Venting thread that still excludes eddy (2)

[Vijay]

Weirdly, I seem to associate Black Friday in my head with Black July.

[Pole, the]

I've just had a panic attack. (Okay, it was more like two hours ago, but my heart is still raging…)

Anyway, since I already feel bad, here's a little funny story I'd like to share:

A few days ago I was taking a train back to the city where I study and work. On board the train I overheard some young people talking — apart of exchanging a few occasional homophobic/transphobic jokes, one of them recounted his experience regarding the recent Independence Day.
(A bit of context: every year the celebration of the Independence Day in Poland turns into a stage of rivalry between the conservative nationalists and the leftist anti-nationalists.)
So, the person in question visited both sides of the conflict, taking a role of a wannabe journalist. He visited the nationalist side — as usual, militant and hiding behind scarves — first. Then, he ventured into the “antifa” demonstration, which welcomed him with an open and friendly atmosphere. However, the pleasantness didn't last long — the leftists started chanting “Down with nationalism and capitalism”. Triggered, he concluded that capitalism is the best economic system there ever has been and, because of the chant, he prefers the nationalist side after all.

Weirdly, I seem to associate Black Friday in my head with Black July.

I believe some Poles would likely associate it with December 1970. ;)

[mèþru]

The earliest known use of "Black Friday" to refer to the day after Thanksgiving occurs in the journal, Factory Management and Maintenance, for November 1951, and again in 1952. Here it referred to the practice of workers calling in sick on the day after Thanksgiving, in order to have a four-day weekend. However, this use does not appear to have caught on. Around the same time, the terms "Black Friday" and "Black Saturday" came to be used by the police in Philadelphia and Rochester to describe the crowds and traffic congestion accompanying the start of the Christmas shopping season. In 1961, the city and merchants of Philadelphia attempted to improve conditions, and a public relations expert recommended rebranding the days, "Big Friday" and "Big Saturday"; but these terms were quickly forgotten.

Use of the phrase spread slowly, first appearing in The New York Times on November 29, 1975, in which it still refers specifically to "the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year" in Philadelphia. Although it soon became more widespread, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 1985 that retailers in Cincinnati and Los Angeles were still unaware of the term.

As the phrase gained national attention in the early 1980s, merchants objecting to the use of a derisive term to refer to one of the most important shopping days of the year suggested an alternative derivation: that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this would be recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period when retailers would no longer be "in the red", instead taking in the year's profits. The earliest known published reference to this explanation occurs in The Philadelphia Inquirer for November 28, 1981.

It's pretty awful to be working in a retailer during this time of the year. Customers can become violent and sometimes even start fights or bring pepper spray.

[Salmoneus]

Now they're trying to import the Black Friday to France. (Actually, it seems to have started in 2014, but I hadn't really noticed. Plus we had other things on our mind two years ago.)

Is Black Friday supposed to, like, mean something? Or is it a naked celebration of capitalism and consumerism?

Ugh. We've had a few years of Black Friday here. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be catching on - it's mostly people bitching about the idea of Black Friday. The first time or two there were the traditional stampedes and serious injuries, but now I think people have mostly just decided not to bother stampeding, when they could just buy online cheaper. And since Christmas sales have in many cases already started anyway, and will continue for months, it makes no sense at all to go mad about this one day.

Unfortunately, the side-effect of that may be that we end up having to import Thanksgiving as well, so that Black Friday makes sense...

[KathTheDragon]

Urgh. Why do we have to import all this bullshit American culture all the time.

[Pole, the]

Fuuuuuuuck.

„Czarny Piątek” is “Black Friday” in Polish.

[Salmoneus]

Urgh. Why do we have to import all this bullshit American culture all the time.

Because only America is the Real World. Nothing else matters, and everything American is better.

[Vijay]

Urgh. Why do we have to import all this bullshit American culture all the time.

Because only America is the Real World. Nothing else matters, and everything American is better.

Ugh, I hate that, too.

[mèþru]

It's sort of difficult for me, because I've lived in America almost my life and don't have memories of my home country from when I lived there. I don't like American culture and I definitely don't feel American. I have no loyalty to the United States. On the other hand, I'm a citizen of the United States and I don't fit in with Israeli society - I'm not fluent in Hebrew. I'm mostly illiterate and most of the Israeli culture I'm exposed to is so old that most people my age in Israel aren't very familiar with it. And Israel has become more American in culture overtime as well. I feel sometimes like I'm my own nationality - a culture of one. And it is lonely when you are your own culture. But I've felt much better since finding this board, because a lot of the people here share my bizarre interests and I can talk to people who know about (or at least can google about) ancient Celtic societies or politics in Taiwan.

