According to my scientific and historical calculations, Valentine’s Day is around 1744 years old. Time for some upgrades, Cupid! We’re freshening things up on the flower front with our 3D printed rose delivery and now PayPal of all places is helping us find the right words to share what’s in our hearts with the custom, on demand poem service: #poemgrams.
Visit the pop-up site and live chat with one of 12 poets who will compose some socially shareable prose from you, for your Valentine. A few of the poets are actually stationed today IRL in a park near Brit HQ, but it’s raining so I decided to try this out from the comfort of my ergonomic office chair and warm laptop.
I pressed the blue “chat with poet” button and waited less than 30 seconds before a little white box appeared in the right corner of my screen. Your personal Pablo Neruda (actually, mine was named Anayvelyse) introduces themselves and gets a little info about the subject of their art. I don’t have just one Valentine this year (cough, #imsingle, cough cough) so I told her we had some options: The guy I went on a (good) date with recently, a guy I’m hopelessly in love with (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) or a guy who is a very good friend (also: gay).
She asked if the guy I’m hopelessly in love with knows it. I’m sure JGL has some idea that women he’s never met find him attractive, so I replied: “Well, I’ve never said it to him but he probably knows deep down inside.” Seemed fair. She felt most inspired by the newbie in my life, asked me if there was anything else I thought she should know (that response is for my and Anayvelyse’s eyes only,) said she’d have a poem to me soon and sent me a link to it when she was done. All in about five minutes! Talk about a whirlwind romance, even for a Tinder user. Kidding, what’s Tinder, I’ve never heard of it??
I was breathlessly describing this “super cool idea” to my desk nabe Kelly and she informed ME that it is pretty similar to the job that Joaquin Phoenix has in Her, a movie I clearly haven’t seen. I still think it’s a really interesting stunt that’s actually a pretty nifty form of public, social media art. I don’t know if I’ll share the poem with my potential Valentine, so I’ll share it with all of you instead. Not weird at all, right?
The poets are available to chat between 8am to 8pm PST, now until February 13. If you can’t find time to get to know your Emily Dickinson* (*who probably would have invented this/loved the Internet if she was alive now since she was a pretty serious recluse) live, fill out a form on the site any time before V-Day to get your poem delivered to your inbox. It sounds impersonal, but you’ll give them basically the same info that I gave Anayvelyse in our quick conversation.
The service is free but you also have the option to send a little love to your poets via PayPal. Good news because they sign off right after they link to your poem. PS: Thank you, Ana’!
What do you think of #Poemgrams? Would you try it for your special someone this Valentine’s Day? Do you think it’s romantic or weird?
