In this Facebook Live video, Travis Thomas introduces Rack Friday, a grassroots movement that repurposes the commercial frenzy of Black Friday into a day of Random Acts of Kindness (RAK). He explains how the idea originated three years ago as a response to the encroachment of Black Friday on Thanksgiving, a holiday he views as sacred and centered on gratitude. Travis outlines the top three reasons to join Rack Friday: (1) it preserves the spirit of Thanksgiving without getting caught up in Black Friday chaos, (2) it brightens the day for workers and others who may be having a rough time, and (3) it’s simply fun and uplifting. He then shares his three favorite RAK ideas that have been popular among participants—free popcorn taped to Redbox machines, dollar bills taped throughout a dollar store, and paying for the order of the car behind you in a drive‑through. The video calls on viewers to help the movement reach its goal of 2,016 random acts of kindness on Friday by posting their deeds on social media with the hashtag #RAKFriday16, tagging the Rack Friday Facebook page, and sharing the video itself. Travis thanks the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation for its support and urges anyone watching to spread the word, even jokingly appealing to celebrity Ellen DeGeneres for a boost.
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Hello everyone, this is Travis here. Hey Facebook Live, how's everything going? Happy Friday to everyone, but, but more importantly, happy Rack Friday to everyone. Many of you may know that about 3 years ago, myself and a few friends and family started this idea called Rack Friday, and Rack Friday celebrates the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is traditionally known as Black Friday. That's right. So a couple years ago, I was thinking about Thanksgiving and kind of annoyed that Black Friday has crept even further. It used to just be the day after Thanksgiving. Now it started the evening of Thanksgiving and then it kind of crept more and more into the entire Thanksgiving day. And if you're like me, like Thanksgiving is sort of the one sacred nondenominational holiday that is all about gratitude. There's not much more less commercial than gratitude. And so can't we hold the sacredness of Thanksgiving, of gratitude? No, apparently we can't. So I came up with the idea to ask as many friends and family as possible to, instead of celebrating Black Friday, go out and do as many random acts of kindness as possible on that Friday and just bless others and have fun with it. come up with some creative ideas. So our goal is to transform Black Friday into Rack Friday by committing random acts of kindness. So we've been doing this, this is year 3 now. It's been amazing to kind of see the different response that people, the lengths that they have gone to do random acts of kindness. And so we're really trying to start a movement. So I want to thank the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation that has been super supportive with all the work we've been doing. And go there to check out great ideas for Rack Friday. So, 2 top 3 lists today. Thank you, Jennifer. I'm glad you're excited about this. Here's the top 3 reasons why you should participate in Rack Friday, and then the top 3 of my favorite racks for Rack Friday that, that most other people have done and I've just stolen, because that's totally welcome here with Rack Friday. Steal awesome ideas. And do them for yourself. So, the number 1 reason to participate in Rock Friday is because it honors Thanksgiving without getting sucked into the whole Black Friday chaos, right? No fights at Walmart, no road rage. If you still want to go out and participate in some great deals, go for it. But while you're doing it, see if you can do some random acts of kindness while you are doing it. Give someone your parking spot. Hold the door for someone. Buy a cup of coffee for a Salvation Army bell ringer. You can do anything. So you can even go out on Black Friday and still be doing random acts of kindness. So that's okay too. So that's number one reason. Number 2 is it blesses others who might be having a crummy day, right? Think of all the people who have to work on Black Friday, the madness that they have to work in. And so go out and, and celebrate other people. Celebrate employees who have to work. on Black Friday by doing a little random act of kindness for them. Give them a gift card, give them a gift certificate, buy them, you know, a Starbucks cup of coffee. It doesn't have to be Starbucks. Starbucks is not a sponsor of Rack Friday yet, but you can just buy them whatever you want. Hey Grace, great to have you on. Great to have you on. Number 3 reason to participate in Rack Friday, it's fun. It is so much fun. Last year My sister and her kids came down and we spent all of Thanksgiving creating a list of things that we were going to do on Rack Friday. And we spent about 3 hours, actually more than that, 3 hours just going around and just having fun and just turned it into— it's really kind of turned into my favorite day of the year because it's just a day of celebrating and doing kindness to others. And it's fun. It's fun being nice. It's fun doing these awesome things. So those are the top 3 reasons why you should participate. Rack Friday, here are my top 3 favorite random acts of kindness that you can do. The first one, and this is, I believe, Jen and her son did this in St. Louis a couple of years ago, and so we've copied it. You know those, the Redbox movie machines, right? They took microwave popcorn and they went to the Redbox machines and they taped them on the machine and basically said, hey, have a free bag of popcorn. That's awesome. With your movie, right? Creative and fun. And so we've done that a few times. It's really kind of fun to see people as they walk up to the machines, they're like, what's going on here? And then it registers for them. Oh, this popcorn is for us. Really easy and fun one to do. Another one, go into a dollar store and tape dollar bills all over the store. And obviously, since it's a dollar store, you are giving basically people free money to buy all of the fun dollar store stuff they're looking for. So Go through the store, paste as many dollars around as possible. Another great fun one. Hey Dave, how's it going up in Chicago? Um, number 3, which this one I know many of you have probably done, but it's so much fun, is go through a drive-through window and offer to buy the food for the person behind you, or coffee, or whatever for the person behind you. It's always kind of like playing the lottery because you're like, hey, how much is the order behind me? And you kind of pray that it's like under $10. But hey, if you're honoring the rack, you buy it anyway. And then, you know, you take off, but sometimes it's nice to see their reaction. And there's been amazing stories. I know we've participated in one, and I know friends have done it where it kind of sets a chain reaction of people that will do that for numerous cars. Like, it just kind of keeps going. And how fun is that when you kind of see the tangible result of kind of starting a mini movement? So those are the top 3 favorite RAKs. And so our goal with RAK Friday is for everyone in the community to perform 2,016 random acts of kindness, but we need to know about it. So you need to share. You need to share what you did on social media using the hashtag #RAKFriday16. You can go to our Facebook page, which is RAK Friday 16. If you go to rakfriday.com, that'll lead you to our Facebook machine. We haven't done anything with the website yet. So #RecFriday16, hashtag that, whether it's Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, then we tally them all up by the end of the day on Friday and just see how we did. How close did we come to 2,016 random acts of kindness? If you are watching this video, one thing you can do that will help us tremendously is share this video on your social media, on Facebook, retweet it so others can see it and everybody can join the movement. You think about it. If 2,000 people saw this video and everyone committed one random act of kindness on Rock Friday, plus 16 other people go above and beyond, we have met our goal. So it's super doable. If Ellen, if you're out there watching, come on, Ellen, you need to promote this on your show. I think we would get our 2,016 easy if that were the case. And apparently I look like Ellen. At certain times. That's really not a compliment to Ellen. I apologize. So there you have it, guys. Rack Friday 2016. #RackFriday16. It's a movement. Be a part of the movement now. Get out there. Get your rack on. And have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everyone. And if you're like me and you don't want to talk politics at Thanksgiving, create a Rack Friday list instead. And everybody will be happy about that. There you have it, guys. Have a wonderful day. Share this video if you get a chance because apparently there's only 4 of you watching, and so we need others to see this. Have a great day, everyone. Bye.
