Netiquette Musings...

Text Message Breakup

The ultimate sign of disrespect in the modern world

It is THE tackiest thing possible. Disrespectful, rude, and cowardly.

Recent statistics also show text message breakups automatically lower testosterone levels by 50%.

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The lowest of the low. Quite possibly the best way to let all your soon-to-be angry ex's friends know you have no balls.

“Hey Panama, My bf just broke up with me by text message and we were together for 2 1/2 years. Is there any advice you can give on why this happened?”

Panama Jackson answered Broken Hearted in NY's question on September 27, 2012 7:22 PM

“Naw. Your ex is a douche. No two ways about it. He took the weak way out and left you with the emotional baggage to go along with it.”

Bad Breakup Etiquette: The Wrong Way To Do It Every Time

What’s up with some people and how they breakup with someone? Recently, a friend of mine emailed me and said, “My girlfriend broke up with me the other day via email.”

Via email?! They dated (and were inseparable) for over a year, and she breaks up with him via email?

She told him that it was too hard for her to sit down and break up with him face-to-face, and that she thought it would be easier for her to break up with him via email. She didn’t even go into detail in the email about it — it was a short three sentence email basically saying that the relationship wasn’t working for her anymore.

Another friend of mine was in a relationship with someone for nine months. They were in love, were intimate, spent night after night together, and vacationed together.

He broke up with her via a text message. That’s right, a text message!

Do you see a pattern here? What are the rules now a days — that you break up with someone via text message if you’re dating under a year, and you break up with someone via email if you’ve been dating longer than a year?

The text message that my friend sent said simply, “I don’t think this is working out, and I think we should stop seeing each other.” That was it.

How do you even respond to that? He didn’t even have the guts to pick up the phone and call this person he said that he loved. He just sent a text message.

I remember how bad I thought it was when the story broke a few years ago that Sylvester Stallone had broken up with someone via a letter he sent FedEx. He just had to break up with her overnight, and even sent it so that it would arrive by 10:00 am. Waking up to a breakup letter is something I’m sure she really needed.

What does it take these days to get a face-to-face breakup . . . or even a breakup via a live phone call?

Do you need to have been dating for more than two years to warrant this treatment? What do you have to do for someone to feel they “owe” you the courtesy of a face-to-face talk or at least a live phone call when they break up with you? What do you have to do to get the closure and the honesty that comes from a face-to-face breakup?

We have become so addicted to technology that we can’t even give each other the time of day anymore. So many people will not even pick up the phone anymore.

Most people text. A lot of people just email instead of picking up the phone.

When it comes down to breaking up — really discussing the relationship and the really important issues — you should never do it via email or text. What is wrong with our culture today that this has become at all acceptable?

When did we become so afraid? When did we become such wimps when it comes down to speaking with one another.

Breaking up via text or via email is disgraceful. You owe it to someone you’ve been dating (no matter for how long) to sit them down. You owe it to them to be 100% honest about how you’re feeling and where you’re at so that they can have closure.

I can’t imagine if something broke up with me via text. I don’t think I’d ever be able to talk to them again, or even look them in the eye. If you’re intimate enough to look someone in the eyes when you’re making love with them, then how dare you break up with them via text or email?

Technology is wonderful. When it comes down to intimacy and your relationship, however, you need to pick up the phone or meet face-to-face to tell someone how you feel if you’re going to break up with them. You need to do this no matter how hard you think it will be for you.

Breaking up is not easy to do. Breaking up using technology, though, is just plain sad.

EVEN WORSE…

The absolute worst way a person can use text messaging is to break up. It’s tacky. It’s cowardly. It’s slimy. But there are men (and women) between the ages of 14 and 65 who do it.

If a man breaks up with you via text, know that he has revealed himself to be a person of low character. Better to have that information sooner than later. Still, a break-up hurts, especially by text and even more if you were really starting to like the guy.

HERE’S HOW YOU HANDLE IT

It helps to get over a person by re-framing him in your mind. So, if “Bob” once seemed like Prince Charming and his plain-sounding name started rolling around your mouth like an award-winning Zinfandel, it’s time to call a spade a spade.

Pick out Bob’s least appealing quality (cheapness, lateness, nose hair, etc.) and change his name in your contact list from “Bob” to a genius nickname that sums him up:

Cheap Boy

Tardy Fool,

Jungle Nostril

and so on.

