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Are you ready for your own blood-curdling proposal?

First we had the Russian millionaire who faked his own death before proposing, smeared in blood, to a traumatized girlfriend. (Bewildering, but she said yes.)

This week, an American man has posted his own death-defying proposal on YouTube. Piloting a small plane with his girlfriend Carlie sitting in the passenger seat, Ryan Thompson decided to pretend the aircraft was malfunctioning and about to plummet to earth before popping the question.

No thanks?

It's becoming abundantly clear that dudes love nothing more than to prank their ladies – and why not during a proposal. It's juvenile in a schoolyard crush kind of way, but also occasionally charming: the freaky proposals are yielding yeses. Still, the women seem to be present primarily to be punked, and secondarily to be married.

Thompson posted the video, "In Descent Proposal," on Tuesday.

"She thought we were dying and ended up with a ring!" reads the caption. The video shows Ryan and Carlie – a Barbie and Ken couple – smiling upon takeoff and snapping photos of each other as sunshine streams into the cockpit on a perfect blue-sky day, a yuppie soundtrack playing on.

But halfway in the music turns ominous, the plane bounces around and Ryan says, "Honey, I need you to stay calm. The flight controls aren't responding." He asks his panic-stricken girlfriend to read through an emergency procedure: check rudder pressure, auto pilot and "ring engagement procedure." Carlie's face is blank so Ryan whips out the box, laughing his head off.

"So there was no emergency?" she asks, head in hands, after agreeing to a life with the guy. The kisses are sweet and very real, but the closing shot is more telling: "Oh, by the way. There was a hidden camera," Ryan beams.

The top commenter on YouTube, where the video has garnered nearly 64,000 views, chastises Ryan for making other men look bad when they propose under more mundane circumstances, like walking the dog.

"This will really make you long for the days when the scariest thing that happened during a proposal was that the guy got down on one knee," The Stir's Kiri Blakeley wrote of the gag.

Blakeley wonders if men are banking on the adrenaline rush to solidify a yes.

Earlier this month, Alexey Bykov revealed he'd hired a screenwriter and stuntman, among other crew members, to fake the gory car crash that would score him a yes from his girlfriend. The woman arrived to see "mangled cars everywhere, ambulances, smoke and carnage," according to Russian media outlets. Bykov then came miraculously back to life to propose, successfully!

"I wanted her to realize how empty her life would be without me and how life would have no meaning without me," Bykov said at the time.

One word for the bride: Run.

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