It seems there is quite literally nothing that can happen in this world without a new dating trend being spurted out. We’ve already seen one come out of the current pandemic: ‘co-vating’, which we take pride in coining ourselves here at DMARGE.
But while that refers to how singletons are having to adapt to a new way of meeting someone virtually during lockdown, the latest trend known as ‘zumping’, refers to how people can get out of their relationship via the same virtual method.
The term was coined by The Guardian (via news.com.au), in response to a tweet posted by freelancer journalist Julia Moser. Moser sent out a tweet asking, “Am I the first person to be dumped via Zoom?”. Zoom + dumping = ‘zumping’. The tweet has garnered 63,000 likes at the time of writing, and while we couldn’t find any replies from users claiming that they too know Julia’s pain, a fair few detail their experiences of being dumped or divorced via other online platforms.
am i the first person who’s been dumped via zoom?
— Julia Moser (@juliamoserrrr) April 9, 2020
While we may refer to this new trend as ‘irresistible’ in our headline, it’s with good reason. For many, the idea of breaking up with someone can be extremely daunting. You know you’re probably going to break their heart, or at the very least, lose their friendship and be on the receiving end of several expletives from the woman in question – and subsequently her friends after she tells them.
So cutting ties via message, or in this case, a face to face video call is therefore seen as the easier way out. Julia does give the calamitous Casanova some credit in a follow-up article on Buzzfeed, saying that even though she didn’t expect to be broken up with, she could at least admire the fact he had the decency to do it face-to-face, rather than just by way of a message. A fact backed up by some other replies to Julia’s tweet.
“He didn’t ghost me, or gaslight me and tell me everything was fine when I could feel him pulling away.”
“He was honest and forthright, it was an incredibly decent thing for him to do, and I am miserable. There is no easy way around it.”
To give him further credit, we’re meant to be staying inside as much as possible, so heading over to her house to do the dumping wouldn’t have been seen as “essential” travel in the eyes of the law.
So if you’ve found yourself virtually tied down to someone new during quarantine, but can’t see it going the distance, zumping may be the best of a bad bunch when it comes to bringing things to an end.