Actual Use For PowerPoint Discovered
"If you've never heard of PowerPoint Karaoke, that probably means you're neither German nor a hardcore techie." By god, we'll have to admit that that's an accurate statement. This trend may have been around in German techie circles for a while, but now that it's hit the media at large, expect to see it in as a weakly-attended theme night soon at a bar near you. The Boston Globe reports that the trend of taking a random PowerPoint presentation and putting together a narrative for it on the fly is just about as much fun as any crowd of "extroverted geeks" can handle. Plus they're all drunk at the time! Actually, it does sound like fun.
Some karaoke slides are pure cliche. ("We offer a wide range of solutions!") Others, taken out of context, feel purely, startlingly random. A chest X-ray. The planet Earth surrounded by cartoon heads. And who thought it was a good idea to superimpose an image of Sony's AIBO toy robot dog over pages from a Dick and Jane-type storybook? And more importantly, what do you say if you're confronted by that slide? (One presenter's take: "Sony AIBO: The Greatest Threat to Humanity Yet!")
We would wager on this popping up on "The Office" any week now. Comparing it to "macho stunts like chainsaw racing," though, is a stretch. PowerPoint karaoke champs can be cool without outside reference points! A video of yourself dominating at this game could be a good way to get hired by Gawker, I imagine.
