Just woken up to the news informing me of the power of Blue Monday and how I should offset its negative effects by consuming positive images from film and nature. Does anyone take this day of mental health marketing seriously? It's absolute bollocks. If you want to, you can feel as cheerful and optimistic as you want, despite the weather and what other people are telling you.
Blue Monday was invented by Sky Travel in 2005 after they calculated the date using an 'equation' that was completely derided and laughed at by scientists. Blue Monday is considered pseudoscience in the scientific community and for me it's a couple of rungs below homeopathy, the science which claims a medicine increases in strength the more water you add to it.
Blue Monday, Black Friday and all these other fucking colourful campaign days are at best, self fulfilling prophecies that consumers buy into and then validate and make real themselves.
If you give contrived campaigns like these any credence whatsoever then you will be at the whims of others telling you how you should be feeling, and most likely start feeling guilty when you don't feel like how they say you should be feeling.
The equation that author Cliff Arnall used to calculate the date incorporated factors such as: Tt = travel time; D = delays; C = time spent on cultural activities; R = time spent relaxing; ZZ = time spent sleeping; St = time spent in a state of stress; P = time spent packing; Pr = time spent in preparation
This joke of a formula naturally produced some proper bollocks of the highest order.
"Ben Goldacre has observed that the equations "fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms", pointing out that under Arnall's original equation, packing for ten hours and preparing for 40 will always guarantee a good holiday, and that "you can have an infinitely good weekend by staying at home and cutting your travel time to zero"
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