DIIL

10',11

com,o ' th l

M"I1 Y

II" .....d lt$al

' wllh

In t UII

rules I

"nd rrItUTlC'h

nslO

lI" n., C1he' I tuIm p or t

1Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover

M EDI A ID EO LOGI ES A N D

I DraMS OF P RACTICE

Toward the end of the in terview, just as the thir ty-someth ing

Oliv ier and I began to say OU T good-byes, he to ld me tha t in

the end, it was the way his wife (soon to be ex-wife) kept e-m ailing

his work account that was particularly distressing. They were dis­so lving a marriage, and thi s d isentang ling requi red discussion.

mo st of which was laki ng place by e-mail. He was forced to create

a personal folder for all the e- mails she sen t to his work account,

the on ly personal folder he had in this pa rtic ular e-mail account.

No mailer how oft en he e -mailed her personal e-mail accounr.no

matter how often he sent messages from his own personal e- mail

acco unt, she insisted on using the acco unts they had both set aside

for their professio nal lives.And when she sent these e- mails, she al­

ways sent them when she was at work. He could tell from th e time

atta ched to each e-mail. The bou nda ries were clear- he was no

longer allowed to co ntac t her personal accou nt or interact with

her du ring her personal t ime.

O f cou rse th is probably wasn't what bothered O livier the most

about the who le process. He was getti ng a d ivorce because his wife

had sent him an e-mai l ou t of the blue asking for a d ivorce and

offering no reason s while he was away on a business trip. It turned

ou t to be a no nn egot iab le decision. After the two -lin e e- mail

Fifty Ways to Leave Yo ur Lover t 7

anno uncing that she wanted a d ivorce, she would communicate

with him o nly bye-mo il and occasional angry pho ne calls. She

d osed their joi nt bank accoun ts whi le he was gone, so he ret urned

to no money and no place to stay. For weeks he had no explanatio n

that mad e sense of why she wanted a d ivo rce, altho ugh grad ually

he learned of another man, someo ne she had met at work. AU the

comm unica tion he had with her gave him no clear ins ights into

why she was doing what she was doing. Knowing another ma n

existed d id not seem to explain eno ugh fo r h im.

She was vio lating allthc shared o rde r tha t they ca refully, or even

perha ps accidentally, created together- when they spo ke in French

Il l' English together, whe n they sent e-mails to their friend s from

their joint e-ma il acco unt, o r when they wou ld e- mail someo ne

Irorn their indi vid ual personal accounts. Th e more O livier deta iled

how divo rce was affecting how he and his wife/ex-wife were using

media to communicate, the more apparen t it becam e that the co u­

ple had developed together a system for indi cating tha t some mes­

e.rgcs were formal, some info rmal, some professional, and some

Intimate. They used e-mail accounts, phones, and different lan­

Wlilgesall to create int ertwined ways of add ing info rmatio n to the

message-e-n message from their jo int e-mail acco unt would signa l

omething different tha n if that same message had bee n sent from

their indiv id ual e-mail accoun ts. In e-mailing his wo rk account,

hili wife/ex-w ife was reject ing all the yea rs of chosen habits that

thl'y had created togeth er just th rou gh how the y e-mailed . So the

unseemly di sorder tha t O livier experienced with these e-rnails to

hl ~ work acco unt -these weekly, sometimes daily, reminders of

how her decisio ns at ever y level had transformed his life's plans

Into unwelcom e chaos-c-captu rcd the miser y of th is dissolution.

Ime the moment she e-nmiled him to demand a divo rce, Olivie r

n pl,lined that he felt non e of his wishes were respected; send ing

You Ca n't Text Message Breakup

I. This is part, but only part, of what linguistic anthropologists have calledmt lapragmutics (see Silverstein 2001).

~ia con tain seco nd·orde r in forma tion because of peo ple's

media ideo logies, people's understan dings of>how e-mail, ph on e,

19Fifty Ways to Lea1'e Your Lover

So then he texts me cu t of the blue:'" am bad atlife," Which is howhe talks, so ,wrote back: '" know, b UI why?"

"Because ' wasn't kidding about Rianna this whole time."

I Il ~ I an t messaging (1M), and other med ia add important infonna­

'lUll to th e message. Let me give you a co ncrete exam ple of when

someo ne's media ideology got in th e way of interpreting th e sen ­

uusncss of a text message. This is a sto ry th at Halle, an undcrgrad ­

1I;II e, told me toward th e end of an intervi ew, when she suddenly

rcrnernbered ano the r sto ry abo ut texting. Halle and Do ug had

heen a couple for a nu mber o f weeks. Th ey met in a class where

they both also became friends with Rianna. Rianna always st ruck

Halle as a little bit off-she was o ne o f th ose people who always

seemed 10say so me th ing sligh tly un expected and awkward, so me ­

thing tha t made the o ther peopl e in the conversation sto p and

scratch th eir heads abo ut how to co nt inue the conversation. As

Holle and Do ug started getting togeth er, th ey started jok ing abo ut

Rranna'ssocia l gracelessness-most o f thi s by text message. After a

while, Halle began teasin g Do ug by text th at he was sec retly infatu­wted with Rianna. This text joking ca rried on fo r a few weeks. Then

IIoug texted Halle, tellin g her he had 10 break up with her becausehe really was in love with Rianna. Th is was by text, a medium that

Ilalle had always used for joki ng. Texting was never a medium th at

Halle used to convey serious information such as "I am breaking

up with you." So she could n't un derstand th e message at first. O n

the one hand, it was a com plete surprise: There was no im rncdi­

utcly pr ior conversat ion the message could be referring to. O n the

III her han d, the o nly conversa tion th ey had ever had by text abou t

Rianna was o ne tha t jo ked about desire. She respo nded as though

IJoug was still joking. He tcxtcd her back th at he wasn't, tha t he

was completely serious. Halle narrates:

The Breakup 2.018

messages o nly to his work e-mail was a sm all example th at seemed

to reverberat e and po in t to all the others, beginn ing with thee- mail requesting a divorce.

Olivier had been using the possibilities made available bye-mail­

multiple accounts-to so rt his co m m unication. His wife/ex- wife

was refusing to accede to this system of classifyin g communlcn

rion. In short , she was sendi ng informatio n through her cho ice o f

medium (e- mail ami work account ) as much as by th e content ofher messages. Th is double co m m unicat ion in the message is pos­

sible only because of O livier's, o r anyone's, media ideologies. As

mention ed in th e introd uctio n, peop le's media ideologies-their

beliefs about how a medium com m unicates and st ruc tu res com­

munication-makes a perso nal e-mail account di fferent from awork e-mail account , o r a text message different from a phone call.The differ ence o ften lies not in the actual message, but in people's

understandings of th e med ia. Media ideologies ar e responsible for

the ways in which second-o rde r in formatio n works (sec chapter 4) ,

Second-order information refers to the information th at can guide

you into understand ing how part icul a r words and statements

sho uld be int erpreted .' O ne never sends a message witho ut the

message being acco mpanied by seco nd-orde r information ; that is,

witho ut indi cati o ns about how th e sende r would like the messagereceived.

IInllll

hOC

:H \ \ h

Import. ':01 II' Ch,

II .tI 't " I I

The second-o rder communication-what Halle understand s it

means 10 communicate this kind of information by text- seems

to her to be at odds with what the words of the text message were

abo ut. For Halle, the medium was at odds with the message. She

had to do some follow-up investigation by asking him if he was

kidd ing so that she could decide what interpretation she should

finally give to the messages they were exchanging. In the end,

Halle dec ided thai he had behaved badly by com municating this

to her by text, so badly that she stopped communicating with him

entirely.

How Halle understands texting as a medium shapes the ways

in which she responds to Doug's message. The textin g was sup

posed 10 give second-o rder disclaimers to the message-s-carried

along with the message was th is imaginary additional frame urg­

ing the receiver to und erstand that nothin g said in this medium is

serious because texting is not a serious medi um. Halle feels thai

Doug violates this tacit assumption-he says serious things in a

medium that she considers appro priate only for the most casual

li nd joking of conversations. Let's not forget thai Doug tells Halle

tlMI he wants to break up with her for Rian ua, a woman she doesn't

respect and fi nds off-putt ing. Th is too is part of the story. But it is

Halle's med ia ideo logy thai in her own account affects how she de­

udcs to treat Dou g afterward. She decides not 10 keep communi­

" Hi nS with someo ne who texts this kind of information , and thu s

In her mind behaves badly. When Doug tried to get back together

repeatedly (by texting, not through face-to-face communication),

. he turned him down . I am not saying Halle was wron g or right.

Instead, I am pointing to how important media ideologies can be

III shaping how people actually interp ret the messages they receive.

( mucn t isn't everything; media ideologies matter.

Sometimes when people talk about ideologies, they talk abo ut

hehcfs that mystify, that keep someone fro m understanding how

things truly are. The term ideologydocs not have that connotation

hlr me. Media ideologies are not true or false. An e-mail conversa­

tion is not , in its essence, more forma l th an an instant-message

«uwersation-c-o r less hon est or spo ntaneous, or mo re calculated.

