Several tech blogs are reporting on Microsoft’s Windows 7 launch strategy of encouraging individuals to throw “house parties” in return for a free copy of Windows 7. Basically, these house parties involve people inviting a bunch of friends over to sit around a computer and learn how to use the new Windows. The videos on the House Party website depict a bunch of happy, ethnically mixed people huddled around laptops eating slices of cheese and laughing. It’s like spying on some terrible future where Microsoft controls the world and has replaced everything fun with Windows tutorials about the start menu.
Party hosts can choose from four themes: Setting Up With Ease, Family Friendly Fun, Media Mania, or PhotoPalooza. I watched the “host help videos” for each theme; I knew that Setting Up With Ease and Family Friendly Fun wouldn’t include anything entertaining, but I was dismayed to find that Media Mania and PhotoPalooza were absent of both video games and pornography.
That brings me to my point — parties are associated with fun, but the severely fake marketing videos for the event make me think that there is nothing fun about learning how to use Windows 7.
The Evidence
The “host help” videos on the House Party website are unsettling. I have a rule that if numerous people who are more attractive than me are sitting around a laptop, it’s a trap. There’s nothing that multiple attractive people could do on the computer that’s better than their everyday lives, unless Windows 7 has some mode that can turn the screen into a mirror.
Microsoft told them that the screen's glow was just as effective as a tanning bed
These models in the host help videos are also constantly laughing and smiling. The amount of laughter at an event that is basically a Windows 7 tutorial is strange. I don’t remember laughing that much when I had to learn about my TV remote. And attractive people would never smile that much because it causes wrinkles. If an attractive person ever smiles at you, you’re about to have sex or put the person in charge of a regional branch.
"HAHAHAHA Crtl, Alt, Delete INDEED."
And what’s with the camera-work? The camera-person takes great care to ensure there are dozens of shots of the food being passed around and eaten. What’s wrong with the food? Is the host expected to drug the food? Perhaps further instructions and doses of pharmaceuticals are supplied in the party pack.
Grapes are a good choice because their skin naturally hides needle marks.
I also found some knocks at the competition in these videos. It can’t be good to use negative advertising in a video that is supposed to simulate an organic user experience. Although, anyone gathering for a Windows 7 house party probably refuses to even eat apples.
The oddest thing about these videos is the amount of different ages and races who are attending each of these house parties. Microsoft is telling us that learning about Windows 7 is so enjoyable that it can bring people together who would normally only interact on the set of “Independence Day.”
The white guy with the glasses came with the computer.
Conclusion
From what I’ve read, the public opinion on these house parties doesn’t seem to be that great. I think this mostly has to do with the disingenuous videos that Microsoft had House Party put out for the event. Based on how overly positive and fantastical these videos are, I’m expecting that every house party will include ten minutes of making icons transparent before a robot resembling Bill Gates pops out of the screen and sodomizes the entire room.
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Scary indeed. I’d forgotten about the house parties I read about a few weeks back. Parties for a game I can understand, perhaps even that people park themselves outside shops at midnight to buy the new operating system, but at the house parties for microsoft windows 7, I imagined that the hosts will never be involved with any social gathering again or be murdered and the video posted on youtube or other media sharing site.