[Imralu]

I'm disturbed about how into Halloween everyone is in Germany. It's, like, ten times what it is in Australia. Like, if you go doorknob king in Australia (well done, spell check!), a lot of people will say "This is Australia, not America" and shut their door in your face. That's what we used to do when it occasionally happened. Someone egged our house once.

I told an American friend how I thought Halloween was kind of ridiculous in Germany and she was like "Oh, it's nothing compared to the states." Well, yeah ... it's your thing!

In other news, I think I'm grieving? The closest thing I ever had to a father figure, a good friend (and probably* also lover) of my mother has just died. Like, he was the only friendly older male I had in my life growing up, but he also lived 1,000km away and I probably only met him in person about five times. So far, I haven't shed a single tear, but I'm having a lot of trouble sleeping. As soon as I stop distracting myself with internet and try to quiet my brain, the fact that he's dead is there, but mostly I'm just concerned for my mum because she's staying in his house on her own in Sydney at the moment and he was kind of a hoarder like she is (but less hoardy, more just messy) and I can imagine she's just cleaning his house and crying. This morning at some point, I suddenly just jerked awake in a panic about his death and for a moment I felt like I was going to cry but there was nothing. I'm usually very quick to tears so I'm kind of concerned that I might be holding it back ... or maybe I'm just not that much of a crier with the dose of antidepressants I'm on.

* I think she told me this and I kind of don't ever remember anything about my parents' affairs (if they have affairs) ... I kind of just don't care. I think my mum told me a couple of times that my dad has had affairs and the only strong feeling I have about that is "Well, that hardly seems fair. He doesn't deserve to have fun with anyone."... But, like, that literally might have just been a dream. Anyway, my mum recently described this guy as the love of her life, which is at odds with other things she's told me, but not my business *sips tea kermitly*

And Methru, yeah, my flatmate has somehow always surrounded himself with Australians and today he was like "You're really not a typical Australian." The only thing he thinks I do that is super Australian is continue thinking while speaking and trail sentences off with a range of random words like "Yeah, I ... well... yeah"

So, I kind of feel like I don't have a nationality at the moment. I have an Aussie accent but my only valid passport at the moment is for a country I've never been to.

[rotting bones]

If you want to avoid pointless foreign influences, then create more new things. They don't have to be brand new. Just reinvent Christmas celebrations by inserting references to topical events or something. People get bored living the same way forever. Your choice is between new things coming from home or abroad.

Edit: On second thought, I notice these particular influences involve giving people free stuff. You probably won't be able to stop people from wanting free stuff.

[hwhatting]

My experience in my corner of Germany is that while Halloween decorations and Halloween parties have become a big thing in the last 15-20 years, trick-or-treating isn't. That's probably due to the fact that Germany has its own tradition of kids collecting sweets around St. Martin (Nov. 11th) in Catholic areas / Martin Luther's birthday (Nov. 10th) in the Protestant parts*1), and that's simply too close to Halloween; people aren't going to stock sweets to give out to neighbourhood children twice in the course of two weeks. I remember some lone children trying Halloween trick-or-treating in our neighbourhood a couple of years ago, but I don't think it's fun when people aren't prepared for it and mostly either don't open the doors or tell the kids to come back on St. Martin. It never caught on.
*1) Children walk around with paper lanterns and sing Martin songs at the doors - mostly badly, almost always one of the same two songs, and only the first verse, so it's not much of a musico-cultural experience...

[Raphael]

Then again, many of the Christmas traditions in the US were originally German, so the Americans would have reasons to complain to Germany, too...

[rotting bones]

I believe most Americans are of German ancestry. (Not true the way I worded it: German Americans are the largest ethnic group in America, but they're only 14.4% of the population.) It'll take time for me to imagine what contemporary America could be like without German cultural influences. But the people who were complaining were British, not American. Do British Christmas celebrations come from Germany too? (Basically, yes. You're absolutely right. Why isn't anyone complaining about prewar Germany being the True World under whose shadow the West continues to live? For me, the biggest proof of this idea is that the specific interpretation of cultural relativism that a lot of Western intellectual types use as a litmus test for Smart People has been a natural part of German culture since Leibniz, though the interpretation is itself not a human universal, and many German thinkers have also tried to subvert it. Even when most Westerners complain about "degeneracy" in music, they seem to be upset about the kids not writing German classical music. The ones who complain about profit motives ruining popular music in very recent times have a point though, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII)

(I suppose this means the only way forward is to create a culture that appeals to both the intellect (New Age fails at this) and aesthetic sensibilities (pure logical analysis is a space-filling curve that corresponds to white noise in aesthetic terms), while pushing beyond classical German aesthetics as a hidden point of reference, whether as an ideal to be imitated or rejected? Does anyone agree or disagree with this train of thought?)

[Vijay]

Anyway, hugs to mèþru, The Pole, and Imralu if they want them!