Uul some people believe that e-mail is more formal, more dishon­

n l, and more calculated, and th is affects the ways they send and

Interpret e-mail messages. l}nderstand ing people's media ideolo­

,,,,:s can give insighls into how utterances are received, and why

IWQple choose to reply in part icular ways. But studying media ide­

nlogies will not give insights into what is renlly being communi­

rned as opposed to what peop le believe is being communicated.

11is !l2' an ana lytical tool for discerni ng truth or reality; instead,

It is but o~ analytical tool for understanding the ways in which

III mmunication is SOC ia ll y constructed and socially interpreted.

Understanding me ia 1 co ogles IS ccn ra a lin erstan lIlg l OW

uun municmion happens, especially now when there are so many

Jlm~ ible media from which 10 choose.

" u

"'°1t 'f1v'i

"";\\'11

tl I fi

'I.Ii.", .1

",n

'I

20 The Brcak!lp 2.0

And I was like"yeah, right, haheha."And he S.1yS: "no really, I wasn't kidding."[Halle interrupts recounting the texts to point out] These are all

text messages.[He continues) "No really, I really like her."I was like- wait, are we still kidding?That is what I said, "Are we

still kidd ing?"And he said, "No, [ talked to one of my best girlfriends from

home, and she said that it's not fair 10 keep seeing you the wholelime I am thinking about her."

And I am likt'-what is going on?These are text messages aboutsomething thnt we have been joking about, and I have no ideawhat is going on. I am completely out of the loop. . . .50 that was it.

I haven't talked to him since.

Fifty Ways to Leave YOllr Lover 21

Th e " How" of Breaking Up

Why do people talk about the medium of a breakup? In my

int erviews, I learn ed abo ut peo ple's med ia ideo logies fro m th eir

emo t ionally cha rged sto ries about end ings. I was find ing o ut about

how they th o ught the me d ia tha t were used affected the co m m uni

ca lio n when the co nversat ions were aUabout love o r desire and its

loss. Peo ple were talking abou t approp riaten ess all th e t ime, abo ut

why o ne mediu m might be app ropr iate or inap pr op riate fo r ending a relat ionshi p. Some times I talked to people about how certain

technologies had co nt r ibuted to ending relation ships; fo r exam ple,

how sha ring passwo rds had , in retrospect , become th e first step in

des troy ing a relat ionship. I talked to co llege students abo ut end ing

fr iendsh ips as well, abou t the d ifferences between endi ng ro man­

tic relat ions h ips and end ing fr iendshi ps. What I now know abo ut

people's me d ia ideolo gies is inti mately linked to wha t they said

about diffe ren t medi a as a mean s for co m m unicat ing abou t end

ing relationshi ps.

Talking about how peo ple choose to end a relation sh ip m ay bea co m mo n American way to talk about b reakups. When I was d is­

cuss ing this project with another anthro pologist, Ray McDermott,

in a tea shop in Palo Alto, he recalled when he and his stude nts

had interv iewed Ame ricans about bein g in a fam ily in the early

1980s. He said that when peo ple talked abo ut divorce, man y fo­

cused o n how th ings were said, wha t wo rds were used. At th e t ime.

there were n' t so many media to cho ose from-peo ple wo uld talk

in person , call on a land line o r write a letter. Ray said that peo ple

tended to describe th eir sense of outrage. inju stice, and griev­

ance in terms o f how so meo ne had ended the relationship. not

IIUlI the relat io nship was end ing. Th e resentment tha t people were

willing to voice about end ing relatio ns hips all revolved aro und the

23fifty Ways 10 Leave Your Lover

lonn of the end ing. When they wou ld narrate how the relation­

.hlp ended. they wo uld focus o n wha t was said. In my interviews,

Ihl\ held true as well. Turning to the medi a used is just an exten­

.Ion of a U.S. tendency to d iscuss brea ku ps by descri bing the way

lucakups took place.

Whe n people focus o n the " how" of a b reak up, pa r ticular as­

pl'LlS of a med ium become im po rtan t- whether it is too forma l

III too in forma l. whe the r it allows for intona tion, conversationa l

turn -taking, circ ulat ion o f the breaku p tex t, explana tion, and so

un. In my interviews, so me med ia were gene rally acknowledged

wbe deficient in o ue way or ano ther. Whe n people explained to

tnc the p rob lems with tcxt ing, as I me ntioned in the introduct ion ,

they often focused o n how b rief text messages had to be. Break up s

should idea lly be adequately expla ined, and how much ca n one

illtually say in 160 cha rac ters? In add ition, some peo ple insisted ,

I{'XI messages were fo r dec iding only the most casua l o f arra nge­

1lll' IHS such as when o ne should mcct for d inner o r who else m igh t

want to go to th e movies. Fo r these peopl e. text messaging is too

Informal for so mething as serious or important as a b reaku p.

Formality and Info rmal ity: Assessing Media

The formality o r informa lity of a me d iu m de pends o n people's

media ideologies; there is no thing inherent in a medium to make

It more formal or info rmal than any ot her med ium . Th e kind of

Informality people agree to attri bute to a particular medium , such

ll~ rcxti ng, will sha pe when it is approp riate to use tha t me d ium.

While text messages migh t be too info rmal for a b reakup, they

often had th e right level o f info rmality for sta rt ing to flirt with

someone. Wome n insisted to me that if they me t someone who

W,IS inte rested in them , they would exchange pho ne num bers, but

TIre Breukllp2.022

2. Even the one person I interviewed who tho ught I was clearly very 01\\fashioned for suggesting that texting was not acceptable as a breakup mediumalso told me in deta il abou t how casual many of her relationships were. In till'case, part of what seemed 10 help textin g be 50 acceptable was the ways in whkhirs informa lity helped to emphasize her relationships' casualness.

only to text each ot her. Calling would express too much interest;

calling wo u ld be too forward a move. But texting was considered

to carry low enough stakes that one co uJd begin an excha nge with

the righ t level o f ambig uity, unclear whethe r the exchange is about

friendsh ip or desire. As Summer suggested in her interview, db

cussing th e text message she saved th at a cute m an had sent her I

half hour after the ir first conversatio n: "The good thing about tex

ti ng is th at it's that nice in-bet ween between calling and not doing

anyth ing. It's not so desperate,"

It is thi s very casualness that makes texting a problematic me

diu m fo r break ing up. One co nnects to som eo ne in it ially using

textin g becau se people presume that texting reveals so litt le about

the depth o r serio usness of one 's emot io ns. As a result, it is hard ly

appropriate as a med ium for breaking up. What is caution in

o ne's cho ice of media in the ini tial co ntact beco mes cowa rd ice ut

the end .

Tcxting's b revity and informality also affects the ways texti ng l\

actu ally used in a breakup. Here Iwant to d istingui sh between media

ideology and p ractice. Wh en people told me abo ut their media

ideo log ies of texting, they would stress how inappropriate texting

was as a med iu m for breaking up.' Sometimes, however, when they

talked about how text messages actua lly played a role in th eir break

ups, I got a d ifferen t sense of how text messages functioned . People

wo uld tell me abo ut choosing to start text-message fights on pur

pose, o nes th at some times, b UI not always, led to breakups. People

wo uld p refer text-message fight s because, as Rose explained to 111(',

25Fifty W(lySto Leave Your lo ver

I reel like for the most part in [face-to-face] fights, women, likel "l id,scream at men.and the men nod like this [demonstrates howthe men stare off into space] and nod like this, and [the woman•.Iys]"oh. you said this" and you scream m them more for saying it,lind they nod. And at the end of the fight you feel better and theyImt let it go and everything is okay.

Alld yet, the wo ma n never really knows whether th e nodd ing man

"',l .lli.:tually listen ing to her. But, as she explained , with a text rues­

l l\~" the man has to pay attent ion to the words, and he has to re­

l li llld \0 what the wo man is saying. Texts, she went on to say, were

1I11"'Ysan swered. Yo u co uld delete an e-ma il or a voice mail, but

j • • \11 requi re bo th at tention and a respo nse.

uecausc of thi s, so me people used text messages 10 begin the

h, r,lkup ritu al. Textin g " ) wan t 10 b reaku p" in so me cases was o nly

IIII' medi ated vers ion o f th e face-to -face ut terance: "We have to

"Ilk " The possib ility of a breaku p is promised but not definite.

III, te,ld , text ing a wish to b reaku p in the early evening so me t imes

u~ \I rcd frant ic pho ne calls or lon g face-to -face co nversatio ns untiJ

h III the morning. A text message's very informality, however,

II II' ,I UI utter ing th e desire \0 b reak up by text mi gh t not be taken se­

' hlll\ ly as a desire. Much more con versational wo rk wo uld have to

lh cur to make th e desi re become fact . Several peop le thought that

" n-xt-messngc b reak up wo uld n't result in a b reakup . Cole said,

II I lexted my girlfriend '1 wan t to break up with you' I think she

urfdn'rt akc it serious ly. She wou ld prob ably laugh."

I have becn d iscussin g the d ilemmas of using 10 0 informa l a

utrdium fo r b reaking up , bu t too formal a medi um can also be

Ih, recipient wo uld focus his or hcr entire attention o n what you

, Il' \.1ying by text and wo uld have to respo nd to that message.

Ill h~' compared th is with face- to-face fights:

Tile Breakup 2.024

J, M~lllY of my interviews had astrong undercurrent of nostalgia(or the w,ycommu nication used to be, before texung, e-mail, instant messaging, Faceb(lll~andsoou.

