Our generation has changed a lot since the last. Like a politician with a secret family and political agenda, we multitask without the slightest hesitation. Creeping knee-deep in someone else’s Facebook during lecture? Easy. Texting and driving? All in a day. I often yield at yellow lights just to finish a text about the delicious breakfast sandwich I’m eating.
However, the hardest spank to the Boomers we’ve served thus far is our inability to deliver a proper breakup. Or rather, the way we have mastered the cowardice that goes into terminating a relationship that, at best, involved weekly Domino’s delivery nights. Who needs a backbone when your thumbs can do all the talking? One text and the thing is done.
The message is still the same – you’ve gotten fat in places I didn’t think possible, you’re more redheaded than I care to admit, and so on and so forth. It’s the delivery that has revolutionized the way we say, “it’s over.” Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg (who never dealt with too many breakups as he was too busy banging HTML codes) we can drop our (in)significant others in a cyber second.
What are the options? Well, you could always send a heartfelt, spell-checked message about why you need to never talk to this person again and promptly de-friend them and all mutual friends.
I like the relationship status change. The Underground Railroad of breakups, the status change is sly and most effective overnight. You slipped into bed and the next morning awake to “WTF?!” texts from friends and your “cool” alcoholic aunt. That sun-of-a-nutcracker switched his Facebook to “single” while you were busy sleep-eating.
Perhaps you’ve learned the hard way that every camera wielding sorority sister of yours is actually a plotting paparazzo in Lululemon pants. Take my advice, set an alarm early Saturday morning and swiftly un-tag and un-shame any evidence online of last night’s debauchery. You can only play the anemic card so long until there’s picture proof of those hickies.
For the enduring, long-distance lovers there comes a time when your patience runs thin and pointing your private parts towards a computer camera begins to lose its novelty. You could opt for the Facebook farewell, or muster up some cajones and do the thing face to face. Kind of. Skype’s tagline, “Take a deep breath” is wise counseling given the imminent cyber showdown. Forget domestic phone calls, Skype helps you reach across oceans to rip out someone’s heart. Then, as soon as the damage is done, you can close your computer screen not realizing you never took into account the time difference in Spain. No wonder he was so tired and confused. If you’re looking for moral support, invite your friends over to break and bake your relationship together. José won’t have the slightest clue your posse is sitting off camera.
Kind of like the way my mom still calls marijuana “dope,” our parents are left behind on the rhetoric of modern relationships. Here’s a quiz – read these reasons for breaking up to an older person and see if they can keep up:
- “It all just got so…Brokeback,” (definitely gay)
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“He was poking Julie. And Elena,” (cyber canoodling)
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“Ugh. All he wore were deep V’s,” (offensive clothing)
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“It was like sleeping with Amy Winehouse,” (not much effort in the bedroom)
What I’d love to witness is a generational turn around. I want you to drag your raggedy ass over to my apartment and humiliate me in front of an audience. If you only make it as far as the intercom, at least you showed some chutzpah. Either way, we’re going to look back on this relationship with little to no memory of it. “That kid – who I dated during my nonprescription eyeglass phase in college – what was his name?” At least this way there’s no paper trail of our shortcomings as a couple.
The next time you decide to dismount and dismantle a flame, take the high road. Literally. To their house. Granted, physical injury is likely but it’s a petty price to pay for looking her in the eye and admitting, “We had a really good thing but now that Zachary Quinto is out I’m gonna try that on for size.”
At best, our parents’ generation has left us with a rude lack of Social Security and some relationship wisdom. My mom’s got a point. Let’s curb our social ineptitude and, “lay off the dope and MyFace.”
Kacy Emmett is a senior in the College of Communication and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at kcemmett@bu.edu.
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