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It’s New Year’s Eve again — that sacred time of reflection, renewal, and discovering that twelve different people have sent you the exact same greeting card. Same font. Same pastel fireworks. Same suspiciously perfect sentence wishing you “abundance, alignment, and authentic joy in 2026.”
Authentic, mind you. Generated in 0.3 seconds.
Once upon a time — and no, this is not a boomer hallucination — New Year’s greetings required effort. Not much, but some. You had to think of the person. Their name. Their mood. Their year. Sometimes you even had to write.
Before AI, sincerity was inefficient.
We bought cards from bookstores — remember those? — and stood there for ten minutes reading verses, quietly judging whether “Warmest Wishes” sounded too distant or “With Love Always” might be misinterpreted. If you picked the wrong card, it said something about you. If you picked the right one, it said something to the other person.
And then there was handwriting. Uneven. Slanted. Occasionally illegible. But undeniably human. A crossed-out word. A smudge. A sentence that began confidently and ended awkwardly. It was proof of presence. Evidence that someone sat down, pen in hand, and thought of you for at least thirty seconds — which, by today’s standards, is practically devotion.
Now? We outsource thoughtfulness.
AI has democratised greeting.
Unfortunately, it has also standardised it. The result is mass-produced sincerity — warm, polished, and utterly forgettable. A thousand well-wishes that say everything and mean nothing. Digital hugs with no arms attached.
We no longer wish people well; we dispatch wishes. Bulk sincerity. Scheduled affection. Timed to go out at 12:01 a.m. because heaven forbid someone feels slightly less loved due to a delayed algorithm.
And the tragedy isn’t that AI writes better than us. It’s that we let it feel for us.
We’ve mistaken efficiency for care. Convenience for connection. We tell ourselves it’s the thought that counts — but there is no thought, only a prompt.
“Write a heartfelt New Year message, warm but not too emotional, inspirational yet grounded.” Done. Next recipient. Same message. Slightly different emoji.
Plastic sincerity has become our emotional uniform. Safe. Smooth. Recyclable.
Yet before all this, messages were often clumsy. Sometimes inappropriate. Occasionally late. But they were specific. “Hope your knee is better.” “You survived a terrible boss — respect.” “This year was rough. Let’s hope the next is kinder.” These were not viral sentiments. They were personal.
Now we aim for universal relevance, which is another way of saying no relevance at all.
Of course, I’m not asking anyone to return to parchment and fountain pens or to hand-deliver cards by bicycle. I’m just wondering when we decided that saying something badly ourselves was worse than saying something beautifully that we didn’t mean.
Maybe sincerity, like muscle, weakens when we stop using it.
So this New Year’s Eve, amid the fireworks and the flood of identical greetings, allow yourself a small rebellion. Write one message that sounds like you. Misspell something. Be awkward. Be late. Be specific. Be human.
Because in an age where everything is smart, the rarest thing left might just be a thought that wasn’t generated.
And that, truly, would be a Happy New Year.
Your very old friend, Rahim
Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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