27Fifty W"ys to Leave Your Lover

Iln lHlse e-mail is so connected 10 oral communication, wefeel likeIlIf Me saying something quite well when we type it o ut. And then~l lIll ,1l1 goback to it a daylaterand you realize-s-oh, this really wasn'tIll',"lyas well-written as I thought it would be, which is not as much~ I ' experience I have with sort of conventional typing. The ways

Ihl l" mail] Every letter looks the same, they arc identical. I push,h.' hulton, but it wasn'rmy hand making the note. But it is incred­11 ,lyhelpful and it's shrinking the world, and it is so much easier toummumcate, blah blah blah.allthosewonderful things. Soin that

11\(', I.' mail is the best tool.You can clearly think out what you are!lyIng to say as long as you don't write an angry e-mail. But you

lI lIM just aseasilywrite an llllgryleiter. And as soon as you send it,1111 regret it, and you try to jam your hand into the blue box, butIllUlllll't gel it, just like you can't unscnd an e-mail. So those two,

111 th.u vein they are very similar, in thai they both still have their11tllhletllS, but since we have been writing leiters as long as wehave1' 1'1'" around, we know how to approach them better. Whereas in­"l it messaging, and tcxtlng, they are fa irly new technologies so

11Ir tl.' really is no etiquette.

rudtnger, chatted with me abo ut what he thought about e-mail,

I. utnguishlng between handwrit ten letters and e-mail:

II the Gunslinger,e-mail and letters gradually became almost in­

l' I,lhlngeable as he thought about the etiquette challenges each

I I .mcd. Other people his age with who m I spoke would also

l'lh kly equate letters and e-mails, viewing them as interchange­

,Illy lormal,

t !Iller people, by contrast. viewed e-mai l as infor mal and de­

lIhrd the way its [nfonnality affected communication. Noah. a

1'1 ' lln \Or of physicsin his fortics at my university, shared his per­

I' \ uvc that e-mail was not similar to leiters at all but far more

11I 11' ('d to spoken communication:

n« lJrctltrlP2.026

a problem. O nly one person told me abo ut being dumped Iletter-and this on cream stationery written with what she \u

peered W3 S a q uill pen. In this case. it was the very formality of IIletter that bothered Eleano r. She knew the breakup was probabf

coming. They had lived in the same dorm. and as long as thl"

primarily co mmunicated face-to-face. all seemed to go well. IIwouldn't text her and when she texted him, his phone was Olh'

tu rned off. For the most part , there was no reason to communicst

any other way but face to face-they lived in the same place. HUI

when they went home for the summer, four hour s away from e,II hother. their communication started to go sour. They kept arguing II)'phone. So Eleanor thought a breakup was likely, but did not exp«

it by cream stationery. She described in detail, with a mixture III

horror and amusement, the seriousness of tone. the surprise of Kt' l

ling such a for maldocument in the mail."Who does that anymon«

she kept asking. She would have much preferred a phone call.

Cream stationery aside, the medium that most undergraduate

described to me as formal was e-ma il.As I mentioned in my intru

duction , people's mcdia ideo logiesabout e-mail reveal a generauon

gap in the ways people und erstand technology. Even undergradu

ares who were unhapp y with the ways in which new media Wl'1

changing people's communication,' would describe e-mail 35 til­

closest regular form of communication that they had to letters;11"'1is, to mo rc tradit ional forms of communication. By contrast wuhall the 01her media they used regularly. e-mail seemed the mo\1

form al, used 10 communicate with employers, professors. I' M

ent s. nnd grandparents. One student, who wanted the pseudonym

"'t, .••. ..,..

iEII

!9Aii4W

~.....

... ' .' '<

..':.~ .

•:1,,'

. ,~,,'"~ .

" .', . .,

Is It Like Pace-to -Pace Conversation?

People arc constantly developing their med ia ideologies through

comparison, attrib uting certain qu alities to one medium becau..r

29Fifty YWIYS /0 Leave YO llr lover

/'1111 1' Vll/we: [Most people think) breaking up in person is ideal.nllt I just think that when it comes10 breaking up with someone.il I am sure that I want to break up with someone. then the bestWilY is to do it through other means.

U./11I. ; So what do you try?

, 11/1/1' VII/we: 1usually just go on instant messenger, and I make itliS dear and straightforward as possible.And llenve no room fordoubts. Because when you see someone in person, it's harder tobrtug i! up. And onceyou do bring it up, you arc going to be af­Icctcd by how that person responds to it. You will feel bad. Andthen you might change your mind based on how that personresponds. if they start crying or something like that. But then,through instant messaging, you willjust sayit, and you won'! see

II. .,. M e tacitly contrasting it to other media. Thus when people

Illp....ed tcxtlng with instant messaging, they would talk abo ut

WJ"Kl jng was eyer-prescnl and too informal, whilej ostant mes--~ 1l11. could offer a textual represent ation of spoken conversa-

I, ,II' When faced with a hypothetical question such as "which is

1,'ller medium for breaking up?", people would talk about how

.'111111 messaging allows for conversational tu rn-taking, how pea ­

l, always respo nd to each other in real-t ime. People could take

1 " Il I I ~ to 11'11 a.rc.spoose. and one never knew when it would arrive.- .-u Instant messaging response, by contrast, on e could see being

'1111'11 . Sometimes people men tioned that they could get infer ­

'1 lIllhltl about the other perso n's state of mind by the speed and

, 1 1 ~l h l l t of their typing, once they knew the person well enough. In

Lllucn, instant messaging affords the possibility for explanation

Ih l .t dialogue ill which the person being d um ped call ask "why?"

Ill.' woman, who requested the pseudonym Duae Vultae, largely

l'l.'lrrrcd to break up by instant message. She explained why in the

I ,Ililwing way:

The Bretlkrlp 2.0

I know it is linked to oral communications is (a) I notice how oflenI am saying things out loud as I type them on e-mail, which is no.something I do with normal word-processing and (b) the numberof times I makephonetic spellingerrors. What did I do just a coupledays ago? II would have been potentiallyembarrassing, I spelled OUItheword that sounded likewhat Iwas saying,but I really meant a dif­ferent word entirely. I don't know if it was"through" or "threw" Thefact that I haveseen thosekinds oferrorswritten bybrilliantscholanmakes me realize that this is something about e-mail. Peo ple make.'grammatical and spelling erro rs in e-mail that they would never

make on a memo theywere typing on the exact same keyboard.

28

E-mail is a medium in which media ideologies are most sharply

different iated along generational lines, with people of Noah's gl'll

eration viewing e-mail as inform al and people of the Gunslinger

generation seeing e-mail almost as formal a medium as one ( ti ll

have, second only to a letter.

Up until now, I have been describing how people's media ideolo

giesdetermine the formality of medium. There is not hing intrinvically for mal or informal abou t a particular medium; it all depend

on what its users decide is for mal or informal. However, the r('l"

tive for mality of a medium is but one small aspect of how medu

ideologies affect people's breakup experiences. Breakups mil~t

people focus on other ways different media might affect commu

nicaticn as well.For example,while peop le's e-mail ideologies tendto center arou nd the ways in which they compa re e-mail to letter•.

people's instant-messaging ideology, by contrast, centers around

the way instant messaging resembles face-to-face conversations.

When people objected to insta nt messaging, they ofte n pointed

to the way in wh ich 1M mi ght not be enough like spoken co nver­

sa tion. O ne student in a class o f mine sa id th at th e problem wit h

insta nt messaging was th at yo u never kn ew if yo u were the o nly

person they were talking to at that moment. Because thi s is on ..

co m p uter sc ree n. someo ne co uld be b reaking up with o ne person

and hooking up wit h another at th e sa me time. In short, instant

messaging could not guaran tee that someo ne's whole attention

was o n th e perso n they were typ ing to. Techn ically thi s is also tru e

o f e-mail, Paccbook, or text messages. But it is the ways tha t peo­

pie ta lk about instant messagin g and how sim ila r it is to face-to ­

face co nversa tio ns th at also makes th e d ifferences th at they not ice

between these two ways o f co mm u nicat ing mo re of a problem .

Anot her d isco m fort people had with instant messagin g is

tha t so meone co uld simply end the conversat io n ab rup tly and

witho ut any fo rewa rning. When people do thi s in face-to -face

«uwcrsarions, there are bod ily movem ents th at give some indi ca­

lion that this may be abou t to ha ppen , and perhaps so me d ues as

hI why someone has chosen to end a co nversa t io n. By 1M , th ere

'lire ']9. s",b nonvrrbal d ues. so th is end ing is perce ived as m uch

mere abrupt. O livia told me a sto ry about how her eighth-g rade

huyfrien d had responded to her desire to b reakup ove r 1M by sim­

ply logging o ff.

3 1FiflY Ways 10 1.fwve Your cover

This is when instan t messenger was a big part of my life-awaymessages told abo ut your state of mind. You would put up the(IUOle of a song. and it told if you were happy or sad.... 1 had this

boyfr iend and it was eighth grade. He asked me a lit through hisfriend, we talked online, lind we hun g out, like, once, and then Igot

freaked out. I am not ready for this. I broke up with him online[by 1M J. And then, of course, it's like that is the equivalent of de­activat ing [Pacebcck], is the person who signs off without sayinganything. It's like Wah my god, arc they going to go kill themselves,did they go to cry.or are they pissed off,and they don't care?"... 1re­member what I said, and my heart was pound ing. And then he justsigned off. and that was his response. I was good friends with hisfriends, and they told me that he W,IS upset and everything. And he

wasn't online for a few days... so I was worr ied abou t him.

