I was one of the millions of nerds (you heard me) who stayed up late Thursday night to see Batman: Dark Knight. It was amazing. This is not a review.
As of today, the film has grossed over $155 Million and beaten Spiderman 3 as the top grossing opening weekend for a motion picture. Already the media is pontificating and analyzing the effects of 'sleepy Friday' and hyping the drowsiness of the fans who stayed up as late as 4:00am to see the Bat do his thing.
This only bothers me because I know damn well that the core Midnight Premier audience is not Joe and Joanna six-pack and they do not typically have jobs where sleep is held in high regard.
Break down the audience and you'll see what I mean.
Males and females between the ages of 17 and 21: This group can be disregarded out of hand. First, their mix of youthful energy, hormones and consumption of Bawls (beverage) make sleep largely irrelevant. Second, they were just as likely to be up playing World of Warcraft till 4:00 am anyway.
Males and females between the ages of 22 and 29: Were probably just leaving work at 11:00pm and drove directly there. Given that at that point they had likely already worked 100 hours for the week, losing another 3-4 hours of sleep wasn't going to significantly alter their job-place demeanor.
What's the boss going to do anyway? They control all of the IT department's passwords and half those of their sister companies. If they get chastised at work for falling asleep, then maybe the boss just "misses" a paycheck that week...month...
Assuming they bothered to show up at 8:30 the next day, they probably didn't look any more exhausted, overworked or under slept than usual. Besides, they only show up early to check on their clan's next raiding party anyway.
Males and females from 30 and over: Likely run their own business or have enough seniority to take Friday off. The boss is still a little gun shy from the last time they changed all the master codes and locked everyone out of the network (where do you think that new car came from anyway?).
Assuming any work-related activity suffered as a result of the nocturnal outing it was probably their UO guild meetings which take place from 11:00pm to 4:00am anyway.
So let's get over this sleep deprivation fairytail and just accept that for most of us, being at a movie like Dark Knight at 3:00 am does more to improve our performance at work than the twenty hours of rest that our boss has been promising us since 2006. Should we hear anything about attending late night premieres, rest assured that we are not without recourse.
What am I doing on this computer? I dunno. Gonna check that letter there from the IRS? Looks important.
