I went on slickdeals.net to see if there was anything worth picking up and I was interested to see that a lot of the “most popular deals” were actually various discounts for services or digital goods. The rest were deals for smallish electronics accessories (chargers and such). It’s possible that website has built a profile on me and was showing me what it thinks I’m already interested in, but nonetheless it struck me that people don’t really go after material goods the same way they used to. Perhaps “Black Friday” doesn’t really work when there isn’t the opportunity to upsell on other items after the person is already at the physical store.

I also went to Costco to pick up regular food type stuff and was surprised to see it relatively empty (I expected to have to do battle over my 2 dozen eggs and etc). Even employees seemed to be surprised at the low turnout. Free alpha on consumer sentiment I guess?