Technology: The Communication Killer
A guy once broke up with me over e-mail. I was confused, incredulous, and hurt, and we weren’t dating. Yep, that’s right. I can’t imagine how crappy it would have felt if we had in fact been dating. Kevin and I had flirted at a party. I thought he was gay, so I was running my unstoppable fag hag game on him. Turns out, that schtick is effective on some straight men, too. Who knew?
After the party, he got my e-mail and struck up an e-flirtation. It was fun and flattering. Then one day after a long weekend, opened up my work e-mail account to find the big break up letter. I forwarded on to friends flung about the globe as a lark, tagging on a self-rightious line or two of sarcastic incredulity.
“OMG, this guy just broke up with me over email, AND WE WEREN’T EVEN DATING! Hahahaha!”
This anecdote has always been the evidence I’ve relied upon to argue that technology is partially responsible for the erosion of personal relationships.
A friend of mine now has the dubious distinction of a better example: her husband texted her that he wanted a separation effective ASAP. This wasn’t out of the blue, but a text?
