As most of us know thanksgiving is a time to spend celebrating our countries past with family and friends. Since the early 2000's our social culture has shifted away from celebrating the holiday as we have for many generations. In 2005 Cyber Monday was started. Coincidentally 2005 was the first year which marked Black Friday the busiest shopping day.
This year REI has started a campaign and hashtag called #OPTOUTSIDE (http://optoutside.rei.com/). They will be closing all 143 of their stores on Black Friday while still paying all of their employees. At this point from what I have been reading they also have no plans to offer any Cyber Monday specials. This is a movement in the retail industry which I believed would never be seen again with the explosion of online advertisement and shopping.
REI's decision to close on Black Friday is a great movement towards separating from the digital culture to spend Thanksgiving browsing many sites to find the best deal to camp out for. Sadly the culture of REI's consumer base is not one to strive to get the best deal and spend endless hours browsing online. REI's consumers are all about the outdoors and spending time away from technology. However, this is a step in the right direction to bring us back to family holidays and traditions where we interact directly with family than through the middle man of technology.
I will be revisiting this topic in my next post regarding a photographer who is out to show how digitally connected we are without realizing it.
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