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By Matt Cohen and Rachel Sadon

We here at DCist get a lot of pitches to cover stuff. Everything from fundraisers, to restaurant openings, to concerts, to rallies and protests, to people, to hell, even an annual porn awards show in Las Vegas.

We mostly ignore the ones that aren’t relevant to our editorial vision, but sometimes we come across something so ridiculous that we can’t help but call it out. Like an absurdly elaborate marriage proposal that the suitor is hoping we will cover. Is this what we’ve come to as a society?

We’re not going to get into the specifics of the proposal plan because it hasn’t actually happened yet and we’re not huge jerks (fine, that’s debatable), but we will say it involves more than 100 people, will happen in an iconic part of D.C., and features more moving parts than an Ocean’s movie. Oh and it will be filmed, of course. Because in 2015, people love to have their grand, elaborate marriage proposals go viral.

It’s one thing to propose to the person you plan to spend the rest of your life with in a highly public setting—a grand display of love and commitment. Is it corny? Sure. Some people are into that for reasons that are highly unclear to us. You do you.

But when you’re pitching news outlets to write about your proposal that hasn’t even happened yet, then something is seriously wrong. It becomes about the spectacle and prospect of going viral rather than a celebration of love. (“So pretty pretty please come do a story on it and post in on the blog” is an actual quote from the email we received).

First of all, you’re presuming your partner wants all this to be a highly publicized affair. Unless he or she has explicitly said to you “please gather 50 of our closest friends, neighbors, and work acquaintances to do a choreographed dance in front of gawking strangers,” you do not do such a thing. You think you know your person really well—and you’re probably right—but if you don’t … well, that is a truly horrifying thing to put an unwilling person through. “My beloved—also mom, cousin Cindy from Hawaii, and my favorite barista—I’m just not ready for marriage yet. So sorry you spent 25 hours learning that dance. Can we turn the camera off now?”

And even if they have told you to go all out in public, who said they wanted the media there? That is opening it up to another realm of publicity that maybe your partner isn’t into.

Secondly, this is all supposed to be a surprise! You’re already compromising it by getting so many people involved—are you sure you can trust all those people to not spill the beans?—but when you send your plans around to multiple news outlets, you’re putting a lot of trust in the hands of organizations you don’t know. Outlets that are always on the lookout for the Next Great Viral Thing, so they can be the “first” to post about it and then reap all the page clicks. Every hear of Buzzfeed? They loooooove to post about this shit. Who’s to say they won’t inadvertently spoil it for you? You are putting a lot of trust in the hands of an editorial staff you don’t know (case in point: this article).

And really, this is just such a cliche at this point. People have been going to increasingly elaborate lengths in the hopes of achieving a viral marriage proposal for years. Come up with something else to honor your hopefully soon-to-be fiance. Please?