Jordan and Jessica are now engaged thanks partially to an engraved iPad 2, but mostly thanks to an open-minded, accepting female. Here’s how it went down: this Jordan character chose to skip over the typical question hidden in a fortune cookie proposal, and decided to pursue a 21st century style approach. He engraved “Will you marry me?” on an iPad 2. Yes, this actually happened. When it was time to kneel and ask the question, he presented the iPad to Jessica. She somehow said “Yes”, likely in between an intense eye rolling moment, and then demanded he hand over the Apple toy. Does this mean the rest of us shy geeks can celebrate and begin planning elaborate, similarly uber-geek proposals?
No. And please stop.
This behavior, unfortunately, will inevitably become the norm.
First a groom will decide who his best man should be based on a videogame tournament. Oh wait. That already happened. Then we will see a Foursquare badge for couples who check in to a Church / Temple / Mosque at the same time with the words “getting married” in the shout. Facebook will of course copy Foursquare (again) while offering minimal innovation: your marital status will change to Married if you follow the same routine in their app.
Next there will be hotel, air travel, and car rental deals for those lucky Foursquare-junkie geeks (I’m one of them) preparing for a last-minute honeymoon getaway. Then the photo sharing apps will catch up. Instagram will offer a special vignette style filter that you can apply after the Priest / Minister / Rabbi takes a crappy photo of you on your Smartphone. Color will use all of its magical data mining power to determine that you’re getting hitched, and place that crappy photo in a priority position for the other two people in the room who use Color to see.
Wedding guests have long been able to liveblog weddings (fortunately they don’t), but now with Yobongo they will begin sharing opinions on the couple’s performance during the ceremony. When the Priest asks if anyone objects to the holy union, several jealous ex-lovers can proudly type “ME ME ME! and share with the group.
We can’t forget video. We have already witnessed couples immediately updating Twitter and Facebook even before the special “kiss the bride” moment, but soon the bride and groom will hold up their Smartphones to each other’s faces while livestreaming on Qik. Qik will post a tweet telling people to check out the video. Angry replies will start flooding the couple’s phones with notifications asking, “Why wasn’t I invited?” The video will drop to 2 frames per second, and most will give up watching.
This is a possible vision of a rapidly approaching app-obsessed future thanks to you, Jordan. Your proposal has taken us one step closer to what will eventually be the saddest proposal ever: the @ tweet.