork subreddit and movement.

History

Black Friday strikes have been prevalent in the United States since 2014. On November 28th, 2014, "Black Friday Blackout" protests happened in New York City, where many protestors organized outside of Macy's Mall of America. A video of this protest was uploaded to YouTube^[1] on November 29th by the channel VeganMotorcyclePilot (shown below, left). YouTube^[2] channel WeAreChange uploaded a video on November 28th, 2021, of arrests being made in New York during the protests. Their video (shown below, right) received roughly 13,200 views over the course of seven years.

In 2015, Black Friday strikes occurred again. Shown below is a YouTube^[3] video posted on November 28th, 2015, by the channel Naomi Ishisaka of a protest happening in Seattle, Washington.

Antiwork Campaign

On October 21st, 2021, mods of Reddit's /r/Antiwork^[4] subreddit made a post titled, "ANTIWORK MEGATHREAD: BLACKOUT BLACK FRIDAY." The post detailed how customers shouldn't shop during Black Friday 2021 to stand in solidarity with workers who can't take off from their jobs in fear of being fired. The post (shown below) received roughly 14,000 upvotes over the course of one month. It also linked Redditors to the newly created /r/BlackFridayBlackout^[5] subreddit, which was created on October 29th, 2021, as well as to a website for the movement, called blackfridayblackout.info.^[6]

On November 10th, 2021, Redditor DearOfTheWild made a post to /r/blackfridayblackout^[7] that asked, "May I just ask the reasons behind Black Friday Blackout?" and received 206 upvotes over 15 days. The top comment of the post (shown below) was posted by Redditor Hellaboveme and puts the movement's reasoning into a clearer context, receiving 401 upvotes in two weeks.

Online Reactions

Memes related to the Black Friday Blackout campaign began appearing in /r/antiwork after October 21st, 2021. Redditor RealCaseyBlack posted an image to /r/antiwork^[8] on October 31st (shown below, left) that received roughly 6,500 likes over the course of one month. RealCaseyBlack posted a similar meme the following day, November 1st, 2021, to /r/antiwork^[9] (shown below, right) that received roughly 650 upvotes over one month.

On November 10th, 2021, news outlet Vice^[10] published an article highlighting /r/Antiwork's Black Friday Blackout campaign titled, "Reddit's Million-Strong Antiwork Community Wants to Blackout Black Friday." The article detailed /r/Antiwork's rapid growth over the course of the past year and its influence in the general anti-capitalist zeitgeist.

More memes about Black Friday Blackout appeared on other subreddits on November 10th, 2021. For instance, Redditor Team-First posted a meme to the /r/memes^[11] subreddit that criticized the lack of a solid plan within the movement's execution. The meme (shown below) received 53 upvotes.