Cyber Monday: The Marketing Stunt That Actually Worked

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Rewind to 27 November 2005 to 3 December 2005

🧬 A new face, a new future

In France, surgeons pull off the world’s first partial face transplant on Isabelle Dinoire — a 15-hour medical marathon involving nerves, muscles, arteries and a whole lot of “please don’t sneeze right now” precision. The media goes full Face/Off panic, ethics boards light up like Christmas trees and suddenly everyone has a PhD in bioethics. 

💼 Top Gun meets Cash Converters

U.S. Congressman Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham goes from war hero to walking bribery cautionary tale. The man literally had a price list for political favours and accepted everything from cash to Persian rugs to a yacht called The Duke-Stir. 

🛒 Cyber Monday was born in a cubicle

Before iPhones, Afterpay and impulse-buying air fryers at midnight, Cyber Monday launches — engineered entirely so people could online shop from their work computers. Websites crash, inboxes explode and retailers discover the day-after-Black-Friday sweet spot. What started as a marketing stunt becomes today’s global retail Thunderdome.

💥 50 Cent goes full GTA

50 Cent: Bulletproof drops on PS2 and Xbox — a chaotic swirl of G-Cash, G-Unit cameos and enough swearing to make Rockstar Games blush. Critics wince, fans rejoice and the game becomes the most 2005 thing ever burned onto a disc. 

🎤 Lindsay Lohan’s raw era begins

Lindsay releases A Little More Personal (Raw) — a darker, emotional pop-rock swing with a music video that becomes an instant tabloid obsession. Critics bicker, fans vibe and the album goes Gold. Nearly two decades later, Gen Z calls it proto-confessional pop and rediscovers it through TikTok trauma edits. As they do.

🇦🇺 INXS kicks off its second act

INXS returns with Switch and new frontman J.D. Fortune, fresh off the reality show Rock Star: INXS. Media debates whether it’s genius or gimmick, fans pack arenas and Pretty Vegas becomes a certified mid-2000s banger. It’s the start of INXS’s short but fiery reboot era — nostalgia meets MTV.

📺 Ray Martin signs off

After defining A Current Affair for over a decade, Ray Martin steps down, marking the end of early-evening TV comfort food as Aussies knew it. The media calls it ‘the end of an era’ and Tracy Grimshaw gets the baton. It’s peak Australian television: heartfelt, dramatic and pre-YouTube.

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