Yeah, sure, but I'm all, like...

I'd bet that most of the men/women who had their romances collapse via text message probably began the courtship with a similar range of nuance. The clucking here seems to be that as the romance began, he was always bringing flowers to the house and foil bags of Starbucks for her mother and there was talk about getting married and moving to a house in the suburbs.

Also, Reuters is full of shit. Also, the exact quote is "one per cent of the population would use a social networking site to dump a partner". In such a context, it's hard to imagine the "partnership is something that others should mourn, anyway.

So is dumping someone via text message following in
the footsteps of corporate behavior (where Radio Shack
laid off about 400 employees via Email)?

I completely agree about what an idiotic practice this is turning out to be. My ex boyfriend dumped me over Myspace! Luckily it was in a message (private email) rather than comment (public on my webpage).

I think if you don't have the maturity to tell someone its "me not you" to their face, then you were never mature enough to be in a relationship with another person in the first place.

Never dumped/been dumped by text. Though I did have one ex who tried to start a "now that we are sleeping together, where is this going?" discussion with me via text. At the time, this might have been the first text I had ever received b/c I distinctly remember thinking: "huh; didn't know my phone did that."

Incidentally, she was a lousy lay.

I dumped someone over text message. I remember telling my co-workers and they all roared in laughter. It made for several funny conversations at work at my expense. That alone made it worth it. I wont do it again, but for some reason I thought that it was the best way to dump the guy.

Why is so much made of this? It's no tackier than a phone call or dear John letter (unless done on a public myspace or youtube; then, yeah, that disgusting) and frankly given some of the cases where the dumping party wound up dead because they were polite enough to talk to their scary ex one last time, not a bad idea. I wouldn't hesitate to do it but then I've never had any qualms about dumping anyone even if it was just that I was bored with them. If I don't want to see them any more, I just say so. Oddly, I've never been dumped. Maybe I just get bored with them too fast.

What I find much ruder are the public marriage proposals. No, it isn't romantic to ask someone on the Goodyear blimp, will you marry me or if you appear at a public event together, in front of friends and family, etc. Whenever I see these cutsey stories, I always cringe. Man, I'd embarrass the asshole big time.