Love, Shift, Delete: Saying Bye-Byte In a Digital Age
A few days after breaking up with his boyfriend, Jeff Ramone couldn't resist logging on to Friendster -- a popular online social community -- to check out his ex's profile page. Two things caught him off guard: Mr. Ramone had already been deleted as a "friend" and his ex had updated his status to "single" from "in a relationship."
"I was about to do the same," says Mr. Ramone, a 32-year-old massage therapist from the Chicago area. "He just beat me to it."
Mr. Ramone then did his part to sever ties: He removed his former partner as a "buddy" on his computer's real-time Instant Messenger service, erased his information from his email contact list, and purged his cellphone number.
Splitting up with a boyfriend or girlfriend wasn't always this complicated. But the digital age has bound people together in ever more complex ways, making it tough for lovers old and new to completely disconnect. Among the rituals: bowing out of email lists, updating online profiles, and clearing cellphone memories of phone numbers and old text messages.
The electronic connections can endure, awkwardly, long after the breakup. Susan Plummer and Brian Snow called it quits a few months before both landed Peace Corps volunteer posts abroad in the summer of 2003. The two barely kept in touch. Then in November of 2004, Mr. Snow, 26, copied her on a mass email about how he'd proposed to someone else. "My offer was accepted after some hysterics and we plan on getting married when we return to the States," Mr. Snow wrote.
In the ensuing months, Ms. Plummer, 25, says Mr. Snow sent several batches of photos as part of mass emails: the engagement party, holiday travels and various pictures of Mr. Snow's fiancee. As a final indignity, she received a Web link to 352 images from the wedding.
Mr. Snow says he thought the mass emails were a way to stay in touch "without having to talk to the other person directly." The emails eventually stopped, and the two now say they are on good terms.
Courtney Reed, a 30-year-old economic-development consultant in New York, says she met someone through Jewish dating site JDate.com and went on just one date before politely brushing off the suitor. A day later, she received a mass email from the gentleman celebrating the birth of his nephew. The next week she received two more emails recommending accessories for Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod. Ms. Reed had seen enough, and asked to be removed from his email list.
Some exes are unwittingly reunited in cyberspace. One Philadelphia couple of 29 years got divorced and both the ex-husband and ex-wife posted profiles on JDate.com, entering in details such as their age, education, marital status and location. Shortly after signing up, the ex-wife says, she received a message from the site declaring her a match with her ex-husband.
The cellphone is usually among the first items that need cleansing. Wireless-handset maker Nokia Corp. even touches on the idea in a TV ad that features a woman named Jill, who says cellphone-number deletion is a sort of post-breakup therapy.
"It is so great because when you go to the phone and you delete [the number] and your phone asks 'Are you sure?' You look at your phone and you're like, oh yeah, I'm sure," she says in the ad.
Forgetting to delete a former partner's digits can make for some awkward moments. A month after breaking up with his girlfriend, Steven Rovery, a 23-year-old New York-area graphic artist, called his ex from a bar in what he calls "a drunk incident." With her number still stored in his phone, he instinctively scrolled down to her name and hit "send." He says he got no answer -- and was embarrassed the next morning when his ex, whose phone indicated he had called, sent him a scolding text message.
Even when a breakup is complete, the Internet makes it much easier -- and therefore more tempting -- to find out what a former partner is up to. People track down old flames using search engines like Google and they troll wedding-registry sites such as TheKnot.com to see who their past honeys have ended up marrying.
Debra Burrell, a New York-based therapist and founder of the Mars-Venus Counseling Center, says people check social networking sites such as Friendster and News Corp.'s MySpace.com, as well as Internet dating haunts, to see if their ex has met someone new. "They monitor the other person's progress in re-entering the dating world," Ms. Burrell says.
Among the breakup tips offered by the Web site
www.soyouvebeendumped.com are several technological tasks, including purging cellphone numbers and "buddy list" handles on instant-messenger services. The site, launched in 2000 and based in Glasgow, Scotland, also says old emails should be deleted or burned to a CD so obsessive types "won't be tempted to continually reread each one over and over."
"Today's information technologies record such a large amount of data, often with little or no effort from users," says Jonathan Lillie, an associate professor of new media at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "To delete someone from your life can actually be quite a hassle."
Mr. Lillie, 33, recently went through a divorce and says his own case is instructive. He still needs to clean up some "digital skeletons" such as photos of his ex-wife and the files she kept on his computer. He'll then have to update his password on most computers and Internet sites, which is currently his ex-wife's nickname.