'ug ning o ff insta nt messaging witho ut announcing he was go ing

telt far too vague for O livia. She was fou rtee n at the time. and th is

was one o f the first times she had ever ended a rela tionsh ip, so she

did not h ave man y past expe r iences to help place his be havio r in

context. And h is acti ons were too am biguous for her to evalua te

wha t m ight be the co nseq ue nces of her desire to end the relation­

ship. In sho rt , she needed mo re informatio n abo ut how his med ia

ideology and h is practice co incided to int erp ret h is act ions.

[ have been descri b ing so me o f th e media ideo logies a t play

whe n people break up with each other (and there a rc many more),

how they react. .. .Most people think it's very harsh. Somehowit never bothered my conscience that it was just do ne with . It'sprobab ly better for them too. I just do n't like to drag out a rela­tionship that Ihave determined to end.

tiona: So let me ask you, you are choosing instant messaging. Andyou have other choices. What is it about insta nt messaging?

Df/ae vu uae: Other choices, maybe phone? I could call them. Thatalso ma kes it more difficult- talking. You know, talking makesit more personal. And then, if I text, its just, 1do n't know, thenI feel like I still need to leave room for a little bit of explanat ionand text messaging, that would take a long time to respond back.So, or e-mail, now e-mail- I like the immediate respon se. With

instant messaging you can do that. And if they get upset, youcan just sign off, and okay, it's done. But then through e-mail,

you have to wait to see.... If I am absolutely certain abo ut thebreakup, then it's instant messaging.

The BreabJp 2.030

4. Upon hearing abou t my project, many people responded by telling Inabou t the Sex and the City episode in which Berger breaks up with Carrie Br' ltshawon ~ Post-it note.

33Fifty Ways to teav/! Your Lover

nuormation to predic t with any degree of accuracy what yo ur

' H I!I;1 ideology will be. I realized as I interviewed more and more

l"'ople that not o nly did people have d ifferent media ideologies,

hUI thev were ofte n dating people with d ifferent media ideologies.-ll ll ~ would occas ionally make the breaku ps more di fficult , O ne

I. rl \t)n might th ink a text message was a perfectly acceptable way

I II ht :lrt a breakup co nversa tion-a conversa tion that they just as­

1II1led would d rift to phone o r face- to-face conversa tio n before

tll t1 end of the night. Th e other person mi ght be horrifi ed to get the

W\~lge by text message and refuse to speak to their now ex-lover,'WI' again. Whe n I began interviewing people, I expected some

.u lety in how they understood the ways that media affected rues­

KC~ . After all, because these media ideoloi ies are jdeologies, thQ'

.I ~ ;llways multiple, locatable, positioned . and contested. Wha t I

,Ud n't expect was how multiple and ho w contested all these media

nleologies would be.In my inter views, peo ple often descr ibed having to guess what

.uhcr people's media ideologies migh t be to interpret why they

ere using a particular medium to accomplish a certain comm u­

Ull ,ltivc task. For exa mple, o n Pacebook, yOll can send a pub lic

mcvsage by po sting to sor nccne's wall so anyone in their Pacebooknetwork can know the content of the message, the author, and the

lillie it was sent. With a pri vate Pacebook message, only the ad­

llu' \ser and addressee can see the message. So Joe invites len to

~iI howlin g via a Pacebook wall pos t; sho uld len con sider thi s a

.I.lle? Why is Joe send ing thi s message so publicl y-to make it less

' 11 l1 da te (that is mo re casual) or more of a da te (wa rn ing o ther

pt'ilple who might be interested in len th at he, Joe, was pursu ing

hr rH This pa rt icular utt erance d rove len to Joe's profile fo r any

Insight into bow Joe understan ds and uses Facebook. And o nce

.me starts datin g, as many readers may have discovered , regular

Til eBrC4kilp 2.032

in part 10 clarifywhat it means to analyze new media from an l, th

nographic or anthropological perspective. I cou ld discuss the W.I)1

I th ink n medium fun ctions- whether tcxting ensures more of lIl'

immediate answer than instant messaging or e-ma il.and how Ihlll

might affect a breakup-but that would be an int erpreta tio n b,l\t'd

on my own assumptions and experiences with technology. PCOI,lfdevelop und erstandi ngs of how media fun ctions based on tlu-rr

own prac tices and conversat ions they have with the people lht'rknow, as well as the stories they hear and see throu gh the media.'

Their media ideologies always managed 10 surprise me, and mil kme think abo ut the technologies we were talking abo ut in a IWW

way. Peop le a rc unpred ictable, o ne can't tell witho ut askin g \llltl

observing what med ia ideolog ies they ho ld , and how their behctshape their pra ctices. Some peo ple 1 talked to tho ught that a It.1

message always required a response; ot hers had no problem IK

noting text messages. Whether texts required respo nse o r could hIignored was part o f a person's media ideology; it had nothi ng III

do with the cell phon e equipme nt. In sho rt, o ne sho uld not pn­sume 10 know the med ia ideologies that accompany a particulartechno logy in advance witho ut asking a person many questions III

determine what his o r her med ia ideologies and pra ctices are.

Dati ng People with Different Media Ideologies

There is a corollary to what I am presenting here-peop le don't

necessarily share the same media ideologies, Being American,o r a white middle-class Amer ican undergraduate is not enough

intimate co ntact does no t necessarily shed comprehen sive Iiglll

on how anot her person communicates or interprets the meduthrough wh ich theyarc commu nicating.

The fact that people do n' t necessarily sha re media ideologies

mean s that they don't necessarily agree on how one should uw

par ticu lar media, either to connect o r d isconnect with each other

Yet being able to interpret ot her peo ple's media ideologies withan y accura cy can affect how your conversat ions will now. As I

mention ed before, if two people agree that a lex! message is 100

info rmal a medium for breaking up, they might decide that a text

message fight con taini ng the stated desire to break up sho uld not

be taken seriously. O nly a face-to -face encou nter following the

fight can best resolve the argument, and might potentially lead to

reconciliat ion. But if one pe rson decides that tcxting is so infor

ma l a medium tha t any breakup utterance pe rformed with in this

med ium is uncon scionable (as Halle did in the sto ry toward the

beginn ing of this chapter], then rather than having a n immincm

reconciliation , a breakup has just taken place. In short. it is not just

how you thi nk about a medi um . it is how you reflexively engagewith the medium given what you th ink abou t it.

Alexis asked me out via the Internet. She was cute, hip, and a sci­entist. We went on fi ve dates, but each one seemed like a fi rst date.She let me kiss her, but never really responded. Conversation wasso-so. Oh, and on the second date, 1 met her dad. We had plans forMemorial Day, but she never called me, and didn't respond 10 myvoice-mail.... The next day, I got an e-mail apologizing for blowingme off and saying " I needed to give myself a hall pass not 10 call"nnd"I don't waur to be in a relationship right now."

35Fifty Wa}'$ 10 Leave Your Lover

onvcrsauonal exchanges switched from phone to texting, for ex­

mple. At first. I suspec ted that the people I was interviewing were

ncrously humoring me-they knew I was interested in commu-

11 11 utive technology and so they were willing to seamlessly mark

lh presence when they narra ted their breakup conversations in an

nucrview. But once I started paying attent io n, it becam e clear that

uwnticnin g the medium is a relatively typical feature of contem­

I'm;lry American breakup narratives. All my friend s constantly

Ihlk the utt eran ce with its communicative medium, and ma ny

IU t'.tkup nar ratives featu red on radio sho ws or television or posted

nil blogs and o ther Web sites do as well. Here is a typical example

III what I am describing fromthe Dum pcdstcr Web sitet-c-this was

ptl\ lcd in May 2003:

The. Breakup2.034

And Then She Texted Me

Media ideologies are central 10 explaining one of the striking

features of the sto ries people told me: ~eople always ment ioned

which medium was used whenever they recoun ted a conversation.

As people of all ages to ld me breakup sto ries. they tended to tell

me no t on ly the sequence of events. who said what and when. but

they also always mentioned the med ia in whic h each con versa­

tion or message look place. They would point out whenever there

was a switch in med ium, lett ing me know whenever the narrated

Ihe Internet. voice mail. e-ma il, and hall passes all appear in th is

narr at ive. In their sto ries. peopl e are tracking the med ia throug h

which break ups arc unfold ing. Why do they do this? Wha t work is

being done when people retell what was said or typed, while con­

~ I(mt ly rem indi ng the audience what medium was used?

