Because naturally your life or work or art or writing should be boiled down to 25 words of less, delivered in an elevator to a harried agent who wants you to send a shiver down their damn spine but doesn't want to actually interact with you or your life or your work or your art or your writing.
Because we should all be Tim Robbins in The Player. Because if you're not a player you're obviously being played.
Because life is a damn Shark Tank, and if you can't pitch your idea you might as well be churned through a spinning propeller and left as chum for the fishes of the world.
Because we need more cliches than truth in our lives. Because we crave summary instead of story. Because we embrace continual mindnumbing instead of mindfulness. Because comforting 25 word spiels are better than actual vision.
Because John Grisham said it so.
Because we think there's originality in cliched reworkings of what's been done before. Because we want a pitch to equal value. Because we want to pretend "Star Wars meets the Real Housewives of Hollywood" is a creative thought instead of a diagnosis of what ails society.
Because this is what people do to sell their product. Because we believe our lives are merely products to be sold. Because we can't see how we're limiting ourselves. Because deep down we hate elevator speeches but everyone told us to have one so we spent two weeks perfecting those 25 words.
Because your life is naturally reduced to little more than the parts which create you.
Because you must meditate and become one with the elevator speech.
Because an elevator speech beats doing anything useful with your life.