Cantillon: Cyber Monday just another Cyber wheeze

Just another Cyber Monday.

Three weeks to Christmas and already we’re inundated with relentless retail news. Nothing wrong with that – it’s win or lose time for shopkeepers. But could we please leave aside the arid language of global PR?

“Black Friday” is tiresome enough, an invented expression which removed the negative connotation from black and made it into an excuse to whip up a frenzy.

“Cyber Monday” has just passed, an online bonanza that prompted earnest pleas from Ministers Alex White and Ged Nash for consumers to buy Irish instead of supporting online behemoths such as Amazon.

This is grim, and worse it will get. According to the Associated Press, Cyber Monday was coined in 2005 by the online arm of the National Retail Federation in the US to encourage people to spend their money online.

Nearly a decade on and the wheeze is now described in the most serious tones by big global newswires as some kind of a formal “event”.

And there’s more. Like Black Friday starting on Wednesday and continuing for days on end – all true, apparently – we are now threatened with a continuous Cyber Monday and variations thereof.

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, is talking of an "evening edition" for its Cyber Monday promotion. Separately, USA Today tells us that "Cyber Monday will last multiple days" at a number of major retailers. This will lead, inevitably, to "Cyber Week", at which point there will be no escaping sales propaganda from an assortment of websites.

Online commerce is everywhere – and there’s much to laud in it. But crimes against language are another thing. Whatever next? I’m dreaming of a Black Christmas?