|
Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind., Mike Leonard column: Digital breakups are becoming the norm in today's society
Aug 01, 2010 (Herald-Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Several months ago, a friend of mine delivered the following news to a group of us who keep in touch through the wonders of the Internet: "He dumped me by e-mail!"
We all knew she was in a tempestuous relationship with high highs and low lows. We also knew her boyfriend (can you say that about a man in his 40s?) was very smart and very accomplished. But we shared her outrage. What sort of person ends a romantic relationship with an e-mail message?
My friend could accept the breakup, but she couldn't tolerate the medium. She called the guy and called the guy and left messages, telling him that he needed to be man enough to sit down and look her in the eye and be an adult. Eventually, the guy relented and met with her. She was still saddened by the breakup, but the meeting was civil.
And she humorously referred to him as Mr. DMbyEM for months afterwards.
As it turns out, this wasn't the gee-whiz event that the rest of us thought it was. According to Indiana University researcher Ilana Gershon, this sort of thing happens all the time, at least among the younger generation. She documents and discusses the phenomenon in her new book published by the Cornell University Press, "The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media."
Gershon, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Culture, interviewed 72 people at length about relationships that had failed and discovered that as technology changes, so do the rules of engagement -- or disengagement.
"One of the odd things I found was that everyone under 30 was getting dumped by e-mail," she said last week. "No Twitter, or at least, not yet. But I had a Skype breakup. Facebook breakups. Voice-mail breakups. One woman got a letter on nice stationery, and she was very offended. I think he even used a fountain pen."
I think the fountain pen was a nice touch, myself. Call me old-fashioned.
Breakups have always been messy, no doubt about that. But Gershon's research seems to be yet another example of what Alvin Toffler predicted in the 1970 book "Future Shock." Our social institutions, not to mention social graces, can't keep up with the speed of technological change.
Gershon found a few doozies in her interviews. One young woman looked at her Facebook profile one day and learned that she was no longer in a relationship but single. Her ex-boyfriend not only changed his own Facebook profile, but changed hers as well. The couple's friends potentially learned of the breakup before she did.
In another case, a man in his 30s was away from home on a business trip when he opened a two-sentence e-mail from his wife, informing him that she wanted a divorce.
And if that wasn't staggering enough, he later learned that his estranged wife had drained their joint banking account, changed the locks on the doors to their home and refused to speak with him by any means other than e-mails to his work account.
After considerable sleuthing, he found out his wife had been carrying on an affair with a co-worker at her office.
Gershon steers clear of being judgmental about all of this. After all, Neil Sedaka sang "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" in 1962, long before e-mail, Facebook or any of the numerous ways people communicate today. And, obviously, it's never been easy for humans or other species, although I have no direct knowledge of monkey love.
Gershon said that even young people who have grown up with the latest technologies don't quite know what to do.
"A lot of them say they have to ask their friends, 'What should I do?'" she said.
There is no definitive answer, but an emerging consensus seems to be that a person should employ the same medium that the instigator used. Although most people, even the younger crowd, do seem to feel that the old-fashioned face-to-face seems to be the best and most honorable way of ending a relationship.
An interesting side note to the IU professor's research is that Americans seem more interested in the "how" of breakups rather than the "why." "I have no idea why this is," she said.
But the whole concept of this brave new world of breakups -- make that this chicken new world of breakups -- is fascinating to a lot of people. When I spoke with Gershon Friday, she said she'd just gotten off the phone from an radio interviewer from Ottawa, Canada.
Stories about her new book have already been published in Chinese, French, Italian and Indonesian languages.
"It's a little bit perplexing for me. I've tried to do research that is politically important before. This is really work I consider to be interesting but not all that politically relevant," she said.
"Some people say that this indicates that people are becoming increasingly rude, but I'm not sure that's the case. I don't think massive incivility has suddenly hit society. Breakups have always been painful. We just have many more means of communicating now than we ever did before."
To see more of the Herald-Times or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, Herald-Times,
Bloomington, Ind. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For
more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune
Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail
services@mctinfoservices.com, or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States,
call +1 312-222-4544).
[ Back To MobilityTechzone Homepage's Homepage ]
|
COMMUNITIES
Technology Marketing Corp. 1997-2011 Copyright. | Ph: 800-243-6002, 203-852-6800; Fx: 203-853-2845 | Contact us 