Joey deVilla is speculating that breaking up by email, usually on the part of the guy (is that redundant? I wonder if anyone has even collected the stats?) is the result of exposure to office-mediated communications, and especially Powerpoint.

He goes on to detail the next obvious move:

As a counter-note, though, some months ago there was a piece on breaking up by SMS, suggesting that the rise of mediated breakups in relationships may be an effect of the rist of mediated communication in relationships generally.

(Tangent: After years of relationships conducted in part through emotionally laden email, chat, and even coded posts in public fora, when I began dating my wife, I made a conscious decision to put nothing in mail more fraught than places and times to meet. The fact that we are now married and have two kids means that this method is sure-fire, based on a sample size of 1.)

(Tangent 2: Was talking to Matt Jones, who sends his fiance messages through his choice of del.icio.us links, as she knows she’s subscribed to him. More proof, as if any were needed, that the human condition affects everything it touches.)

(Tangent 3: The Group Hug site for online confessions specifically tries to filter out posts that attempt to set up user-to-user communication, showing how hard people will try to respond to one another, even in a site designed solely for one-way, one-time use. Curious that they call it Group Hug, since they are intentionally disabling any mediated analog to a real group hug…)