The Holiday Season has begun and I am once again looking forward to my favorite one: New Year’s Eve. I love it not just because it signals all the rest of the stuff is (finally) over, but because of it’s cultural and economic significance. Leave it to me to make it about more than champagne hangovers.
Here’s the vision I forsee… “Today is January 1, 2008″
I am not the only one posting to their website today, millions are online right now. Some are posting resolutions, some are (regrettably) posting to Facebook/MySpace about the crazy antics of last night. Some are on Match.com making that new love a reality (or at least trying to), some are on boston.com in the jobs section, or maybe the personals. Still more are visiting Bally’s signing up for gym memberships, street searching local yoga studios, or on amazon.com buying (into) self-help books like, Body Clutter: Love your body, love yourself. One or two are surfing the Phillip Morris website for hints on quitting smoking, just like they did last year.
It can’t be denied that the internet plays some role in the modern day execution of New Years Resolutions (for brevity, NYR). Once upon a time NYRs were abstract rhetoric, followed quickly with vague notions of follow-up, “tomorrow, when I have the paper,” “next weekend I’ll get to the gym,” “I swear I’ll call a hypnotist as soon as I get a good referral.” This was a practiced routine, predictable in its diminishing returns on talk.
But now the excuses are over. Whether its 12:01am and you’re really inspired, or 5am and the buzz is gone but you’re oddly wired, or 11am and you’re just glancing at something you wrote on a napkin you found in your pocket, there isn’t anything, save champagne-blurred vision, to excuse a person from not executing the classic set of NYRs.
What a boon for the economy! Take Bally’s. They don’t have to be on your way to work, near your doughnut shop or in your office building to have a flying chance of catching you in your moment of determination. They don’t even have to be open—just online. They don’t have to worry that a customer will walk in the door, smell the sweat, see the tears and run out the door before they get a chance to get your money. They don’t have to pretend that they can help your lazy ass, they don’t have to pretend they care if you show up; in fact, they’d sort of prefer if you didn’t, esp since you were so inspired you took the 1 year membership with the $500 cancellation fee.
Abstract rhetoric becomes concrete idealism, as you enter your credit card number(s)—only to become expensive abstract rhetoric. So much for talk is cheap.
Happy New Years everyone. I’m off to the gym…
“We now return to our regularly scheduled black Friday.”