Disconnecting

In the fifth year of its existence, Facebook now offers more than just social connectivity.

Just when you were busy flaunting details of your latest shopping spree, the last art exhibition you attended, the update on your dog’s dysentery, or ways to tackle climate change through your Facebook taglines, Neil Brady, with his intensely modern approach, made history by expressing his truest feelings on the website. No, the 39-year-old Briton did not propose marriage to his girlfriend, but announced his divorce on that virtual notice board for all to notice. The IT consultant’s status message read: ‘Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady,’ about which the no-longer-dear wife was informed by her closest friend, considering that Mrs Brady wasn’t quite the geek her soon-to-be-parting husband may have liked her to be.

HT Image

So while the man has earned the credit for starting a new trend using the virtual space, the big question is: what will be the next, new mode of calling it quits? After the Darul Uloom-Deoband validated the talaq through SMS — even if the text message wasn’t actually sent — and showed us another function of mobile telephony, Mr Brady has extended the tradition to Facebook taglines. And not just changing his tagline to showcase the current state of his socks.

Perhaps, tomorrow when a wife wakes up in cold sweat realising that there were five overnight missed calls or when a man discovers his hard disk has been hit by a virus called ‘divorce’, married couples everywhere will pause for a second and contemplate if technology has actually made their lives less complicated. Or not.