Every year, as November rolls around, I watch the same global ritual unfold with a mixture of amusement and mild existential despair. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sweep across the world like a pair of energetic siblings who have no sense of boundaries. They barge into the room, flip the table, scream “SALE!”, and suddenly everyone loses their ability to behave like reasonable adults. What was once an American tradition tied loosely to Thanksgiving has now become a worldwide cultural event, one in which people would quite literally elbow strangers for a discounted vacuum cleaner. There is something absurdly poetic about this—humans, the so-called most intelligent species, willingly regressing into territorial jungle creatures over electronics that will be outdated by next year.
I used to think Singaporeans were above all this, that we were too polite, too paiseh to fight over material things. But then came one particular November some years back, when I innocently stepped into an electronics store because I wanted to look at portable speakers. It was not even Black Friday yet; just the “pre-pre Black Friday warm-up sale.” The crowd inside was so intense that I swore the air itself was being pulled into the vortex of human desperation. A middle-aged uncle grabbed a demo speaker like it was the last loaf of bread in a famine. A teenage boy stood guarding a stack of discounted power banks as if he were protecting an ancient relic that held the keys to immortality. I watched two aunties argue furiously about whether the kettle they wanted was part of the “Buy 1 Get 1 Half Off” or the “Buy 2 Get a Free Mug” promotion. In the end, the kettle sold out, and both aunties left without buying anything, but somehow still angry at each other.
That was the moment I realised: this wasn’t just consumer culture—this was something primal.
Anthropologists and psychologists have long tried to explain this kind of behaviour. Robert Trivers, the evolutionary biologist famous for his work on self-interest and reciprocal altruism, once argued that humans perform better under perceived threat because our bodies and minds are still wired for survival in prehistoric conditions. Essentially, your brain doesn’t know the difference between a carnivorous beast stalking your cave and 10 other shoppers eyeing the same discounted TV at Best Buy. The fight-or-flight response kicks in, and suddenly buying a TV feels like a life-or-death mission. When framed like that, it makes complete sense why people have been known to camp outside stores overnight, equipped with sleeping bags and snacks, as though preparing for battle at dawn.
It’s funny because the stakes today are embarrassingly low. Our ancestors hunted wild boars; we hunt vouchers. They fought wolves; we fight for promo codes that expire at midnight. But the instinct is the same: get the resources before someone else does. Sociologist William Graham Sumner wrote in the early 1900s about the “in-group and out-group” mentality, the way humans naturally divide themselves into “us versus them” whenever there is something desirable at risk. He was probably thinking of tribes, immigrants, and economic groups—but honestly, if he had lived long enough to see a Black Friday sale, he would have updated his theory to include “us: people who want the AirPods” and “them: people who also want the AirPods.”
This instinct for domination sometimes reveals a darker, uglier part of human nature. The willingness to shove others aside, to snatch something out of someone’s hand, to sprint across the aisle with the moral integrity of a raccoon—it all points to a survival-of-the-fittest mentality that arguably no longer serves us. We don’t need to conquer one another to live. We’re not competing for shelter, clean water, or basic safety. Yet, somewhere deep within, we continue to behave like scarcity defines us.
Perhaps it's because scarcity is how many of us were raised—especially in Asia. Growing up, an auntie once scolded me at a pasar malam because I hesitated for two seconds before buying a packet of chicken wings. “If you don’t buy now, finish already!” she declared, snatching the tongs from the seller and handing me a packet as if she were rescuing me from myself. And honestly? She wasn’t wrong. Scarcity is part of our cultural upbringing. We queue for everything: food, public events, bubble tea, MRT, discounted Hello Kitty plushies from McDonald’s. Of course, when Black Friday came to Asia, we adapted to it like fish discovering new water.