"I still haven't changed it, just because it's going to be a big pain," Mr. Lillie says. "Although I know eventually I'll push myself to do it. 数字时代如何说分手
和男朋友分手几天后，杰夫?雷蒙(Jeff Ramone)忍不住登录一个热门交友网站Friendster，去查看他前男友在那里的交友页面。有两件事情让他很吃惊：前男友已经将雷蒙从好友列表中删除，而且他的情感状态也从“热恋”变为“单身”。
“我刚想这么做，”32岁的芝加哥按摩师雷蒙说，“却给他抢了个先。”
于是雷蒙也如法炮制：他将前男友从即时聊天软件的好友列表中删除，从电子邮件通讯簿中删除，并将他的手机号清除。
和恋人分手并非总这么麻烦。不过在数字时代，人们以越来越复杂的方式相互接触，因此分手后要完全切断联系也更加困难。要做的事情很多，比如清理电子邮件，更新网上档案，清除手机内存储的号码和短信等。
即时分手后，双方的数字联系还能尴尬地维持很长一段时间。苏珊?布朗默(Susan Plummer)和布莱恩?斯诺(Brian Snow)在2003年夏天分手，几个月后都加入了美国驻海外的维和部队，两人之间几乎再没有任何联系。然而，在2004年11月，26岁的布莱恩在一份给朋友的群发邮件中加入了苏珊的电邮地址，而邮件内容说的是布莱恩如何向别人求婚的事情，其中有这样一段话：“她欣喜若狂地接受了我的求婚，我们计划回美国后结婚。“
25岁的苏珊说，在接下来的几个月里，布莱恩又通过群发邮件给她发了几批照片：在订婚典礼上的照片，度假时的照片，以及布莱恩未婚妻的照片等等。最后还来了一次重击，她收到了一个网络链接，里面有352张布莱恩婚礼庆典的照片。
布莱恩说，他觉得群发邮件是一个与朋友保持联系同时又“不必和每个人直接说话”的好方法。最终，布莱恩给苏珊发来的邮件停止了，两人表示双方还是好聚好散。
30岁的珂妮?瑞德(Courtney Reed)在纽约从事经济发展咨询工作，她说自己通过犹太人交友网站JDate.com认识了一个人，约会过一次就决定不再发展。然而第二天，她就收到那个人庆贺他侄子的生日的一封群发邮件；第二个星期，她又收到两封来信，向她推荐苹果电脑公司(Apple Computer Inc.) iPod随身听的周边产品。珂妮忍无可忍，要求那个人将她的地址从其通讯簿中删除。
有些分手的恋人在虚拟世界里又不期而遇。费城有对29岁的夫妇，两人离婚后都在JDate.com发表了自己的交友档案，其中包括年龄、学历、婚姻状况和居住地等。发表后不久，女方说她收到网站发来的信息，声称给她找到了合适的另一半，而那个人竟然就是她的前夫。
手机通常是分手后需要最先清除对方信息的物品。手机制造商诺基亚公司(Nokia Corp.)甚至有这样一个广告创意：一个名叫吉尔的女人说，清除对方的手机号码是分手后的最佳疗伤方法之一。
“这种感觉很好，因为删除号码时，手机问我‘是否确定？’我看著手机说‘是的，我很确定。’”吉尔在广告节目中说道。
忘记删除前恋人的手机号可能会给自己带来麻烦。23岁的纽约平面设计师史蒂夫?罗弗瑞(Steven Rovery)几个月前和女友分手了。有一天，他在酒吧喝醉了，因为手机里还有前女友的号码，就下意识地给她发了条短信。前女友当时没有回复，第二天却发来短信谴责他的行为，让他尴尬不已。
即使两人顺利分手，互联网也使双方刺探对方近况变得更容易，因此也就更让人忍不住要刺探。人们可以通过Google等搜索引擎探寻以往恋人的情况，或通过婚姻登记网站TheKnot.com等查询以前的恋人是否已经步入婚姻殿堂。
黛布拉?伯尔(Debra Burrell)是纽约的一位治疗师，也是“火星金星心理咨询中心”(Mars-Venus Counseling Center)的创始人。她说有些人会在Friendster和新闻集团(News Corp)的MySpace.com等交友网站以及一些网上配对服务上查询自己的前恋人是否找到了新伴侣。“他们观察对方在分手后的感情生活方面是否有所进展。”黛布拉说道。
www.soyouvebeendumped.com网站上为分手后的恋人提供了几点建议，包括清除对方手机号码，从好友列表和聊天软件中删除其名字等等。该网站建于2000年，注册地在苏格兰的格拉斯高。它还建议应该删除以往的邮件，或把它们复制到光盘上去，这样分手后情绪激动的人不至于一遍又一遍地读著老邮件，沉迷于痛苦之中。
“现代的信息技术能让我们轻松地记录大量数据，”夏威夷大学(University of Hawaii)新媒体学的助教乔纳森?李烈(Jonathan Lillie)，“但清除掉一些记录时却让我们很伤脑筋。”
33岁的乔纳森最近刚刚离婚，他说自己的经历可以给人一些启迪。他还需要清除一些“数字残骸”，比如电脑上他前妻的照片和文档等。然后他还要更改大部份的电脑和上网登录密码，因为以前他用的密码都是前妻的昵称。
“我还没有更换密码，因为这个工程太浩大了，”乔纳森说，“不过我知道，最终我还是要改的。”
