I find that letting a story flow naturally makes for a more powerful narrative. Things happen because they make sense in the context of the story, making any sort of payoff or emotional investment feel earned and not manipulative.
As you've made extremely clear in the commentary, this was a mission to manipulate the feelings of the reader, and that addendum certainly felt every bit like someone grabbing my head with both hands and repeatedly going "see? you should feel SAD. SAAAAD." As a result, what's intended to be a moving experience feels to me to be a cloying, somewhat cynical exercise in playing on one of the more easily manipulated emotions.
I also feel like the equally open attempt to work easter eggs and whatnot into this detracted from the piece. I don't like stuff like that in general, because 99% of the time, the author isn't content to leave something subtle in there for a careful reader, for fear of it being not noticed. So when I read the word "file" a whole bunch of times in succession to the point that the writing feels stilted and unnatural, it doesn't do anything for me.
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