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Dresses, tuxes, corsages, and fancy dinners, I get it. It’s nice. But promposals? Really? You’re going to spend x-amount of money asking someone that 99% of the time said yes before you even did the promposal. It’s pointless.

A promposal is an elaborately staged request to be someone’s date to prom involving many carefully arranged details; complicated in design and planning. So for a promposal you are carefully arranging a complicated plan to request to be someone’s date to prom. Doesn’t that just seem a little ridiculous? Whatever happened to just asking someone? Knocking on someone’s door with a flower and simply asking “Will you go to prom with me?” is much more classy than getting a fighter pilot spelling out “I’d be flying high if you would go to prom with me.”

Look up “promposals.” You are delighted with an array of pictures that are pretty much all the same. One person asking another with a sign that you can barely tell what it’s supposed to say accompanied with something else that goes along with what the sign says such as an abundant amount of candy or an overly-sized teddy bear.

Then look up “extravagant promposals.” This is where it gets really good. You see people decorating hallways and cars and buying them animals like dogs and horses.

This is enraging because it is just a show. People only do the big ask for the reactions of others. Nothing is just between two people anymore. Anytime someone goes on a date, it’s posted on social media. Anytime someone gets engaged, everyone knows by the next morning and they don’t even have time to be excited for themselves. There are some things that should be left between the two people that it involves. It should be an “A-B” promposal and everyone should “C” their way out of it. A one on one ask makes it more personal and meaningful. Never mind the fact that there immense pressure to have the best promposal.

The gesture is nice. It really is. Making someone stand in front of a group of people awkwardly while you ask them in a way you think is sweet while others probably just think is embarrassing. Even buying them unnecessary things just to seem like a “good date” or training a parrot to say “I’d be living in parrot-dise if you’d go to prom with me.” It’s all too much. Another is getting a pizza and writing on the box “I know it’s cheesy, but” and then in pepperoni on pizza write “prom?”Some people even acknowledge it all being a hoopla.

If we use these puns and over the top gestures for promposals, why not use them in daily life? Imagine you’re at a haunted house and you go to shake a fake zombies hand, you pull it off and he says “Will you take my hand?” Would you really want someone to ask you to marry them like that? Or your breaking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend and they do it by handing you a bag of trash and say “You’ve been dumped.” It’s funny, but definitely not ideal and just adds to the embarrassment of getting dumped. We do it for one aspect of life why not them all, but can’t we all agree that this is just ridiculous.

Prom is all about feeling special and having a night to remember. But wouldn’t someone asking in a way that’s more personal and intimate be better than these crazy ways that’s all just for views anyway?

If you are planning on asking someone to prom this year, I highly suggest asking in a way that’s personal and meaningful to you and the person you are going with. We can leave the occasional funny pun, but can we comPROMise to not do these over the top asks anymore.