Or, conjure up an unfortunate memory of Bob, perhaps at a diner breakfast where he aired his political views with an errant blog of scrambled egg in his mustache:

Egg Lip

From now on, every time you run through your contact list, you will be reminded — not of Knight in Shining Armor Bob — but of Egg Lip.

You will soon find yourself thinking of Bob as Egg Lip, and nobody wants to date Egg Lip.

Nobody.

(To quickly get over Bob, this can work even better than eliminating his name from your contact list altogether. BONUS: If the clown ever contacts you again, his name will come up as Egg Lip, which might even provide you with a well-deserved laugh.)

Remember, relationships are built eye-to-eye, not via text message. If a guy is consistently too busy to see you, he’s too busy. He’s not the right man for you.

The right man will make an effort. Let him make that effort.

You’re worth it.

Netiquette: Five texts you should never send

(CNN) -- We're texting more than ever, and, like society, the texts themselves are getting worse and worse.

That's a conclusion cobbled together from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which found that the median number of texts adults send and receive in a day doubled from 2009 to 2010, and much anecdotal observation from the authors.

Read on to learn just how terrible silent cell phone users are these days, and the five texts that should never traverse that satellite-banked arc from your hands to the eyes of another.

1. "I think we should see other people."

It isn't just skittish teenagers pulling this rude move. Last year, a survey from Lab 42 found that 33% of adults (adults!) had broken up with someone via text, e-mail or Facebook. Forty percent said they "would ever" do it, indicating that 7% of the surveyed humans are soulless jerks who haven't but would hurtfully sever ties with a lover if only someone would respond to their advances.

Yes, breaking up is hard. Knowing you're going to hurt someone you cared about with your words indeed makes your stomach do some Cirque de Soleil-esque acrobatics. But shooting over a one-way missive to deliver the news for you? It's supremely cruel, because it leaves the other person cocking his or her head with Fred Willard-esque histrionics and asking, "Hey, wha' happened?" That complete lack of closure (not to mention the dearth of soothing, I-care-about-you-as-a-human-being signals you send with your voice and motions) add up to WAY more ruminating than is necessary.

Netiquette: Be careful when diagnosing your ailments online

The break-up text is only this much more noble than ghosting on someone you're dating, letting the silences grow longer and longer until you can tell yourself it was a mutual separation and then scuttle into the night like a cowardly cockroach. If you went on enough dates to call this person your boyfriend or girlfriend, he or she deserves at least a call.

2. "Will you marry me?"

A text proposal. It actually happened, people. And if that isn't innards-wrenchingly horrific enough, after it happened, Miss Manners went on to condone it. Can we please consider marriage proposals one of the few remaining bastions of old-fashioned romance, free from the lackadaisical pall that technology has cast over everything?

Unless you've rigged some clever feat that ties in the nerdy way you met, your phone should be put away, your knee should be on the pavement, and your hands should be clutching a ring, not picking a ringtone.

3. "We're thinking about going to Shortstop later but Aiden is still napping & Mona was talking abt having ppl over for a cookout. IDK if I want to be out in the heat tho since I'm still hungo from Bosco's pirate party thing last night. Are you and Weeds still... [1 of 2]"

4. "...wandering around the park or did you want to do something later? Hit me up if you see this before 10. Gonna go pass out for a while. [2 of 2]"

Texting was supposed to save us time by letting us bypass the phone call and just instantly telegraph the important stuff. But we've grown so reliant upon it that we obliviously miss, Mr. Bean-like, the conversations that could happen expeditiously over the phone.

Netiquette: An open letter to texting-crazed teens

So often, we put our thumbs to work typing out long and convoluted messages that warrant a detailed, meticulous volley of responses, when wagging our tongues would have cleared things up in 30 seconds flat. More than half of texters have "long, personal text message exchanges," according to a 2010 survey. They are all wasting time.

Our rule of (red, raw, overused) thumb: If your text is longer than two sentences and it demands a response other than a simple yes or no, just hit Call. You'll save everyone a little time and a lot of confusion.

5. [a photo of your junk]

According to a Pew Research Center study that is (according to the Times) due out later this year, 6% of American adults -- that's one in 17 upstanding citizens -- has sent a nude or nearly nude (but not "never-nude") photo on a cell phone. And 15% have received such a text. (Apparently these self-portraitists are prolific.)

Leave something to the imagination, folks.