The earliest form of PPT dates back to the Primitive-age! In those days of primates, meetings and presentations used to be held inside the caves to avoid being eaten by tigers, bears, leopards if meetings and PPTs were held in the open.
It all began with the love blooming in the hearts of a caveman of one tribe and the princess of the other tribe. There was a fierce battle between the 2 tribes –one of the ordinary-in-love-caveman and the one of the princess. A lot of blood, time, stones, spears and food was spent in those wars and then someone put forward a suggestion that the ordinary-in-love-caveman go to the king of the other tribe and convince him as to why the beautiful princess belonged to the ordinary-in-love-caveman.
Our hero - ordinary-in-love-caveman- then spent one full night to think of reasons as to why he was the best of all cavemen. He thought of some 5-6 reasons and gathered ample number of convincing statistics to prove his point. He gave a mock rehearsal in front of his cavemen and then next day he went to the King of the other tribe and said -
“ohhh…laalaa..zoozozozo…. okkoook….aaa..eee..uuuu….. …….. “.
He gestured a lot.
He rambled a lot.
He threw a lot of facts about his achievements and what he will do for the princess.
He used a lot of words related to “progress”, “satisfaction”, “eternal benefits”, “overall growth”, etc.
He proved other cavemen to be [1]hubaalloolaaboo*.
He went on relentlessly for 30 minutes.
The king got confused. Later on he got convinced.
The king had never encountered such a good convincing-session! He became very happy and gave her daughter’s hand as a present to the ordinary-in-love-caveman. That day on, the convincing-sessions began to be known as Presentations. (Using one word is better than using the combination of convincing-sessions. This was a more prominent reason than the caveman-story described above.)
Let me put a chart of comparison to show that the contemporary PPTs are a derivative of the primitive cave discussions.
| Primitive days | Contemporary PPTs |
| 1) Pointed stones | 1) Lasers or remotes or sketch pens |
| 2) Whitest portion in the cave | 2) A whiteboard with sketch pens hanging on the side of the whiteboard |
| 3) A few pictures, symbols, lines, etc. | 3) Microsoft PPTs with boxes, diamonds, lines, pictures lifted from the net, content copied from the net, PPT format copied from some already existing PPT, etc |
| 4) Futile attempt to prove that your point is definitely right. | 4) Convincing all the attendees that the point put forward is a ‘never-thought-before’ idea and that could change the way your company works, increase the revenue of the company, increase the sales of the company and ultimately lead to a rise in salary of the people. The attendees will then better listen to the ‘salary-increment-inducing’ PPT of yours. |
| 5) Throwing pointed stones at the sleeping attendees of the PPT. | 5) Taking names of the sleeping attendees and asking them “X, do you have anything to add here?” |
| 6) Crazy amount of swearing to wake up the sleepy cavemen attending your PPT | 6) Repeatedly asking questions like “does anyone have any doubt?” Louder each time! |
| 7) Moving on to the adjoining wall to make your next point. | 7) Moving on to the next slide. |
| 8) Wrapping up your Presentation by saying “hee..aaa..zoolllooooo…eee..aaa… akkaaaa…oooo….zoolllooooo.”. | 8) Wrapping up your PPT by saying “I hope there are no questions. If there are any, please mail me.” and then swearing to god to take revenge in other’s presentations for the all the humiliations that others must have caused to you in your presentation. |
In today’s world, Presentations are used to merely to impress bosses. The higher number of PPTs you give in a financial year, the better are your chances of getting a better rating than other hubaalloolaaboo* in your team.
[1] hubaalloolaaboo is an imaginary creature with sleepy eyes, a highly retarded brain, spiky hair, round nose, flared nostrils, eyebrows like the dense bushes of the forest and bodies of 90 year-old bears.
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