Celebrate New Year’s Eve with the Internet

Mary Matthews wants to celebrate the New Year with you. Virtually.

For the fourth year running, the old school video blogger (behind online video classics like 39 Second Single), internet collaborator (who orchestrated the web’s largest slow dramatic clap), and Transport Workers Union of America’s Interactive Media Producer/Director (responsible for projects like The Worst Governor Ever Award) wants you to snap a photo of whatever it is you’re doing wherever you are on New Year’s Eve and send it to her at mcmpressATgmailDOTcom by 5PM EST Sunday, January 1. Matthews will then compile the results into a well-edited, collaborative photo montage with an accompanying song that’s at once both nostalgic and inspiring.

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The cooperative “virtual Times Square” is called Project Midnight. You can check out the final product from NYE 2009 through 2011 on the official webpage. They’re good.

“It began as an organic way to spend midnight with all of my family and friends spread out across the country,” Matthews told me over e-mail. “The idea of all of us being in one place – a video – together to kick off a new year really appealed to me. I opened it up to total stangers via Facebook and Twitter as well and its grown each year.”

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with all the forced hype and social pressure to have one helluva New Years Eve, just relax, go or don’t go to whatever party will make you the most happy, be sure to bring your camera to snap a pic when Lady Gaga makes that ball drop and send it to Matthews to ensure you’ll spend the first moments of 2012 with a few crowdsourced-project-loving people you know and a few people you don’t.