The Yearly Trend of Recycling “Happy New Year” Messages

In the past few years, the mediocrity of forwarded messages has taken away all the charm from the art of wishing others on New Year. Most people in our physical vicinity overlook us, in a race of who can wish how many people at dot midnight. Their eyes, hands and brain cells are glued to their smartphones, while they manage to mouth "Happy New Year" somehow.  This over-enthusiasm caused WhatsApp to crash for an hour post entering the new year. Since typing “Best wishes for New Year” or even “Happy New Year” to every person at that very moment is physically impossible, most of us resort to forwarding messages received from others.

Same old Same Old

Many people don’t even bother to go through the messages they are forwarding.

They don’t even check if the previous sender has inserted his name in the message, or if they have already sent the same message to someone the previous year.

Few do take the pains to update the year in the message from 2017 to 2018. The sincerity of such people is worth mentioning. My only question is, why not just type the good old “Happy New Year” instead of spending time on editing a forward?

WhatsApp forwards are the only form of media, which need censorship

I have stopped counting how many people have sent me this message:

“Time has no holiday.. Dreams have no expiry date.. And life has no pause button...!

Live it..  Love it..

Enjoy each and every moment of your life....!!

Sample this. Apart from the use of ellipses (both correct and incorrect),  to give philosophical pause in this piece of art, kindly also note the effort put into the rhyming scheme.

Save only those memories which gives twinkle in your eyes... Not wrinkles on your face...!! HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018 

Another popular message this year:

“Wishing Everyone in Advance a great begining to... "twenty Eighteen "..... feel twenty and look eighteen ....”

Constipating pauses, and spelling mistakes. Oh, to be eighteen indeed!!!!!

The following message, on the other hand, deserves to be banned for the sheer amount of maths involved in it.

12 Months happiness, 52 weeks fun,

365 Days laughter, 8760 hrs good luck,

525600 Minutes joy, 31536000 seconds success,

So wishing u a Happy New Year :heart:

People become very philosophical around New Year for sure…

“Learn from Yesterday, Live for Today, Hope for Tomorrow.. HAPPY New year..”(This message was embedded with a thousand emoticons. Or was it 2018?

And sometimes even lend you advice on investments

“Another brand new year is here so recharge your energies and get set to enjoy. Abandon all worries, doubts and fears and just follow the policy of laugh, love, live. Wish you a very happy new year..”

Wonder how much is the monthly premium on this one.

In December 2017, Google came up with an app which helps you delete all the "Good Morning" messages and other junk with one tap. I wish they had done something for Messages like this one.

"Ignore Worries, Avoid Tensions, Believe in your intentions. Have no fears Love your dears"

The New Year Messages are in the need of serious upgrade

Those who invest time to create these forward messages, need to up their game now. In times when GIFs and customisable images are breathing down their necks.

The only way that is possible if the great minds who write these messages pay more attention to the content. Also, what’s with the abuse of ellipses? Pop it up a little with some underlines and formatting.

 Who is the real culprit?

Be it our lack of imagination, laziness to write personalised messages, we are only too happy to just forward the generic messages as they come to us. Does this mean, that our wishes are not entirely heartfelt? Or is it that we feel that a mere “Happy New Year” message is bland or boring. This just goes on to show how under the guise of making us more connected, the technology and social media at hand are only making us more disconnected from each other.

There is nothing wrong with forwarding one message to everyone in your contact list. If only, that one message should have a personal touch.

If you do not want your wishes to get lost in the sea of messages or if you want the receiver to feel wished on personally by you, then a little bit of effort will go long way.

Stop with the Yuppier than thou approach

Let's also take a minute to shout out to all those who post gyan on New Year mornings, but criticize those who post their milestones and achievements from the previous year. Ridiculing those who want to share their personal and professional achievements, makes you a critical person. Posting forward messages on your timeline makes you unimaginative. Kindly do the maths.

So instead of forwarding shoddily written messages, which will make people judge your education, why not just write two lines straight from the heart? Why not make sure that all your friends and family members know that your wishes to them are indeed genuine.

All it will take is some basic photo editing skills, and few minutes of your time, to make a personalised card, for everyone important in your life.

For those who are not, bomb them with the hypnotic New Year GIFs.

Picture Credit: fullonsms.com

Also Read : On New Year Resolutions, and my Secret Affair with Procrastination

Dr Yamini Pustake Bhalerao is a writer with the SheThePeople team, in the Opinions section.  The views expressed are the author’s own.