Walmart's Black Friday Starts Tonight, 15 Days Before Black Friday

Americans went to Google Wednesday to search for the Walmart Black Friday ad, and they found that Black Friday, at Walmart, begins Thursday. Not the Thursday after Thanksgiving. This Thursday, Nov. 12, at 12:01 a.m. Eastern online and 6 a.m. in stores. Black Friday itself is Nov. 27. That's not a sale getting an early start. That's a sale that left for the airport three days before the flight.

There are, according to the schedule Walmart released in late October, three separate events. Early Black Friday Deals run Nov. 12 through 15. The main Black Friday Deals event runs Nov. 23 through 29. And Cyber Monday runs online Nov. 30 through Dec. 2, which means Cyber Monday is now three days long and two of them are Tuesday and Wednesday. At this rate Black Friday will be a season by 2030 and a geological era by the time my grandchildren are old enough to be trampled.

What's on the list? Walmart said thousands of gifts would be under $20, and early listings show things like AirPods Pro 3 at $199 and a laptop at $199, which is the first time I've seen headphones and a computer reach price parity. Walmart+ members get some online deals 24 hours ahead of everyone else, so the poor can wait in line while the slightly-less-poor wait at home. Progress is a slow thing, but it does have free shipping.

I remember when Black Friday was a single day, and people lined up outside in the cold with a thermos and a grudge. There was something honest about it. You wanted a television badly enough to sleep on a sidewalk, and your reward was a television and pneumonia. Now you scroll on your phone in bed for two weeks, never quite sure if the deal is the deal or the deal before the deal. The store has successfully turned shopping into the stock market, except your losses are a toaster oven.

Retailers do this because it works. People buy earlier, spread it out, and the store doesn't need to hire as many people to stand at the door and watch the stampede. Nobody's getting hurt anymore, which is good, and nobody's getting a bargain either, which is the part they don't advertise.

Anyway, the deals are live tonight. Save your money for the real Black Friday, or the main one, or the cyber one, or whichever one is going on when you read this. A sale that never ends isn't a sale. It's just the price.