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So as you sit there and ponder the thought “OMG” this could happen to me and your heart goes all a twitter, feeling like drinking a tumbler of whatever is readily available in the house, I ask you, what are the new rules governing this era of internet everything? How should this go down and how can you emerge relatively unscathed from all the added remnants now gathering in the cloud? How does one go from being the couple of Web 2.0 to …Web no.0?”
I hereby offer a few initial suggestions and I am sure I will come up with many more, but I need to know what you, the techlover, thinks. Perhaps together we can come up with some basic framework for keeping our net presence intact as we navigate the treacherous online break up?
Rules of Disengagement for Internet-related break ups
1. Do not post a breakup blog explaining the gory details. Such things should be private, even in today’s voyeuristic world.
2. Removal of ex should be done gradually. i.e. they did not disappear from the face of the earth, just perhaps from your life or more visibly, your blog. This should be adhered to in order to avoid the inevitable onslaught of queries about your separation. Do it for the other person, if not for yourself.
3. Do not post new pictures of yourself with an ex, a new whatever or overtly salacious images in an attempt to inflict additional pain on your ex (no mater how much you think you hate them).
4. It is not recommended posting hourly, self-involved mood updates that will not only indulge the voyeurism of others, but cheapen the anguish you both feel. In a nutshell, don’t twit a twitter.
5. While sending angry emails/IM’s in the wake of your break up, do not dig yourself a hole you cannot climb out of. This means that words on a screen are forever. Permanent. Nothing is ever truly erased from the web. So pick your jabs wisely and don’t stumbleupon your own immature cruelty.
6. Do not badmouth your ex. It is beneath you.
7. Avoid “tracking” your ex’s web activity. This can only lead to obsession and worse, pathos.
8. Do not refer in any way to your suddenly, even remarkable renewed sex drive, virility, or promiscuity. This is so far beneath you as to be found somewhere deep in the Earth’s mantle.
9. Take a break from social media. We all could use one.
10. Eat, drink, be merry and do not let the bad experience disillusion you as to the viability of another Web-based relationship – we all benefit from social media, both platonic-socially, and if we are careful and a bit lucky, we may fall for another techhead again, with markedly better results.
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