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Ever been dumped via video call? Thanks to coronavirus, that’s now a reality for many. Nothing stings quite like a pivotal Zoom meeting with an ex-lover.
Let’s be honest. Dating is hard enough in normal life, let alone with this new, constant fear that you may infect the elderly with a deadly disease every time you go outside.
Coronavirus has hit all of us where it hurts when it comes to social interaction. Our Friday nights are now spent in group video calls trying to impress our friends with homemade quizzes, or drinking wine alone in our bedrooms like we’re on a budget version of Love Island. Except there’s no audience, or other potential single people, and it’s just you and the television.
Video chats are now the new normal. Need to talk to a boss? Hit up Zoom. Have a work meeting scheduled? Hit up Zoom. Trying to also date or talk to your romantic partner? Hit. Up. Zoom.
This new, uncomfortable reliance on a video messaging app extends beyond friendships and client meetings – it’s also affecting our ability to break off relationships or let people down. You don’t have the privilege of just being able to wander into any old park and make someone sad now. You have to send them a Zoom link via Messenger, like some sort of sociopath who can’t recognise basic social etiquette.
It’s meant that many online writers have started describing their experiences with being dumped via video calls. Twenty somethings are having flashbacks to being fourteen on MSN, crying down a webcam in their childhood bedrooms and asking their parents to leave them alone, while the tabloid press has coined a new word: ‘Zumping’.
Twitter users have also come together to poke fun at their own virtual video turmoil, highlighting new, quirky relationship problems such as bandwidth size, Zoom bugs, and the inability to correctly start a meeting without the whole thing going haywire. Coronavirus has meant that our intimate connections with one another are now dependent on technical know-how – for better or worse. This tweet by Julia Moser has been liked over 60 thousand times, with thousands of others replying with their own tragic Zoom tales.
am i the first person who's been dumped via zoom?
— Julia Moser (@juliamoserrrr) April 9, 2020
Hopefully this whole pandemic thing won’t stretch on for an absolute eternity, and we can all go back to hurting our soon-to-be ex’s feelings in person, like decent folk. For now, we’ll have to make do with our bedrooms and a lonely drink to get us by when things get a little rough.
Now, anybody for an MSN chat?
