Now, as this montage of moments flits through your head, let's home in on all those times you've sworn you'll totally give your buddy some good new tunes or your photos of an event. Yeah... fail.
As the Internet has made sharing files and information a snap, we've all gotten into the habit of breezily vowing to share our digital goods.
But you could also argue that the Web has contributed to our epidemic laziness. (Case in point: Taking the "outsource my life" stunt to a higher, more penny-pinching level, Fiverr lets you hire strangers to take care of all sorts of odd jobs for you for a mere $5.)
And that laziness, exacerbated by selfishness and an inability to keep a thought in your head for more than three -- hey, is that a fruitcake?! -- means your intended recipients know your promises to follow up are as hollow as your average citizen's soul.
Still, if the Christmas movies have taught us anything, it's that eleventh-hour redemption is totally possible. Here are a few quick tips for morphing from Scrooge's Doppelganger (pre-hauntings, of course) into Santa himself.
And so begins my Netiquette column -- which I write with my Stuff Hipsters Hate co-blogger, Andrea Bartz -- this week over at CNN.