It's sort of difficult for me, because I've lived in America almost my life and don't have memories of my home country from when I lived there. I don't like American culture and I definitely don't feel American. I have no loyalty to the United States. On the other hand, I'm a citizen of the United States and I don't fit in with Israeli society - I'm not fluent in Hebrew. I'm mostly illiterate and most of the Israeli culture I'm exposed to is so old that most people my age in Israel aren't very familiar with it. And Israel has become more American in culture overtime as well. I feel sometimes like I'm my own nationality - a culture of one. And it is lonely when you are your own culture. But I've felt much better since finding this board, because a lot of the people here share my bizarre interests and I can talk to people who know about (or at least can google about) ancient Celtic societies or politics in Taiwan.

I used to feel that I couldn't identify with other Americans culturally, but I now see it this way: There is no one American culture. There are tons of cultures and subcultures within the US. I can't identify with mainstream American culture, but you know, neither can lots of Americans. Reddit has helped me realize that I can identify a lot with Indian American culture, though - more than I thought I could. It may seem odd that I'd need Reddit to help me realize something like that, but the truth is that I didn't even relate much to other Indian Americans when I was growing up because I didn't grow up under circumstances that most people (of any kind) share since I have an extremely (even excessively) obliging father and a relatively irresponsible mother.

[rotting bones]

I'm an Indian male who doesn't play or watch cricket, or watch Bollywood hits, the pillars of modern Indian culture. (I wish this were an exaggeration.) Two other groups I know of who are like that are religious fundamentalists and those pretentious ultra-Westernized people who hang out in nightclubs and places like that. I don't belong in either of those circles. I suppose I belonged in the circle of those super-studious people who don't have time for anything else until 2006. When people meet me, most of them still think I belong to that group, but I haven't really been studious since 2006. I guess my current lifestyle is that of an internet addict.

[Pole, the]

Anyway, hugs to mèþru, The Pole, and Imralu if they want them!

Hey, hugs to you too. I feel a bit better now. (I will probably visit a psychologist anyway.)

[rotting bones]

A few days ago I was taking a train back to the city where I study and work. On board the train I overheard some young people talking — apart of exchanging a few occasional homophobic/transphobic jokes, one of them recounted his experience regarding the recent Independence Day.
(A bit of context: every year the celebration of the Independence Day in Poland turns into a stage of rivalry between the conservative nationalists and the leftist anti-nationalists.)
So, the person in question visited both sides of the conflict, taking a role of a wannabe journalist. He visited the nationalist side — as usual, militant and hiding behind scarves — first. Then, he ventured into the “antifa” demonstration, which welcomed him with an open and friendly atmosphere. However, the pleasantness didn't last long — the leftists started chanting “Down with nationalism and capitalism”. Triggered, he concluded that capitalism is the best economic system there ever has been and, because of the chant, he prefers the nationalist side after all.

Did he search his soul and realize that he hated the "antifa" from deep within his being because of their emotionalism and irrationality, and that rational objective dudes like him should stick up for what is Right and Just for the people? If not, my idiot was more annoying than yours.

[Pole, the]

Did he search his soul and realize that he hated the "antifa" from deep within his being because of their emotionalism and irrationality, and that rational objective dudes like him should stick up for what is Right and Just for the people?

Well, I didn't look into his soul that deep, I don't worship Satan long enough to have that particular set of skills. I just tried to ignore him and this story sounded far more enjoyable between a casual joke about marriage infidelity and a casual joke about crossdressing gay people.

(In case I didn't make it clear before, that little story isn't what onset my panic attack — I have no darned idea what did — and was just a random vent.)

If not, my idiot was more annoying than yours.

If that's true, I feel glad to Áine I wasn't in your place.

[rotting bones]

I don't worship Satan long enough to have that particular set of skills.

You will come around to our side eventually, but that's beside the point. I'm only repeating what my idiot told me.

(In case I didn't make it clear before, that little story isn't what onset my panic attack — I have no darned idea what did — and was just a random vent.)

Oh, ok. Glad you are better.

[rotting bones]

Edit by mod: no. We're not asking or answering questions like that on the board. Morality aside, it would incur legal consequences.

[hwhatting]

Edit by mod: no. We're not asking or answering questions like that on the board. Morality aside, it would incur legal consequences.

Now you made me curious what kind of question could have warranted that kind of intervention...

[rotting bones]

Now you made me curious what kind of question could have warranted that kind of intervention...

You haven't worshiped Satan long enough to be granted access to that kind of knowledge.

[hwhatting]

Now you made me curious what kind of question could have warranted that kind of intervention...

You haven't worshiped Satan long enough to be granted access to that kind of knowledge.

Vade retro.

[Pole, the]

You haven't worshiped Satan long enough to be granted access to that kind of knowledge.

Vade retro.

*starts walking backwards*