I'll begin to answer by pointing out something that readers may

hnve been wondering about. Saying or wr iting " I wan t to break

5. The website Dumpedster (www.durnpedstcr.com) is now defunct.

37Fifty Ways to Leave YOllr Lover

text-message breaku p is rarely accomplished solely by tcxt iug,

Il her media would almos t immediately be called upon for this

I ~ ~k . Texting a breakup may o nly be the beginnin g of the ritual of

1lll',lking up , and in some sense the warning shot across the bow.

lu_1 because you say you want to break up doesn't mean that you

I I' actually going to break up. You could be having one of many

Il ~hts or be abo ut to rede fine some of the terms of the relat ion ship,

hUI endi ng the relationship is not a given.l acebook plays an ambiguo us role in how it facilitates break ing

It ll Sometimes it creates a sharply de fined ending. For Leslie, the

Iacebook breakup served the same function as e-ma il d id in my

111 ,1interview. Leslie checked her Facebo ok profile late in the day,

oIlid found out that she was suddenlysingle. In fact, she learned that

her boyfriend,now ex-boyfriend, had a new girlfriend th rou gh the

Ill'WS feed that flashes on as soo n as one logs on. And then she

11111iced that her profile had changed, that he was no lon ger listed

,t'li the person she was in a relationship with. Th is was a Paccbook

hrcakup that was immediately effective. And she said ruefully that

be cause of the news feed , everyo ne else knew before she did . In th is

I "\C, the medium helped determine whether ind icating " I want to

lueak up" beco mes effect ive over time.Out in other cases the news feed also reveals to peop le how un ­

~hlble Faccbook claims can be-that is, how unstable a person's

a ngle status can be. Whi le some people will claim that a breakup

I'n't official until it is "Pacebook official," just becau se it has be­rume Facebook official doesn't mea n that it has taken . People will

waiver-c-one day they anno unce on Facebook tha t the relat ion ­

shlp is in troubl e, the next day they annou nce that they arc back

togeth er. A community's first ind ication that a relatio nship is in

trouble is often the rapid cha nges to a Pacebook relat ionship sta­

IU~ . SO Pacebook is a glimpse into other peo ple's d isconnect ions,

TheBretlkllp 2.036

up" is no t necessarily effective: suggesting breaki ng up does Il l "

actually result ill breakin g up. People are ofte n ambi valen t al>clulbreaking up--one person may want to break up more than tl!,other. o r bo th people may be uncertain. Clar ity on this front can

seem like an elusive achievemen t. It turns out that the mediuu

through which "[ want to breakup" is uttered contributes to II

effectiveness. Louise, who was in her late twenties, had been i ll II

seven-year rela tionship that had begun to co ntain many ambigu

ous conversati ons about whethe r il should continue or no t. Th

conversations went on for mont hs, but Louise and her signifi cant

other were still together. Finally her significan t other e-r nailed her

that he wanted to end the relationship. When Louise reflected Oil

the breakup, it was the e-ma il that she focused on, calling it cow

ardly, and jo king months later that she sho uld have refused th

breakup and instead waited for the text message. In fact, afte r th

e-mail, she stopped all contact with him. She conside red perfo rm

ing a breakup over e- mail so ind icative of his personal failings Ihlll

she did n't wan t to con tinue interact ing.

Befo re J began this research, I thoughI that a fairly typical re

sponse to being d umped by the wrong medium might be to refu\('

any furt her cont ac t with the person ending the relationship. Evcu

the popular fict ion al "Text Message Breakup" Youtube video

(http://www.yout ubc.com/watch?v=XcidD2HFK8M) depicts thi,

response to a breakup e- mail o r break up text as the predictahlr

response. A woma n raps abo ut the social costs her boyfriendl

ex-boyfriend wiJl now pay- namel y, never sleeping with anyone

else-because he has breached social norms by breaking up bytext-message after a two-year relat ionship, the cho rus being "You

don't text message breakup." Yet as I mentioned earlier, fo r SOI1lI'

coUege stude nts, a text-message breaku p just ind icates that thr

phone calls o r instant messaging wiJl now sta rt. For these people,

Idioms of Practice

Peop le's med ia ideologies contribute to why they mention tilt'

mediu m of a message as they tell the stories of their breakups

They are explaining the message-people's media ideologies en

sure that the same sentences a re interpreted and experienced dif

ferently when read on a computer screen or on a cell phone. There

39Fifty Ways to Leave YOllr Lover

Ali Gitelman explains, mu ch of what we take for granted about

older co mmunicative technology like the teleph on e had to be

Inventing, promoting, and using the fi rst telephones involved lotsof self-conscious attention to telephony. BUI today, people con­verse through the phone without giving it a moment's thought.The technology and all of its supporting protocols (that you an­ewer "Hello?" and that you pay the company, bUI also standardslike touch-tones and twelve-volt lines) havebecome self-evident asthe result of social processes, including the habits associated withother, related media. (Gitelman 2006, s-6)

h another reason, though, th at ma rking the medium contributes

h i the detect ive work of tryin g 10 understand a breakup: People

have what I am calling different idioms of practice, a term I men­

Onned in the introdu ction. Groups of friends, classes, workers in

till office will develop togeth er their own ways of using media to

runrnu nicate with each ot her. Sometimes they realize th at th eir

,Iyof using a medium is distin ctive, that it marks them as differ­

III from other people. Sometimes they don't perceive that their

lhe of a medi um is unique until some miscommunication or un ­

vpe cted way someone was communicating made it clear (often

unpleasantly clear) that others have different idioms of practice.

Fwo main reasons emerged from the inter views to explain why

there are so many idioms of practice with new media right no w,

wh y people keep discover ing that there isn't a genera l consensus

~ h() lI t how or if to use d ifferent media to acco mplish d ifferent

.umm unicative tasks, such as breakin g up. First, becau se these are

m-w media, people haven't had time to develop a widesp read con­

,n iSUS abo ut how to use a medium, especially for relat ively rare

«un muni catlvc tasks such as break ing up. As Lisa Gitclman, a his­

torlnn of media, poi nts out, thin gs we now take for granted about

the: telephon e took a whi le to be established.

Tue Breakup2. 038

but a glimpse that tantali zes instead of satisfying. And what is oftenunknown is whether the breakup is going to take-is the news (cI'11recording a breakup saga or a narrative of renewing commitment

of near dissolution narrowly averted? Which kind of sto ry will III,

breakup stateme nt o n Facebcokcventually contribute to when tilevents become a story that circulates?

I want to suggest that because peopledon't share the same med••ideologies, especially about new media, part of what someone II

doing by marking every medium in their story is tracing the derc,

live work Ihey had to do to determine which genre of sto ry th is nat

rative was going to become as it unfolded. The interactions mightbe a relationship fi ght leadin g to renewed co mmitment, or t/wy

might signal a breakup. Each person's intentions are unclear, anti

can only be retroactively guessed at byseeing how what they say and

what they do align. One of the clues that peop le focus on as they try

to guess in hindsight what was going on is the medium that cadi

person uses. Their cho ice of media can be read as formal o r infermal, enabling intonation or devoid of intonation, allowing for COil

vcrsarional turn-taking or preventing it, public o r private, and !oil

on. By recounting the medium used, people can gain some insight

into other people's media ideologies, and often people realize that

these media ideologies are not shared in the mom ent of a breakup.

The qu estion "Why would anyone text that?" is a good indication

that people are not sharing the samemedia ideology abo ut texting.

42 The Breakup 2.0 Fifty Ways to ullve YOllr Lover 43

id io ms of p ractice. A per son can ca ncel a Facebook friendship by

clicki ng o n an X near th e Pace book friend's name. O nce th e per son

clicks to ca nce l the frie nds hip. Facebook as ks: "Remove fri end?Arc

you su re you wa nt 10 remo ve Harry Potier as a friend? Th is ca n not

be undone. Harry Potter will not be notified ." You then have ro

confi rm tha t you do indeed wa nt to ca ncel the Facebook fri end

ship. Some people said they never de friended anyone on Pacebook.

As the G un slinger puts it:

If someo ne angers me, I just don't talk to them. It is so trivial to

have them no longer associated with you on the Internet. I mean ,I am tr ying to put this in a more base term-when you look atsomeone, it won 't say friends in common-the Guns linger and "soand so."So many people are going: "They're friends? I thought theydid n't like each other." But wha t is the point?

The G u ns linger, and ot hers. tho ught th a t Facebook friends means

SO little th at defriend ing was an excess ive act o f hostil ity. ln tr igu

ingly, et her people had regu lar boUIS of defriend in g friends, and

gave exa ctly the same reason fo r these purges: that Facebook

friends don 't really matter. Rosie described how she regul arly goes

through and defrien ds so me of her Faceboo k friends:

llana: What abo ut defriending?

Rosie: I just do it. I had so ma ny friends on Pacebook. and I didn'teven really know them all. I mean, I knew them. but they weren't

of any real importance to me. So I went through a defriendingpurge, spree actu ally. And I went from 700 friends and I havelike 56 now.

llana: When did you do this?

Rosie: Over the last year, probably. I went through one [purge]where I delet ed all the fake Facebook profiles, like Bruce

Buckeye, Brad Pill , that kind of thing. Then J started goingthrough high school, people I don't talk to from high school.There are a lo t.

llano: Did you get any comments abo ut th is?

