The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/23074
Breaking up is hard to do the Web can help I just unfriended my ex, and I feel great! The Internet has plenty of tools to help people looking to start a romance — Match. com’s ads assert that one in five new relation- ships begins on an online dating site — but what about those trying to end one? In recent years, a handful of new sites and services have emerged to salve the wounds of the newly single — advising them on recov- ery strategies, offering a space to vent, a way to laugh and a marketplace to hawk the wares of bygone boyfriends. “I looked on the Internet, got a couple books. But nothing was really helping me move on,” Ellie Scarborough said of a par- ticularly tough breakup two years ago. After months of moping, the former television reporter sent herself flowers at work. They arrived, along with an idea to start a website devoted to helping women recover from breakups. That site, Pink Kisses, offers a variety of BREAKUP WEBSITES PinkKisses.com Offers services to help people move on. IHateMyEx.com YouBrokeUpHow.com Let uses anonymously rail against romantic wrongs they’ve suffered. Brokenheartedgirl.com LovesAGame.com BreakupKings.com Provide comical solace for users. services including an “action plan” that, for $10 a month, delivers daily e-mails with advice about how to move on. (Unfriend him on Facebook; take up a hobby you’ve always wanted to do.) Clients can also sign up to receive uplifting text messages and pur- chase sessions with a stylist or life coach. The particularly bereaved can upload a picture of their former love and watch it burn on screen. (That one’s free.) Anyone who needs to get some things off their chest or find solace in the struggles of others can log on to I Hate My Ex or You Broke Up How?, sites that let users anony- mously rail against the romantic wrongs they’ve suffered. (You won’t believe what Mike said about Tiffany.) Advice sites range from the morose to the comical. Some, such as Brokenheartedgirl. com, target women while others, such as LovesAGame, are geared toward men. Moise Toussaint, a 26-year-old student in Miami, started Breakup Kings after he and several friends got out of relationships. The site aggregates breakup-related stories and videos from across the Internet. Some of it is meant to be practical, but much of the material he collects, like a YouTube video of a relationship-ending strategy gone wrong, is funny. “A lot of people break up and don’t know how to cope with it,” he said. “They just need a little humor.” The need for comic relief was, in part, the inspiration behind “Break-ups: The Series,” a collection of short films depicting breakup scenes created by Ted Tremper, a member of Chicago’s famed Second City comedy ensem- ble. He recruited his friends from the improv community, had them pick a setting and a scene partner and started rolling. What re- sulted — without any written dialogue — is a Web anthology of searing close-ups between two people who are through with each other. “I hoped to give the actors a chance to ex- plore the horrible, gut-wrenching and hilari- ous aspects of this terrible process we all have to suffer through so many times in our lives,” he said. “It’s torture, but it’s also extremely amusing.” — Ellen McCarthy, The Washington Post Jan. 13, 2011 O-Town Scene 21