Small Business Saturday and I Didn't Buy a Single Thing

So yesterday was Black Friday and today's apparently "Small Business Saturday," which is a made-up holiday if I've ever heard one, but here we are. I spent most of Thanksgiving week telling myself I was going to finally get a new monitor, the 27-inch 1440p one I've had in a browser tab for like three months, and then Black Friday actually arrived and I just... didn't. Bought nothing. Not the monitor, not the mechanical keyboard I keep eyeing, nothing. My cart is still sitting there like a little shrine to my own indecision.

Part of it is that Black Friday deals aren't really deals anymore, they're just prices that were already going to happen in December anyway, stretched out over two and a half weeks so retailers can squeeze more days of "ACT NOW" emails out of you. I got eleven separate emails from one electronics retailer between Wednesday night and this morning. Eleven. I unsubscribed from four different newsletters this week purely out of self defense.

The other part, honestly, is that I've been too distracted by Baby Yoda to shop.

I know, I know, everyone's already said this a hundred times, but I don't think I was prepared for how completely that little green guy has taken over every group chat I'm in. My sister sent me nine texts yesterday that were just Baby Yoda images with no other text at all. Nine. Nobody asked for context, nobody needed it, we all just understood. That's the power of a good meme, I guess — no caption required. The Mandalorian itself I think is fine, kind of slow in a way I respect, but the internet has decided the ten-second clip of a puppet drinking soup is more important than anything happening in the actual plot, and you know what, the internet might be right about that one.

I will say the Disney+ app has crashed on me exactly twice since launch, both times mid-episode, which is annoying but not surprising for a service that's still only a couple weeks old. Streaming launches always seem to go through this rough patch. I remember when Netflix used to buffer at the worst possible moment too, back when that was just a thing you accepted.

Speaking of rough launches, I almost pulled the trigger on Stadia during one of the Black Friday bundle deals and then I actually read a handful of reviews first, which, credit to me, is not always something I do before buying tech. Turns out the consensus is pretty much "cool idea, real lag, thin game library, wait a year." So I didn't buy that either. Which brings my Black Friday total spend to zero dollars, a personal record I'm weirdly proud of. My partner thinks this is very funny given how much time I spend reading about gadgets I never actually purchase. She's not wrong. I have a folder of bookmarked "best deals" posts going back to October that I mostly just... read for fun now, like it's a hobby that doesn't require money.

I did almost buy AirPods Pro. Almost. I tried a friend's pair at a coffee shop a couple weeks back and the noise cancellation genuinely impressed me on the walk home, blocking out enough traffic noise that I could hear my podcast at a normal volume for once. But $249 for earbuds still makes me wince a little every time I think about it, deal or no deal, and there wasn't really a deal on those this week anyway since Apple doesn't really do Black Friday the way everyone else does.

Anyway. December's coming, the actual shopping season hasn't even started for most people, and I've apparently decided my strategy is to sit here, read the meme texts from my sister, and let my cart quietly expire. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday. I might go make coffee and watch another episode. The soup one, probably, again.