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Sure, you’ve been dumped – but have you ever been zumped?
Social distancing, self-quarantining and shelter-in-place orders have separated some hopeless romantics from potential partners amid the coronavirus pandemic, but it has also created a terrible new breakup trend for those who hope to part ways with someone they started seeing before pandemic began, but are unable to do so in person: zumping.
In an essay published on Monday by BuzzFeed News, writer Julia Moser revealed that she recently split up with a man she had been dating for about two months after he called it quits over an online Zoom videoconference.
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“Am I the first person who's been dumped via zoom?” the 26-year-old wondered on Twitter last week, in a post that has since gone viral with over 63,000 likes.
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In the piece that followed, Moser acknowledged that a fizzled-out romance was “pretty low on the totem pole of problems facing our country right now” but “frustrating nonetheless,” highlighting the particular pitfalls of getting dumped during a pandemic.
“There is something particularly bruising about this happening in the midst of a global public health crisis. I can’t have my friends come over and bring me sheet cake and wine,” she wrote. “Crying over FaceTime to your sister isn’t the same as getting to wipe your snot on her shoulder [in real life].”
“It didn't help that the internet connection wasn’t great so we kept freezing, and I said, ‘We’re breaking up’ and we were!”
Though things didn’t work out between them, Moser said she was grateful her now-former flame ended their fling so honestly, describing the video conference breakup as “an incredibly decent thing for him to do.”
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Since the story went viral, The Guardian even coined a new breakup trend inspired by her plight in the age of coronavirus: zumping.
After Moser aired her grievances, scores of Twitter commenters rushed to share similarly traumatic tales of breakups, divorces and job losses amplified by technology.
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Some offered comforting words of advice, while others playfully made light of the situation and likened the emotional saga to something that that would happen to writer-protagonist Carrie Bradshaw of “Sex and the City.”
Another, meanwhile, pointed out that "zumping" doesn't always work as planned.
"Years ago I tried to dump my girlfriend via phone," he wrote. "Now been married 19 years."
