Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

---

Where are the crowds? There ought to be crowds. Well, maybe next year.

It can't be fun getting up in the middle of the night to report on local people getting ready to jostle each other in order to buy a cheap TV.

Yet here was Joshua Short of WNDU-TV standing outside the University Park Mall in Mishawaka, Indiana, at 5.15 a.m., ready to describe the mood.

"Look behind me," he said. "You see the long lines of people." 

There was no one there. "We don't have the big crowd that we expected," he continued. 

But then he just couldn't cope anymore. "I got up at 3 o'clock, excited to do my first-ever Black Friday and it ain't nobody here. I am literally upset right now."

Watching this, I am literally enjoying his performance. For surely this was a performance.

"I don't know why people didn't wake up. They had too much food," he surmised. In the end, he took an executive decision. "I'm going back home, back to my bed and I'm going to sleep."

He acknowledged that some people seemed to be staying in their cars until the mall opened. This is Indiana. It's cold there. Still, this was not the show he'd come to witness.

I contacted the University Park Mall to ask what on Earth might have happened. I contacted Short himself to ask whether he really went back to bed. I will update, should I hear. 

However, another local news station, ABC 57, insisted that "hundreds of people flocked to University Park Mall early Friday morning to get their hands on all the Black Friday deals." It added that some of the most popular items were the iPhone X and the PlayStation 4. Wait, there were really good deals on those?

While Black Friday sales online reached a record high, not everyone thought the best idea was to stand outside in the dark, waiting for physical store doors to open.

At electronics store Curry's PC World in London, just one shopper sauntered through the doors and past the waiting cameras. 

Joshua Short, you were not alone. You were, though, left out in the cold.

Tech Culture: From film and television to social media and games, here's your place for the lighter side of tech.

Solving for XX: The tech industry seeks to overcome outdated ideas about "women in tech."