This Poor Woman Might Be the First Person to Be Dumped Over Zoom

Julia Moser is a freelance writer, a producer for BuzzFeed News, and perhaps the first person to be broken up with over Zoom during the quarantine. It's not a distinction that anyone relishes, but at least she got a viral piece out of it. 

On the evening of April 9, Julia simply tweeted, "am i the first person who's been dumped via zoom?" It immediately went viral, racking up nearly 63,000 "likes," although most people obviously didn't like it like it. 

Her tweet shocked the world and garnered such reactions as, "DEATH PENALTY!" and the short but emotive, "OH NO." In short, people were horrified. What monster would do such a thing to Julia, whom I assume is a lovely person? 

The world sprang to Julia's defense. I mean. How do you even deal? You can't bake enough loaves of bread to get over this. Zoom should be reserved for awkward work meetings and even more awkward games of Quiplash with your extended family. Breakups on Zoom should be big no-nos.

Who would dare to bring another ounce of bad news into the world at this fraught moment? It simply isn't right. But according to Julia, the precise problem with the dude who did the deed is that he was really nice and responsible about it. The nerve. 

Honestly, that makes his actions even more reprehensible. At least with Julia's tweet, she found out that she was not alone in her terribly unfortunate experience. 

Others started sharing similar stories, like this one woman who wrote, "Oof. My ex asked me for divorce through Facebook message when Facebook was still new. It smarts." Facebook Messenger? Oh, you mean the devil's instant messaging app? No thank you.

Another person shared that they had been dumped via AIM back when they were in eighth grade, which is a quintessential middle school experience if you ask anyone who grew up in the early 2000s.

Still, the most baffling of the bunch was this next person, who wrote a sentence so hard to comprehend that I had to read it three times to even understand what they were trying to get at.

I just don't understand. But don't worry; they explain. In a follow-up tweet, after many people were like, "WHAT??" they explain, "They gave a PowerPoint presentation during a staff meeting and halfway through, they showed us the new org chart with a bunch of people missing. The people not on the chart were asked, not unkindly, to step out. It wasn’t mean. Just weird. :D"

Um, that's horrifying. And I've been laid off in some pretty unceremonious ways (*ahem* via email on election night in 2016 *ahem*). 

I hope that these stories brought Julia some solace in this dark time. It's got to be nice to know that she's not exactly alone, even if she is the first person to be dumped over Zoom during this quarantine. At least she got a viral piece out of it; she wrote about the agonizing breakup for BuzzFeed News, in what I hope was a cathartic exercise.

In it, she writes, "The internet connection wasn't great, so we kept freezing. 'We’re breaking up,' I said — and we were!" At least she has a sense of humor about it, eh? 

As Julia writes in her piece, it's especially hard to be broken up with when you can't cry on your sister's shoulder or have your friends bring you cake and alcohol. It's a unique experience, one that will probably happen to more and more people the longer this quarantine lasts. All we can hope for is as many Zooms as possible that don't end in heartbreak.