A marriage proposal is supposed to be a special personal thing, it’s the chance to ask your significant other if they will be with you until the end. You want to make it an intimate and unique occasion, and do we have to mention again, personal. But with the advent of the Internet, more and more marriage proposals are going public as everyone tries to show how clever they are.
For as many amazing proposals there are nowadays, there should be an equal number of heartbreaking rejections out there. You probably don’t see many of them because no one wants to publish their failure online, especially after your heart was just put through a giant wringer. Unfortunately, if you propose in public, you don’t have a choice to share your moment or not, since any random bystander can take pictures of you popping the question. And as you will see, sometimes the results aren’t pretty.
Most people don’t imagine their proposal to be incredibly public. It used to be, the most embarrassing proposals were the ones that happened on the Jumbotron at a local sports game. But those moments are usually only shared with 20-50,000 other people. In today’s age of social media, your proposal, successful or not, can be viewed by millions of people in minutes. You had better make sure the other person is going to say yes!
▼This doesn’t look like a yes…
Regrettably for this Chinese man, he didn’t get the answer he was looking for. Things are sure to be even more embarrassing for the couple as you can see the people in the background are all wearing very similar clothes. Could it be that the onlookers are mostly coworkers of the pair? Nothing makes better office gossip than the real-life soap opera drama that is occurring right outside your front window!
▼Clear example of PDR: Public Display of Rejection
The wanna-be fiance does whatever he can to show his lady-love that he will never let her go, by physically never letting go. The woman appears to desperately try and release herself from his grip, but can’t wiggle her way out of a clearly one-sided relationship, and they both fall to the ground.
At least, by the final picture you can see that many of the onlookers have moved on. Makes sense, you can only watch so much of a train wreck in person. Besides, TV dramas have the benefit of writing more intriguing dialogue than “Marry me!”, “…no”, “Marry me!”, “…no, let go!”
Back to the relationship drawing board.
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