As the love boat sails swiftly into the harbor of Valentine’s Day (it’s this weekend, for those prone to procrastination), people fret over the best way to express affection towards their partners (or potential ones). But how often do they exploit technology for the purpose of wooing?
I’m not talking about sending a card from 123Greetings.com and claiming brownie points, or e-mailing a love poem that you borrowed from an English major. I’m talking about using all of the tech toys we so often take for granted to share a unique and meaningful experience with a loved one.
The world of technology often seems analogous to the world of work, of production, of creativity for the sake of advancement rather than feeling. Men may, in general, find this notion more truthful than women; to substantiate this, I need only point to the pools of male saliva in front of plasma screen TVs, Blu-ray players and first-person shooters. We need not entertain this stigma of entertainment, however.
Being emotionally considerate with technology doesn’t require any extremes, of course. No one, though it’s admirable, needs to mimic Phill Spies, a young computer science student who proposed to his girlfriend last month by hacking “Chrono Trigger DS” and inserting a custom level with the big question at the end. Few people are that nerdy (or that good at hacking).
Everyone in love, or on the precipice of love, can be creatively considerate, though. Just a few suggestions for the technologically inclined:
Sit down to a game of Mario Party, Wii Music, SingStar, or any other game in which the goal is laughter and fun, rather than winning points or killing aliens. For owners of the PlayStation 3 title “LittleBigPlanet”, whip up a Valentine’s Day-inspired level and frolic appropriately. For those who dislike consoles, pick up an electronic board game, replacing pieces with candies and prizes with kisses.
Grab a free version of Photoshop, GIMP or Paint.Net and assemble a personal collage of memories and sweet proverbs. If you don’t want to e-mail your work, make good on the Infinite Canvas from Live Labs mentioned last week and coax loved ones into perusal.
Record yourself professing your love – perhaps as a direct and sincere soliloquy, or as a surreal mix of movie clips that capture how you feel about your partner (Windows Movie Maker should suffice). Then upload it to YouTube, or whichever variant your lover prefers, slyly guiding him/her to the page with a, “Look at this great video I found.”
Download a free trial of Garageband, Fruity Loops or Hyperscore and compose a really terrible Valentine’s Day piece (or not terrible, for those with musical abilities), then sneak it into your loved one’s iPod playlist.
For those inclined towards serious business, produce a PowerPoint that offers bullet point rationales for your love, and ends with a sentimental (read: likely corny) statement of devotion; or, if you’re a math person, make an Excel document that quantifies the variable LOVE through a series of formulas, arriving as the final result of FOREVER.
Cynics will say that Valentine’s Day belongs solely to Hallmark, but technology can easily antiquate that view, if people use the opportunity. Ultimately, the execution matters less than the mindset – the belief that your partner deserves your time, energy and consideration. Without that emotional anchor, you may want to avoid pulling into port.
