Technological Baggage in a Breakup

This post was inspired by Brian Truong’s “Millennial breakup problems”

What’s the first thing you do when you go through a breakup? Besides weep and wallow. Gather any remains of them and chuck them in a trash bag as if you’re getting electroshock therapy to erase them from your memory forever, yeah?

In this day and age, technology makes this grand expulsion a little trickier. At every turn, at the touch of your fingertips, reminders of your ex pop out and linger. If only there was a delete button to remove every technological instance of your ex. But alas, the technological baggage clings on, forcing you to remember how linked you two were at one point as you trudge through the necessary actions to forget.

Actions taken to wipe out technological baggage/obsessive actions still occurring because you miss your ex:

• Revoking your ex’s digital key to your place
• Deleting your ex’s phone from your car’s Bluetooth directory
• Still following your ex on Spotify and seeing the moment he is in his feels in Friend Activity (“Sleep Apnea” on repeat, I know you see me)
• Having to unfollow your ex because you are driving yourself mad constantly checking Spotify and toggling the “Show Friend Activity” button in your account settings
• Unfriending your ex on Facebook so that you don’t repeatedly pop open the chat sidebar to see if he’s online
• Asking the Messenger group chat owner to remove your ex
• Figuring out if it’s possible to restrict Google Sheets by email (it’s more trouble than it’s worth)
• Deleting your ex’s column and any remnants of him out of the Sheet
• Copying the old Sheet and asking your friends to use the new Sheet, which inadvertently ousts your fresh singledom
• Opening Instagram stories more than usual to view if your ex’s friends posted a story with him in it
• Checking who viewed your Snapchat (yes, I still use Snapchat, sue me) story with increased frequency
• Speculating that your ex misses you (rightfully so!) when he is one of the first viewers of your story
• Wondering if your ex deleted you as a friend on Snapchat since he never views your stories anymore
• Scrolling furiously through your ex’s Venmo friends to find the new addition, since of course you know how many friends he had when you broke it off
• Wishing your ex’s Venmo transactions weren’t private so you didn’t have to go through this rigmarole
• Removing yourself from your ex’s best friend’s Amazon Prime account
• Knowing your ex’s best friend and you follow each other on Twitter so he is probably gonna see this
• Starting to see the Google Photos Memories trickle in from the past year
• Deliberating whether it’s too cruel to remove your ex from your shared album…you ultimately don’t do this
• Seeing the suggested videos from the YouTube channels you used to watch together; you watch them alone
• Hearing that the Netflix series you and your ex started your relationship with and a movie sequel you two were anticipating released — also watching these alone, sigh
• Logging into LinkedIn to see that your ex changed his tagline and if the green dot is present by his name (it never is, much to your feigned surprise)
• Removing your ex from the Airbnb booking of an upcoming trip
• Checking your ex’s Reddit account history
• Going to your ex’s photography website for new posts
• Updating your friends’ online wedding RSVPs to indicate that you will not be bringing a guest
• Realizing that he also purged you from all technology in an attempt to do the best “Eternal Sunshine” of you as well
• *Bonus if I wasn’t a green texter* Removing your ex from tracking your loc but still constantly checking his. Or leaving location tracking on so he sees how much you’re getting out and living life.

While social media is a boon for all the extensive creepin’ I do, this breakup has certainly turned my antics against me. All of my neuroses fire when I log online. I can’t imagine how much more of my day would be engulfed with doing my routine check-in on all the apps if he was an active user with more accounts. I’m sure there’s more baggage to stumble on that reiterates how ingrained he used to be in my life. It sucks, guys. This one is tough.