Rosie: No, I never had an ybody try to rc-Inend me. So J am gues.'i­ing thai they didn't even realize that I did it. O r they just d idn'tcare. in which case I d idn 't need to be friend s with them on Face­

boo k anyway. My rule now is that I periodically go through myfriends list and [ ask: "okay, have I talked to this person in the

last couple of mon ths? No. Okay.Should I gel rid of them ? Prob­ably."There arc some peop le that Idon 't talk to on a regular basisthat I keep on there. For the most part , if I don't talk to them ona regular basis, or interact with them ill reallife, I probab ly do n'tkeep those friend s on Paccbook or MySpace.

lIoth Rosie and the Gu ns linge r arc addressing the same soc ial di­

lemma: how they sho uld best ma in tai n a socia l netwo rk whose

member s have p rivi leged access to thei r profil e and often c ircu late

Ino m uch in formation (people's news feed co uld be too packed

Wi th in fo rma tio n abou t people they don't know well o r ca re

,ll)Qut).' So me peo ple felt that to be a Pace book frie nd was so m in ­

hll ,ll a link th at to den y so meone th is link wa s especially rude-the

metaphorical eq uivalent o f refusin g to sa y " how are you do ing?"

In a friend of a friend , so meone you bar ely know and pa ss o n the

, t ree t. Others do not want 10 clu tter thei r network (and news feed )

With people they do n't know well.

Some people broa dcast t hei r personal informat io n so often

Ilnu even rel ucta nt defrienders will cu t t he link. Pau l, who rarel y

(t_ A l the time that J was Interviewing, Pecebook did not allow you 10 choosewhetheror ocra ltucebook friend's information would appear in your news feed .Ihl ~ changed in 2009.

45fiflY WtlYs to Leave YOllr Lover

.' lIdir: She had already decided a week before, two weeks, maybethree weeks that she didn 't want fa be my friend, but she didn't

tell me in person. So not everyone is like this particular person.But il was surreal.

llaua: How did you know thai it was weeks earlier?

.' lIIlie: I am just guessing. It could have been the day before, itcould have been three weeks before. Because I had n't had an oc­casion to message her. And her profile hadn't changed, maybe

her profile hadn't changed in a couple of weeks. Since thai isanother way that you find out . It was vcry unsettling. I was sortof like "wait. what? Did you seriously defriend me?" And at thatpoint I WaSangry, because she was disagreeing with me, but shewas still talking 10 me an hour beforehand. And I had had ot herconversations with her. She wasn't super-friendly, and she wassort of strange. I didn 't really notice it until I saw th is and knewthat she didn 't want to be my friend anymore.

(H course so metimes peo ple d o defr icnd each o th er o ut o f

,tl"'l'r. It is even more of [I state ment w hen (here a re d ifferent id i­

11l1 ~ of practice in volved , whe n someo ne d efr iends another who

r-uevcs (ha t a Paccbook friend is a m inimal acknowledgmen t o f

xial connect io n, and thus wo uld never defnend anyone. T h is

j,"ppencd to Sad ie, w ho wo uld never d efriend an yon e, as she ex­

111,. lns in respo nse to my questio n: How did she know she had been

btucnd cdi

III th is case, the fact that the people invo lved had different id io ms

II I practice su rro und ing Paceboo k fr iending a nd dcfric nd ing made

t h l ~ dcfricnding meani ngfu l and pa infu l.

I interv iewed so meo ne else fo r who m Iriendin g o r defriend ing

hed littl e to do with being acq uaintances and much more to do

wnh how people circula te knowledge. Noclle told me th at w hen

lit'was cu r ious ab out so meone on Faceboo k, she wou ld request to

The 8rt akup 2.044

Awl: So this was on livejou rnal. This wasn't on Pecebook, this wa\

on livejournal. It's basically a public diary... a blog that works ~

little diffe rently because you can basically create communities.It was a big thing in high school, a big big thing in high school.And when you write something down , you put up a post if youare friends with someone. Then on your friends' page, your postwill be there.She would post all the time, like maybe five times II

day. And it is supposed to be like once a day, maybe three time,a week, Thai sort of daily or less ballpark. She would post five

times a day! So my friends' page would becluttered with all herposts. I still liked her as a friend, but I couldn't have thai many

thin gs cluttering up my friends ' page. So I took her off, we aren'tlivejournal friends anymore.

lfmra: Did you tell her?

I'alll: I don't think so. We were in dru m line [in the band ] together.We weren't close enough to talk all the time. We were within thesame friends' circle, which was part of the reason why I didn't

want her cluttering up my friends' page. You know, friend of J

friend. So Idon't think I actually told her that. I am not sure thatshe knows. [ imagine that she knows. At the same time, she hasfive hu ndred livejournal friends.

dcfriends o n Pacebook, decided to remove som eo ne fro m aneth

networking s ite , his livejo urnal blog network (www.livejcurnalco m) because she w rote so m uch that his livejournal page WI

filled o nly with her en tr ies and no o ne else 's.

Pau l put a lot of thought in to figu ring out whether o r no t tlum ight o ffend her. He decided tha t they didn' t know each other .1 11

thai well, t hat thi s wasn' t a vio lat io n of tacit fr iendsh ip expects

t ions. He also decide d th at she was u nlikely to value him all thul

highly eit her, given h ow many livejo u rnal friends she had . Ill'

ho ped tha t one less link o ut o f five hundred links surely co uld nul

matter that much to her, but this was all guesswork on Pau l's pall

47Fifty Ways to I.eave Your Lover

Ilumb! Dumb!Why? Idon't know... like Ijust feel like it is so trivial.nd so childish. What arc you telling people like when you put thatup there? No, I am not interested in your advances because 1kindlit got this thing going on with someone. Well then. just like .. .justrrmove it, just take it all off. And if people are unsure, you shouldhe enough of an adult ... you should have enough social skills tohl' able to give someone a sign thaI like ' hey, that's really sweet of¥'lI l- not interested, got some stuff going on.' You need to do itthrough ' it's complicated' on Facebook? Really?

lot everyone I inter viewed was as o utspo ken o r funny in their

ut lquc as Keith, but most people had st ro ng senses of what is an

Illllop riate o r inappropriate usc of technology.

.euucms, I unwiuingly stumbled across the fact that I was inter­

,rwing college studen ts with numerous idioms of practice.

I have been trying to w rite fro m a nonjudgmental stand po int

e people's various idioms of practice because I believe th at o ne

11M 1ll'S med ia ideology and usc o f technology is no better o r

H\ C than another's. This is the p rivilege and obliga tion o f an a­

hiKpeople's pract ices. B~inB a goo d analyst o f others' pra ctk es

uvolvcs accept ing th e validi ty o f ot her~r~c:.ti~s. This isn 't a

t . ll ~ e you ca~~~i1 y o r comfortab ly take when you arc cons tantly

.nununicating with peo ple with d ifferent idiom s of practice. As

II analyst, I was encountering peopl e's different uses of technol ­

,y as sto ries, not as pract ices tha t affected me personally. I am

1111' 10 ana lyze and write without jud ging o ther peopl e's behavior

j'lh ical- a luxury th at peo ple in the thi ck of things don 't have.

I! I. no t su rp rising th at in my interviews, people were constantly

«uktng mo ral judg men ts. They fell st ro ngly th at so me ways of

h1hlK technology were wro ng. For example, in respo nse to my

Illnl io n abo ut what Pacebook's relat ionsh ip status option " it's

uuplicated" might mean , Keith said:

TIle Breakup 2.046

llaua: How do you decide whether to friend someone or not?

Noelle: Oh, sometimes if I want to be nosy, I want to look at Iht'wall, but if you can't, I will friend somebody, and see what I havrto see, and then delete them as a friend. I do that all the time, if Iwant to look at their pictures or something, just 10 be nosy. <11111

then I just defriend them.

be their friend . They tended to say yes; people often fr iended 0111,

people th ey suspec ted th at they vaguely knew. She wo uld th,

look at th eir profile, figure ou t what she wanted to kn ow, and tilpromptly defriend them .

must ad m it, when Noelle told me this, m y first though t w

"Well, th at 's a different idiom of practice." No one else I inlr

viewed would friend and defriend qui te like th at. Seve ral ollh

people I had already inter viewed would be horrified a t the III,

o f so meo ne do ing th is, but just as many might wish th at they h

thou ght of it them selves.

The wide range of idioms of practice I was enco un tering in II

terviews occasio nally made for some awkward interview moment

When I was talking to college students about th eir use o f co m muni

cative technology, Ididn't want to introduce them to new techniqu

I just wanted to find out what they did . But I would occasio nally,I,

my su rprise, find myself explaining o r un wittingly warning peo!,i

about ot hers' practices. For example, I often asked students abou

fake Paccbook profiles, which 1 had first learned about from til

interv iewee as a technique to find o ut who on e's ex- lo ver is 1111'

dat ing witho ut revealing th at you want to know. In short, a 1ft

Pacebook profile can be an asset in one's Facebook stalking (morcre

Pacebock stalking in chapter 4). But sometimes studen ts WI'

su rprised to find o ut from my quest ion s that fake Pacebook plI

files existed that weren't obvio us jokes. In this, and other sinnl

49Fifty Ways to u:m't! }'OlIr t owr

III the next two cha pters, I d iscuss at grea ter length wha t people

'II ~ on as they develop their media ideologies-the structure of

uumunicarive techn olo gies an d a techn ology's relat ionship to

lIlt'" mediums. To understand o ther peo ple's media ideo logies,

II' h ,IS to figure out two pri mary aspect s. First, what structures of

II.' par ticular mediu m matte r for people, and when do those

till rures matte r? Peo ple aren't going to care all that much if a cell

,l llllle has bad reception when they arc making small talk. But bad

ption can become mu ch more significant when it is happening

IUIIll:\ a breakup co nversation. When ending a relatio nship, call­

t! ~ OIl a cell phone can becom e interpreted as a sign of d isrespect

. ,Hl l>e of the sta tic. In other contexts, ,I cell phon e call would be

I ItOul y acceptab le.

cond , people understand a parti cular medium on ly in the con­

tof other media. People's media ideo logies about e- mail, for ex­

'llple, change if they begin to text others regularly. When people

1411using a new tech nology, they change thei r understandings of

II till' other techno logies they use as well. One canno t understand

'111,11:'5 media ideology for one medium in isolat ion. O ne has to

1 ,.~ 111111 0 accoun t their medi a ideologies for all the media they usc,

H.l litl,l lyze how these media ideo logies arc interwoven .

