Valentine's Day (or Otherwise Romantic) PowerPoints Are Destroying Love
When she and I were in college, my best friend's ex-boyfriend tried to win her back with a PowerPoint presentation.
Actually, he emailed it to me first, to see if I thought it would work. (I did not.) Against his wishes (because how could I not??), I showed it to my best friend in our dorm room, both of us in horrified silence. Later, even though I told him it wasn't going to work, he played it for her on a TV in the student lounge. The presentation featured 15 or so slides with pictures of them, or just him, or just her, with romance clichés and love song lyrics beneath. She doesn't remember anything she said during, or after.
They did not get back together.
I am afraid this was not an isolated incident.
Valentine's Day PowerPoints Are a Punishment for Having Allowed Yourself to Love Again
It was only recently that I stumbled across an article about presentations like the one I'd seen in my own inbox, back during the PowerPoint Incident of '06. (I would tell you what the initial search was for if I could remember. Hopefully it was SORT of far from "Valentine's PowerPoint presentations"?)
The article is entitled "Surprise Your Valentine with a Romantic Presentation: A Trip Down Memory Lane Might Lead to Romance."
If it starts innocently enough, and if it relies pretty heavily on the assumption of one's enjoyment from tripping down memory lanes ("What could be a more thoughtful gift to give your Valentine this year, than a trip down memory lane of all the special memories that you two share?"), the suggestions presented here quickly become terrifying:
Step 6: "Add Some Movements to Your Slides. We know that he/she is going to be enthralled anyway, but add a little movement to jazz the presentation up a little."
DO we know that?
Step 8: "Narrate That Love Letter: Nothing is more romantic than hearing your loved one read you a love letter. Do a 'voice-over' effect to your presentation and narrate the love letter while the slides change."
I cannot stress this enough: There is A LOT of stuff more romantic than hearing your creepy weirdo boyfriend read out loud to you some dumb letter he wrote, and that's ESPECIALLY true when it's being read via an audio file set to accompany a PowerPoint presentation.
Step 10: "How Was The Rehearsal? ... Rehearsing the Valentine presentation allows you to put just the right timing onto each animation so that it all runs smoothly — not too fast — not too slowly."
If you should ever come across your significant other rehearsing a Valentine's Day PowerPoint presentation, back out of the room and out of the house and out of the state. Not too fast, not too slowly.
Valentine's Day PowerPoints Are Moving in on Your Honeys
And that's not all. That one article, somehow, isn't the beginning and end of the worst-ever union between a Microsoft Office tool and a boundless, irrational, joyous expression of the human spirit: There are pages (and pages, and pages) of Valentine's Day PowerPoint templates on the internet.
This is an abomination, and it must be stopped.
Valentine's Day PowerPoints Systematically Whittle Your Fairy-Tale Dreams Into Bullet Points
In the rare and depressing event that the objective awfulness of a Valentine's Day PowerPoint isn't abundantly clear, let us make it so.
