I personally love game nights: trouble, bananagrams, sorry, Farkle, I love it all -- except Monopoly, because who likes Monopoly? Nothing brings people closer together, especially during the holiday season, than screaming matches and attempts to assert dominance over your loved ones. The first time I played Apples to Apples, I swore it was the best game to grace planet Earth, until I found something infinitely more inappropriate and exponentially more entertaining: Cards Against Humanity. What I recently learned about Cards Against Humanities' promotion against the objectification and worldwide consumerism that has masked the true meaning of 'tis the season, I firmly believe I found the real MVP of card games and, possibly, the 2014 holiday season.
In a true proclamation of capitalism, Cards Against Humanity's Black Friday deal sparked my interest; upon further investigation it completely rocked my world. Their website usually has a direct link to purchase their product, download an online version, or even create your own cards. On Black Friday, however, the option of purchasing the game was disabled. In it's place was a link to a one-day limited edition "Bulls***t" box for $6. Consumers were essentially, and repetitively, warned that in all seriousness the box contained nothing but excrement from a bull. No puns, no jokes, you are buying a box of poop. Why people willingly spent their money on this remains a mystery. Perchance they hoped for a box of top secret collector's edition C.A.H. playing cards, or it was just another display of the curse of Pandora's box. But America did not disappoint: 30,000 people bought the product and it sold out on the website faster than you could decorate a Christmas tree.
Upon reading how successful this trickery was from the original post on Time, I was intrigued to learn more about this company. It turns out Max Temkin (yes, I followed him on Twitter) wanted to run a Black Friday deal that exposed how ludicrous consumerism has become, and it worked. They made a very small profit on the entire shindig (the markup on bull crap did not outweigh shipping expenses), and the company donated all the earnings to charity.
The holidays are over, but this is a gift that keeps on giving, folks.