TIre Breakup 2.048

How people under stand the media they use sha pes the waYlI th,

will usc it. As a result , determ ining people's media ideo lcgn­

crucial when you arc trying to figure out the ways that I'('i l l'

communicate through different technologies. Often, people 1.,

for granted their own assumptions about how a medium ~h . 1 1

the info rmation transmit ted. They do n't always realize thai Ih,

way of usin g communicative technology is but one of ma ny w..'

that what they focus on as important features of a medium HI

not be gener ally held to be th e important features. This is less11'1

th e case when the communicative tech no logies have been nI 0111'

for a while. Over t ime, people's practices can change from IwlI'

id ioms to widely accepted practices. Whe n media is relatively t1

the medi um itself can pose social qua nda ries for people when ,I.t ry to use it to accomp lish par ticular tasks. People will talk w ll,

friends, coworkers, and fam ilies about these d ilemmas, t rylt!,. II

fi gure out solu tions collectively. In these mo me nts, they arc 1I,'v

opi ng idioms of practice. But these are still relat ively small Klll' lil

decidin g togeth er how to deal with a part icular problem 01

cial etiquette. It takes time for people to develop widely ~ I Ht .

on strategies 10 use d ifferent media, espec ially to accomplish I' tll

tionally charged social tasks.

As peo ple develop their solutions to social quandaries WI

their friends, they also arc developing ethical expectations, M' Il

of right an d wro ng techn ological uses. Just as there aren't wid

shared idioms of practice, or media ideologies, there also ~II " I I

widely shared ethical evaluat ions of media use. Wha t peop le

trying to figure out arc the ethics of how to end the rclationch

as they break up with people and th en tell their friend s MOl II

about thei r breaku ps.

C9

New fOr!p.!.2fpersona l connc<:tioll

shopping sites, email and Instant Messaging (1M), which differfrom one another in many w:r.ys. Seven concepts thaI can be usedto productively compare different media to one another as well as10 face to face communication are interaclivity, temporal structure,social cues, storage, replicability, reach, and mobility.

The many modes of communication on the internet and mobilephone vary in the degrees and kinds of interaetivity they offer.o nsider. for instance, the difference between using your phone

10 select a new ringtone and using that phone to argue with aromantic partner, or using a web site to buy new shoes ratherthan to discuss current events. Pornas and his co-authors (2 0 0 2 :

4}) distinguish several meanings of interactivity. Social interactiv­lly, "the ability of a medium to enable social interaction betweengroups or individuals," is what we are most interested in here.Other kinds include technical Interactivity, "a medium 's capabilityofletting hu man users manipulate the machine via its interface,"and textual interactivity, "the creative and interpre tive interactionbetween users (readers, viewers, listeners) and texts." "Unliketelevision," writes Laura Gurak (2001: 44), "online communica­tion technologies allow you to talk back. You can talk back to thehlRcompany or you can talk back 10 individual citizens." Rafaeliand 5udweeks (19971 posit that we should see inleractivity as aruntinuum enacted by people using technology, rather than a tech­nological condition. As we will see in chapters to come, the factth,lt the internet enables lnteractivitygives rise to new possibilities

lor instance, we can meet new people and remain close to thosewho have movedaway - as well as old concerns that people maybefhrung with danger.

The temporal slruclure of a communication med ium is alsoImportant. Synchronous communication, such as is round in facelu face conversations, phone calls, and instant messages, occursItl rca! time. Asynchronous communication media, such as email~1lI1 voicemail, have time delays between messages. In practice,tilt' distinction cannot always be tied 10 specific media. Poor con­Il'"t lions may lead 10 time delays in a seemingly synchronous»nhne medium such as Instant Messaging. Text messaging viatill' telephone is often asynchronous, but needn' t be. Ostensibly

!'C' I SOIlJ!

Seven key co ncepts

If we want to bu ild a rich understanding of how media inRu­ence personal connections, we need to stop talking about mediain overly simplistic terms. We can 't talk about consequencesif we can't articulate capabilities. What is it about these mediathat changes interaction and , potentially, relationships? We needconceptual tools to differentiate media from one another andfrom face to face (or, as Fortuna ti, 2 005, more apt ly termed it,"body to body"] commun ication. We also need concepts to helpus recognize the diversity amongst what may seem to be just onetechnology. The mobile phone, for Instance, is used for voice,texting, and also picture and video exchange. The internet includesinteraction platforms as diverse as YouTube. product reviews on

In the remainder of this chapter [ idenlJ fy a set of key conceptsthat can beused to differentiate digital media and which influen cehow people use them and with what effects. I then offer a verybrief overview of the media discussed in this book and a discus­sion of who does and who doesn't make use of them. Chapter 2is an orientation to the major perspecnves used to understand theinterrelationships between communication lechnology and societyand an exploration of the major themes In popular rhetorics aboutdigital media and personal connection. Chapter 3 examines whathappens to messages, both verbal and nonverbal, in mediatedcontexts. Chapter 4 addresses the group contexts in which onlineinteraction often happens, including communities and social net.works. The remaining two chapters explore dyadic relationships.Chapter Sshows how people presen t themselves to others and firstget to know each other online. Chapter 6 looks at how people usenew media to build and maintain their relationships. Finally, theconclusion returns to the question of sorting myths from reality,arguing againstlhe notion ofa "cyberspace" that can beunderstoodapart from the mundane realities ofeveryday lifeand for the notionthat what happens online may be newer, but is no less real.

Plan of the book

i" . Conn~ Up . .. ... - - ' &'~ -ve-

I"· l'r.pollaIJ :::!lllncc"{Cons in the Digital Age

asynchronous email may be sen t and received so rapidly that itfunctions as a synchronous mode of communication.

The beauty of synchrono us media is that they allow for the veryrapid transm ission of messages, even across distance. As we willsee, synchronicity can enhance the sense of placelessness thatdigital media Can encourage and make people feel more togetherwhen they are apart (Baron, 1998; Carnevale & Probst, 1997;McKenna & Bargh, 1998l. Synchronicity can make messages feelmore immediate an d personal (O'S ullivan, Hun t, & Lippert, 2004 )

and encourage playfulness in interaction (Danet, 2001 ). The priceof synchro nicity, however, is tha t interactants mus t be able toalign their schedules in order to besimultaneously engaged. Real­time media are also poorly suited to hosting interaction in largegroups, as the rapid-fire succession of messages that comes fromhaving many people involved is nearly impossible to sort throughand comprehend, let alone answer. There is a reason that dinnerparties are gene rallykept loa small collection of people and at largefunctions guests arc usually seated at tables that seat fewer than adozen . Accordingly, most online chat rooms and other real-timeforums have limits on how many can participate at one time.

With asynchronous media, the costs and benefits are reversed.Asynchronous communication allows very large groups to sus tainInteraction, as seen in the social network sites and online groupslike fan forums, support groups, and hobbyist commun itiesaddressed in chapter 4. Asynch ronicity also gives people time tomanage the ir self-presentations more stra tegically. However, wordmay filter more slowly through such groups and amongst indiovidua ls. We can place fewer demands on others' time by leavingasynchronous messages for people to reply to when they like, butwe may end up waiting longer than we'd hoped . or receive no replyat all. One of the biggest changes wrought by digital media is thateven asynchronous communication can happen faster than before.Time lags are created by the time it takes a person to check for newmessages and respond, not by the time messages spend in transit.ln comparison to postal mail, the internet can shave weeks offinteractions.

Most of the questions surrounding the personal connections

New forms of per sonal connection

people form and maintain through digital med ia derive from the IJ«parse social cuts that are available to provide further informationregarding context. the meanings of messages , and the identitiesof the people interacting. As chapter 3 will address in more detail,ruh media provide a full range ofcues, while leaner media providefewer. Body-to-body. people have a full range of communica tiveresources available to them. They share a physical context. whichthl"Y can refer to nonverbally as well as verbally (for instance, bypotnung to a chain. They are subject to the same environmentaltuftuences and distractions.They can see one another's body move­mente, including the facial expressions through which so muchmeaning is conveyed. They can use each other's eye gaze to gaugeattention. They can see one another 's appearance. They can alsohrar the sound ofone another's voice. Allof these cues - contextual,vtaual, and auditory - are important to interpreting messages andI reattug a social context within which messages are meaningful.

