Cards Against Humanity has a decidedly love/hate relationship with Black Friday. That is to say, the makers of the adult card game love to make fun of Black Friday because they hate it so much. Over the years, the Chicago-based game makers have come up with some pretty impressive ways to lampoon the concept while drawing attention to themselves in the process.
The site once sold actual feces for $6 one Black Friday in an effort to teach a lesson about consumerism. That people were surprised to actually get a box of bull s*it for their hard-earned dollars only made CAH’s point for them: people will buy pretty much anything if you tell them that it’s a good deal.
This year’s Black Friday shenanigans are another lesson in the perils of consumerism. They are also just some really damn good deals. On Friday, 99PercentOffSale.com went live, offering massive discounts on all kinds of different products at, yes, 99 percent off their retail price.
With a red and white banner circling the deals with phrases that include ‘F*ck You Jeff Bezos,’ ‘Death Is The Ultimate Savings’ and ‘The Prophecy Is Upon Us,’ the site ran extreme deals on some high-end consumer goods like 85-inch 4K televisions and engagement rings, all deeply discounted to somewhere around $35 dollars.
There were also some downright weird ones, though the savings were still intense. For example, if you’ve ever needed a “toilet poncho” and didn’t know this sale was going on, you had a terrible Black Friday.
It’s a little disappointing that the deal only includes two cloth wipes, but nine cents seems like a small price to pay to be prepared for the impending water shortage that will ravage this once-great land.
Also, this was a great deal if you liked the Lord of the Rings series a little too much.
The good deals went extremely fast, and some users had trouble navigating through the interface to actually enter their shipping and contact information. And because it’s CAH, even the security questions to prevent robots from buying up all the good stuff were caustic.
“What horrible cable company owns NBC?” the security question answered, and would only let you pass to the next step if you answered “Comcast.”
CAH made sure to get a few jokes off in the product descriptions, because writing small blurbs that are funny is kind of what they do. And in a way, the concept here is kind of brilliant. No one needs an 85-inch flat screen, but a flat screen for $35 dollars? Sure, why not. But stretch that concept out a bit and, well, that’s consumerism in the first place isn’t it?
At one point, they even sold a used Ford Fiesta with a reasonable amount of miles on the odometer.
It’s the latest prank in a now-annual holiday tradition of poking fun of the concept of Black Friday, only to have people give them their money anyway. It all started in 2013, when CAH actually raised the price of its game in an “anti-Black Friday sale.” Somehow, the attention made many people buy the game anyway. CAH has kept it going ever since in a variety of ways. Here’s a brief summary of the shenanigans they’ve put on in the years since:
2013: Raised price of the game $5. Saw a minor sales spike.
2014: They sold a box of bulls*it. More than 30,000 boxes were sold.
2015: Cards Against Humanity ran a “Give Cards Against Humanity $5” campaign where customers got nothing for five dollars. 11,248 customers spent $71,145, which was given to 10 employees. Many donated their earnings to charity.
2016: Donations were taken for the company to dig a ‘Holiday Hole’ in Oregon, Illinois. They raised $100,573 for no apparent reason, dug the hole, then filled it up later in the week.
2017: CAH sells Pringles knockoffs ‘Prongles,‘ including at some Target stores.
2018: 99 percent off sale on luxury items and also poop receptacles.
And so this latest edition will actually get some people a few good deals, especially if you need a 17th Century Italian Halberd.
You know, for all that medieval combat you’ll be doing after the apocalypse.