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Comment by gaius_baltar | Hacker News Reader

This have been a joke for a few years here in Brazil, we call the day "Black Fraud" (sounds a little better in Portuguese)

The relevant point is that Black Friday is an "artificial" event here: we do not celebrate Thanksgiving Day so there is no need for a the stores to get rid of unsold inventory. It started just ~10 years ago when marketers began advertising it as a sales day.

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Iranian companies are now advertising Black Friday sales. Even though in Iran we do not celebrate Thanksgiving, we do not celebrate Christmas (except for Christians of course), and even our new year starts at spring equinox in late March. Black Friday is literally a random day in fall which has no significance. Yet there are Black Friday sales now.

This is amazing. Thanks for sharing.

It s like Halloween in France, it's so weird how tv shows made people with a strong identity adopt a foreign culture.

Same in Germany. Though I like that I can have

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aachener_Printen &

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculaas

long before Christmas.

It's so weird seeing the sortiment in supermarkets change to all sorts of foreign events. Not that I'd care much for the native ones, either.

Basically it's all just BUY! BUY! BUY! like in They Live from 1988.

What's the threat? We all sell out every day. Might as well be on the winning team.

India is thankfully untouched because Black Friday falls after the biggest Hindu festival of the year - Diwali. Most people are already shopped out by that point. Also the reason why our big sales are in October.

I mean I thought Black Friday was when Shah killed people in Jaleh Square? I guess you had to be there.

You are not wrong. But almost everyone is calling this shopping event "Black Friday" (as in the English name, not translated to Persian) which does not sound anything like "Jom'e-ye Siah" (the proper translation, also used to refer to the historical even you mentioned).

Black Friday is only associated with Thanksgiving in the US because it marks just about 1 month before Christmas, but otherwise it’s not part of Thanksgiving. It’s also to start selling products for Christmas gifts — not related to getting rid of unsold inventory.

Most companies have a fiscal year ending in December, so it’s mostly just about getting that last boost of sales before the end of the year.

> It’s also to start selling products for Christmas gifts — not related to getting rid of unsold inventory.

That seems totally related to me…

“Unsold inventory” would be understood as “items that are leftover and need to be cleared out to make room for new products”. That’s not what BF is. Many items sold for BF/Christmas are new products that have just been released (like stuff from Apple that was just released). I’m also not talking about the products that are specifically made for BF only, which are typically lower quality versions of similar products and are lures just to get people into the store.

Technically, it might be correct to say that anything not yet sold is “unsold inventory”, but that would have the same meaning and simply saying “inventory”, so adding “unsold” gives the additional implication that it’s unsold for a reason (i.e. it’s old stock, etc.)

Yes, it's a Christmas-oriented holiday, but the timing is determined by Thanksgiving since the day after Thanksgiving is when everyone turns their attention to Christmas and starts buying gifts (traditionally).

The history of Thanksgiving -- FDR moved the holiday to support the holiday shopping season. Black Friday has not really been about dumping excess inventory but as the beginning for the holiday shopping season..."black" references the profit retailers make, going from red to black for the year.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/franklin-roosevelt...

Fantastic article. I didn’t realize how polarized things were.

“Public opinion split along political lines. A Gallup Poll showed Democrats favored the switch 52% to 48%, while Republicans opposed it 79% to 21%.”

This is entirely unrelated, but it's unusual to see "black" used in a positive sense... Just thinking about all the phrases it's been used negatively in (eg "black sheep of the family").

I'm entirely uninvested in the US culture war, but it's good to see something on the positive side of the ledger.

The name Black Friday comes from the nightmare experienced by store staff, shoppers, mall cops, etc on a day of extreme overcrowding and sometimes fights over discounted items.

The reference to being 'in the black' was invented afterwards to try and make the name seem more positive.

It's not entirely true that it's unrelated to Thanksgiving.

That day originally became a popular day to start Xmas shopping because a lot of people took that day off, since Thursday is a federal holiday, but the actual Thanksgiving festivities were over.

Same in southern Europe, cultural imperialism becomes apparent when one notices that all local festivities (often of Celt, Roman, and Greek origin) have been replaced by commercial crap.

Black Fraud-day has a pretty good ring to it

At this point "Black Friday" just means "November."

Stores in Europe advertise "Black Week". I've seen "Single's Day" sales even (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singles%27_Day#Outside_China).

I mean if people didn't like it wouldn't it go away? What is the fraud involved? I am sincerely curious. Are the sales fake or something? like they have very limited inventory and just get people in and while they're there the store hopes they'll buy an alternative? That used to be a big thing around here but generally these days if you get there early you can get the deals, or if you sit up late and buy on the web site.

>What is the fraud involved?

The "marketing/sells" guys decided that prices for products changing daily is something profitable, Keep a tab open to some product and refresh it daily, see how prices change and how you get tricked.

So for Black Friday they will increase the prices before the sales and then put a giant "25% off" label. They also can say advertise with some super deals like super cheap laptop but they might have only 1 device. So in Romania we have laws and big companies will be fined heavily and shamed for this evil tricks(not sure if this is an EU thing or only local).

Maybe you mean "fraud" is not the correct word and there is a better legal word that fits for this evil and illegal(on some regions) behavior.

Same in Poland, we have many days, one of the more popular is "Black Frajerday", Frajerday meaning Sucker Day. Our deals aren't even that good. The prices rise over few weeks before, and then you get 10% or 15% discounts which usually are above the base price anyway. At least in the US, especially for virtual goods you can find some actual 70-90% discounts.

How do you say it in portuguese?

Black frode, I cannot write in phonetic alphabet but the sound is quite similar to Friday (especially as pronounced in some states)

Black Fraude

We still use the first part from English, but the second is Fraud. Which is almost the same as the English word, but phonetically it is closer to how Brazilians say Black Friday.

It is almost the same, though. Black Fraud is a good enough approximation.

Ha,same in Argentina and we have:

cyber monday (that extends to cyber week)

electro fest (?)

black friday as well

hot sale

the only opportunity there is not around discounts (they just increase the price a coupe of days in advance), and more on having 12/18 months payments/installements without or very low interest.

Also, something funny happened in between: as these sites are re-marking everything, sometimes "bugs" appear as they might miss a zero (we have a lot of them =), or something like that. If you're lucky you can get the product no questions asked, or you can make a claim and they compensate, or worst case they cancel it and you get your money back.

[edited to add line breaks]

There is a common function even without the holiday - a flushing of older inventories and potentially making their fourth quarter numbers look better.

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