1'0 varyi ng degrees, digital media provide fewer social cues. Inmobile and online interactions, we may have few if anycues to ourpartner's location. Th is is no doubt why so many mobile phoneI alls begin with the question "where are you?- and also helps tor_plain some people's desire to share C PS positioning via mobileapplications. The lack of shared physical context does not meanthol! uue ractants have no shared contexts. People commu nicating'" persona l relationships share relational contexts, knowledge, andeome his tory. People in online groups often develop rich in-group11K tal environme nts that those who've participated for any lengthlit nmc will recognize.

though . as we will address in more depth in chapter 6 , muchof our mediated interaction is with people we know face to face,tlUlI1C media convey very little information about the identities ofl li C)~ (' with whom wc are comm unicating. In some circumstances,tli"t renders people anonymous , leading to both opportunity andtruer. In lean media. people have more ability to expand, manipu­IJtl', multiply, and distort the identities they present to others. TheI'JIltIty of personal and social identity cues can also make peopleII' -l safer. and thus create an environme nt in which they are moreIHUll·!! t. Cha pter Sexamines these identity issues.

,/, 5

'!i)

Perseus! Ccn uccnons in the Digital Age

Media also differ in the extent 10 which their messages endure.Stora8~, and, relatcdly, repUcability, 'Ire hig hly con sequential.Unless cue makes an audio or video recording of telephone andface 10 face conversations (practices with laws governing acceptablepractice). they are gone as soon as they are said. Human me moryfor conversa tion is notorious ly poor . To varying degrees, digitalmed ia may bestored on devices, web sites , and company backupswhere they may be replicated . retrieved at later dates, and ed itedpr ior to sending (Carnevale & Prob st, ' 997; Cherny, ' 9 99; Cuinan& Marku s, 1987; Walther, 1996\ . Synchronous form s like 1M andSkype require logging programs that most user s are not likely tohave. Th ose thai are asynchronous can be easily saved, replicatedand redistributed to others. Th ey can also be archived for search.Despite this, onli ne messages may feel ephemera l, and indeed websites may be there one day and d ifferent or gone the next

Media also vary in the size of an audie nce they can attain orsup port, or rtUGh. Gu rak (4001: }o) descri bes reach as "the partnerof speed," not ing tha t "dig itized discou rse travels quickly, but italso travels widely . . . One single keystroke can send a message tothousands of people: Face to face com mun ication is inherentl ylim ited to those who ca n fit in the same space. Even when a mpll­

fied (a form of mediation in itse lf), physical space and humansensory constraints limit how man y call see or hear a message asit's delivered . The! telephone allows for group calls, but the upperlimi t on how many a g roup can admit or mainta in is sma ll. Incon trast, many forms of digital comm unicatio n can be see n byany internet user (as in the case of webs ites] or can be se nt and,than ks to storage and re plicability, rese nt to enormous audien ces.Messages can reach audiences both local and global. This is apowerful subversio n of the elitis m of mass med ia, within which avery small number of broadcasters could engage in one-to-ma nycommunication , usually within regional or geographic boundaries.The gatekcep ing functio n of mass media is challenged as ind ividu­als use digital media to s pread messages much farther and morewidely than was eve r h istorically poss ible (Gurak, 2 001). Futu recha pters will address ho w enhanced reach allows people to formnew commu nities of inte rest and new relationships.

New forms of personal c0!l.nN tion

Fina lly. media vary in the ir mobility, or extent to which they arcportable - enabling people to send and receive messages regard ­It' SS oflocation - or stationary - requiring tha t people be in speci ficIoc eucns in order to interact. The mobile phon e rep resent s theparadigm case of mobility , making person-to-person cc mmunka­lion possible regardless oflocation. Th e clunky personal computerned to a desk requires thai the user be seated in that spot. L.andhnephones require that people be in the bui lding where tha t num berrtngs. In add ition to offering spatial mob ility, some digital medi a~ llow us to move between limes and interpersonal contexts (Ishii ,1006). Mobile med ia offer the promise that we need never be outuf touch with ou r loved ones. no matter how long the traffic jamIII which we find our selves. Whe n stuck with our famili es, werll;ly import our friends through our mobile devices. As we'll seeIn chapter 6, mobi le med ia give rise to m icrocoordination (Ling,~004) in which people check in with one another to provide briefupd ates or qu ickly arrange meeting s and e rrands. However. moreth.1l1 other personal media, mobil e phones threate n autonomy... we may become accountable to othe rs at all times. ScheglolT( ~oo~ ) . one of the first to study telephone-med iated in teraction,. IlHgests mobile media don't create perpe tu al contact so much. l ~ olTer the perpetual possibility of making contact, a dist inctionome exploit by strategically limiti ng their availability (Llcoppe &lh-n rtjn, 2002).

these seven concepts help us begin to understand the simi­1.1I ltles and differences between face to face com munication andIlln !iated interaction, as well as the var iation amo ngst d iffere nt~ I l\(h, of digital interactions. Face to face comm unication. like alltIll' term s of digital media we will be discussing, is interac tive.l'rople can respond to one another in message exchanges. Face toI ~ l (. com munication is synchronous. It is also loaded with socialI Ul· . that mak e one another's iden tities and man y elemen ts of,u'I.ll an d physical con text apparent (althou gh. as we will retu rnhi In chapter 5. this does not gua rant ee ho nesty). Face to face con-

I' mons can not bestored, nor can they be replicated . Even whenI t 1Iided and, for exam ple. broadcast. the recording loses manyb-tnrnts of the context tha t make face to face communicat ion

(j)

sgnal connectionNew forms of Pf!ii9 Q L

Digital media

JUllt as it's importa nt to clarify core concep ts that may shape rnedi­ned social interaction, it's hel pful to walk throug h the med ia inquestion. 1assume readers are familiar with the mobile phone, so Ilows below on a brief historical overview of the internet. I empha­rze the extent to which the interpersonal appeal of these media

sha ped their development. Unlike the mobile phone, the internetW.ll not built as a personal commun ication med ium, let alone aw~y for fans to connect around their objects of pleasure, for peopleIn find potentia l roma ntic partners. for employers to find or investi­H,llfO potential hires, or any such social processes. It was developedto safeguard m ilitary knowledge. When the first internet con uec­11011 was made in 1969 th rough what was then called ARPANET,funded by the US Department of Defense, no one envisioned that.11 uuc rpersonel com mu nication med ium had been lau nched. It isI"'yond the scope of this book to cover the technological develop­IIII'll ' of the internet; the reade r is referred to Janet Abbate's (1999)hi_tory. First , thoug h, a disclaime r: trying 10 list specific types101 d l~ila l media is frus trating at best. Between this writing andyUill reading there are boun d to be new developments , and thingsI'0pular as I write will drop from vogue. l et this be a remi nder toll ~ 01 the importance of remaining focused on specific capabilities,ul consequences rathe r than the med ia themselves.

TItt: textual internet

I "I II I first quarter-century. the interne t was text-only. With itsluutted Bocial cues, it seemed a poor match for personal interac­Ihlll Vel it took mere months for its developers (who were also itsI'd lllMy users) to realize the medium's utility for persona l com­llllull!.ntcn. Within th ree years of the tirst login. email was in use,111 1 Within fou r years, three-quarter s of online traffic was ema il

IA'I<II'I HOli . 2005). By 2000, the ability to use email was a slgntfi-1 1 1 1I' J ~on that people first got online and one of the main reasonst tho' e already onl ine stayed online (Kraut. Mukhopadhyay,

Willa, Kiesler, & Scherlis. 2000).

l'n JOI1il1 Connections in the Digital Age

what it is. As discu ssed above, face to face comm unication has lowreach, limiting how many can be involved and how far messagescan spread. Face to face commun ication may be mo bile, but onlyso long as the Interacrants are moving throug h space togethe r.This combin ation of qua lities gra nts face to face a sort of special.ness. The full range of cues. the irrephcability, and the need 10 bethere in sha red place and time with the othe r all contribute to thesense that face to face com munication is authen tic, putting the"communion" in com munication.

In contra st, some forms of mediated interaction are asynchro.ncu s. enab ling more message plann ing and wider reach , but apotentially lower sense of connection. Media such as Skype orother video chat tech nologies offer many social cues - voice, facialexpression , a window into the physical surroundings _ but lackcritical int imacy cues including touch and smell. Most digitalmed ia have fewer social cues than that, limiting interaction 10sounds or even just words. By virtue of their convers ion into elec­tronic signals, all d igilal med ia can be stored, though particularinteractions may not be. Even when conversations and messagesare not stored , however, they may leave traces such as records ofwhich phone numbers called which other ones, which IP addressesvisited which wcbsttes. or how many tweets a person has twittered .Digital messages are easily replicaled if they are asynchro nous. butless so if they are synchronous. The reach of digital media can varytremendously depending on the medium. A phone call gene rallyremain s a one-to-one encounter as does much ins tant messagingand chat, but em ails.mailing lis ts, d iscussion grou ps, and websitesare among the digital modes that can have extraord inary reach.Digital media are becoming increasingly mobile as the internetand mobile phone converge into single devices, meaning that thesetechnologies make comm unication possible in places where itwasn 't before. but also that they can intrude into face to face conver­sations where they never cou ld before. As a result . people can haveverydiflere nr experiences with different med ia, yet none may seem10 offer the potential for intimacy and connection that being face toface does. These dist inctions all bring with them im portant poten­tial social shifts, which the remainder of th is book will addre ss.