But the East and the West do approach this phenomenon differently. In America, Black Friday is a national performance. People camp outside stores in tents, armed with coffee and protein bars, bonding through shared madness. The moment the doors open, they rush inside with the enthusiasm of Olympic athletes and the strategy of military tacticians. It’s loud, chaotic, physical, and spectacular. There’s even a sense of camaraderie in the chaos, like everyone is collectively aware that what they’re doing is ridiculous, yet they’ve all agreed to the absurdity for one day.
In Asia, however, we don’t trample people in stores—we quietly annihilate each other online. The Westerners go to war with their bodies; we go to war with our Wi-Fi. You don’t see us physically pushing one another, but watch an Asian shopper during a major online sale. Their finger is hovering over the “Buy Now” button at 11:59 PM, their heart beating at 120 BPM, their Shopee Pay topped up like they’re preparing to enter a digital gladiator arena. And don’t even get me started on flash sales. A one-cent face cream? Gone in 0.1 seconds because someone with lightning-speed reflexes (likely fuelled by bubble tea and childhood trauma) beat you to it.
The origins of Black Friday itself were not glamorous. In 1950s Philadelphia, the police coined the term to describe the traffic jams, crowds, and shoplifting that happened the day after Thanksgiving. Retailers tried rebranding it as the day they finally went “into the black,” but the truth is far less pretty. It was, from the beginning, a day defined by chaos. Cyber Monday came decades later in 2005 when marketers noticed people shopping at work using faster office internet. That’s all it was: an observation turned into a global ritual.
There’s something almost mythological about the annual frenzy. And speaking of myths, every society seems to have stories warning us about human greed. In Malay folklore, there’s the tale of Si Tanggang, the ungrateful son who rejected his poor mother once he became wealthy. Though the story focuses on filial piety, at its core it’s a lesson about the dangers of pride, material hunger, and forgetting your humanity in the pursuit of worldly gains. Tanggang desired status so desperately that he denied the very woman who raised him—and in the end, he turned to stone. I sometimes wonder whether, metaphorically, modern consumerism slowly turns us into stone too—not physically, but emotionally. Hard, cold, reactive, unthinking.
On a more personal note, I remember once seeing an elderly auntie at a store during a sale period holding onto a blender box with both hands. She was tiny, maybe in her seventies, wearing sandals and a simple floral blouse. A tall man approached her and reached for the box, saying, “Auntie, last piece, I take lah.” She didn’t let go. Her grip tightened, her face hardened, and she said, “I also human.” That sentence hit me like a truck. “I also human.” Three words that capture the entire psychology of Black Friday. Everyone wants something, and everyone believes they deserve it. And the moment someone challenges that desire, even the gentlest person becomes a lion protecting their kill.
But must it be this way? I’d like to think not. Humans may be wired for competition, but we’re also wired for cooperation, empathy, and connection. The same evolutionary instincts that push us to hoard resources also push us to care for our communities. Studies in social psychology—from the classic work of Muzafer Sherif to modern behavioural economics—show that humans thrive most not when they outcompete one another, but when they collaborate.
Maybe the real challenge is unlearning the scarcity mindset we’ve inherited. Perhaps the world won’t collapse if we don’t buy the discounted gadget. Perhaps we won’t lose anything meaningful by letting someone else have the last item. Maybe the real victory lies not in beating others to a deal, but in recognising that enough will always be enough if we decide it is.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday give us a mirror—one that reflects both the desperate consumer and the reflective human being. One who is terrified of missing out, and one who quietly wonders, late at night, why missing out even matters. One who fights for the last item, and one who feels strangely empty after buying it.
Maybe the lesson for us moving forward is not to ban sales or judge people who enjoy discounts, but to slow down and question why we feel the need to fight in the first place. What are we really competing for? Status? Comfort? Validation? A sense of worth? A feeling of control?
Because in the end, it’s never about the toaster.
It’s about the fear beneath it, the longing behind it, and the hope that maybe this one purchase will finally make us feel like we’re winning at life.
And perhaps, just perhaps, the real myth isn’t Tanggang turning into stone.
Maybe the real myth is the belief that happiness can be bought—especially at 40% off.
Written by: Adi Jamaludin
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