Snapchat Geofilters Are Taking Promposals To The Next Level

Insanely elaborate, public promosals have been all the rage for a while, but for every one that’s adorable is another that’s incredibly awkward. (Like, paralyzingly awkward.) Some teens are now moving away from the big declarations, and are going for something a little more high tech. Enter: Snapchat filter promposals. Social media loving-high schoolers are creating custom geofilters to snapchat their way to prom. Are some of these Snapchat promposals excessive? Probably. Are they also cute AF? Yep! Do I kinda hate the word “promposal”? Yes, but I soldier on.

As Mashable reports, Snapchat promposals are cropping up more and more. With Snapchat geofilters, users can create their own custom filters using templates provided by Snapchat. They then identify where they want their filter to be active, and for how long. Setting up a geofilter costs $5 to start, but the price goes up the larger the location gets and the longer you want it. (Other factors can play a role, too.)

Recently, 18-year-old Casey Kemerling proposed (promposed?) to his girlfriend, Sydney, in Iowa City. He told Mashable that he took her to dinner and snapped a photo of her for a Snapchat Story. When Sydney went to view the Story, she saw his customized geofilter, asking her to prom. “She looked and her hand immediately went over her mouth and she says, ‘OMG Casey I'm actually going to cry, this is so amazing,’” Kemerling told Mashable.

Another Snapchat fan, 17-year-old Zena Gittens, from Toronto, used Snapchat at school to invite her date to prom.

“I was surprised that I was the first person at my school to think of doing a promposal like that,” Gittens told Mashable. She also said that she liked the fact that Snapchat promosals are public — because they’re attached to specific locations, anyone in the area of the filter can see it, and even use it, for themselves. Snapchat geofilters thus provide a nice alternative to the trend for uber-public promposals; they allow people to make their invitations public, without having to ask someone to prom in front of a whole stadium.

Other teens have gotten in on the action:

"I think that in the future geofilters are gonna become extremely popular for promposals," Jacob Beacham, above, told Mashable. "I'm just super stoked to be one of the first ones to do it."

One question that this trend raises is whether the Snapchat promposal will bring down the cost of going to prom. A 2015 survey by Visa found that the average cost of a promposal (a thing that did not even exist when I was in high school) is a staggering $324 — and that the average total cost for going to prom in the United States is $919. Snapchat geofilters aren't free (as the tweet above points out), but time will tell if these Snapchat promposals reach the extravagant heights that in-person promposals have.