Isaac’s live lip-dub proposal has had almost 14 million hits on You Tube. In the most unlikely event that you have not seen it, here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_v7QrIW0zY&feature=player_embedded.
Take a look and you will see a gaggle of friends and relatives lip synch to a cute song and in doing so, asks Isaac’s girlfriend to marry him.
I have to admit that I was sucked in by its sweet sentimentality and its incredible creativity. I passed it along to my contacts and I am sure they did the same at such a rate that on my last business trip to China my waiter at breakfast said, 這是太可愛了。更多的雞爪? (which means, “That was so cute. More chicken feet?”
Now I came across this little gem which cost the future groom $9K to produce:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Yi5iBwOB0IA
If you are 45 or older you will remember what it was like to ask someone to prom in high school. You obsessed about it. If you were fortunate, you would have friends perform some reconnaissance with the intended target or even soften the beachhead for the coming question. By the time my children were in high school, you started to make the arrangements for popping the prom question in the fall to make sure you were the first to lock in the rental of the local movie theater marquee and the parade permit for the marching band playing Jack Johnson’s Better Together and the float with the 30 foot question mark and the words spelled out in multicolored roses, “Pamela, will you go to the prom with me?” (Anachronism alert! Jack Johnson wasn’t popular when my kids were in high school but I digress.)
I think we are on the threshold of a new tradition, a new standard in asking someone to marry you. These same people who were hiring the Playboy Bunny naked skydiving team to jump out of an airplane in a formation spelling out the question while whistling “Do Ya Love Me” until chute deployment are now bringing their skills and experiences to the pre-matrimonial stage.
And I say “stage” intentionally. What ever happened to the concept of intimacy? You are asking a person who is arguably the most important person to you for a 50/50 shot at spending the rest of your lives together and you want to do this in front of hundreds of people hoping for a million hits on You Tube so you can sell some advertisements and defer some of the wedding costs?
Now I don’t want to come across as one of the town elders from Footloose but shouldn’t this moment be the most sincere, intimate, and meaningful moment two people can share? It is likely my warnings will be unheeded and this trend will continue to build to the point where it is de rigueur.
I call it the age of voyeuristic narcissism.
I can only imagine what this generation’s funerals will be like.
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