导读：社交网站(Social Network Site)的流行为恋人们提供了一个增进感情的平台，无论相隔多远，恋人们都可以轻松掌握对方的最新动态，增进彼此的感情。与此同时，它们自然也成了恋人们分手的一大途径。当感情渐渐淡去，为了避免当面说分手的尴尬，越来越多的年轻人开始尝试网上分手。

张海峰（音译），兰州大学19岁的医科学生，与女朋友分手时有个怪癖。

ZHANG Haifeng, a 19-year-old medical student at Lanzhou University, has an odd habit when it comes to breaking up with his girlfriends.

他喜欢通过互联网说分手。他曾通过邮件和一个女孩分手。后来的一个女朋友则是通过QQ说分手的。

He does it via the Internet. Once, he broke up with a girl by e-mail. With his next girlfriend, he broke up by QQ messaging.

他的开场白通常是“我想和你说件事”，然后就开始解释他们其实并不合适。最后，他会向那些女孩道歉，并祝她们好运。

He always began the message with, "I have to tell you something", and then explained that they weren't compatible. He apologized to the girls at the end of his message, and he wished them good luck.

“如果想和对方分手，我觉得宜早不宜晚。当面说分手的话，你不得不对她们的反应做好应对措施--痛哭、争吵、商量或者乞求。”张海峰说。“但如果是通过邮件、QQ等方式，我就可以直接了当地说分手。她们收到消息时通常是在家或者自己一个人，因此可以毫无顾忌地宣泄自己的情绪。”

"If I want to break up with someone, I think it is best done sooner rather than later ...When you face them, you must prepare for their reactions -crying, arguing, bargaining or begging," Zhang said. "But when I send an e-mail, or leave a message on QQ, I can just tell things directly and clearly. When they receive the message, they are always at home and in private, so they will feel safe enough to respond emotionally."

近来，像张海峰这样想通过其他媒介说分手的人越来越多了。热门电视剧《欲望都市》的粉丝们可能记得，凯莉·布兰肖的一个男友就曾通过便利贴说分手。

Zhang's desire for a "medium" for breaking up may be universal these days. Followers of the hit US TV series Sex and the City may remember that one of Carrie Bradshaw's boyfriends broke up with her via a Post-it note.

他在一张黄色正方形的便利贴上草草写道：“对不起，我不能和你在一起了。别恨我。”

The man scribbled on a sticky square of yellow paper: "I'm sorry, I can't. Don't hate me."

对该剧的粉丝们来说，这样的举动看似残酷、孩子气。但在7年后的今天，此举却显得如此过时。

It may have seemed cruel and childish to fans of the TV drama, but seven years later, it just seems so old-fashioned.

据美国《新闻周刊》杂志报道，便利贴分手已经属于一个遥远的时代--一个Facebook、短信诞生前的时代。

According to a story on the US magazine Newsweek, the Post-it breakup now belongs to an ancient era - the pre-Facebook, pre-texting times.

在09年的电影《你其实不懂他的心》中，现代的分手时尚得到了充分诠释。剧中，女演员德鲁·巴里摩尔说：“我上班时收到他的语音留言，所以回到家后给他回电话。接着他发邮件到我的黑莓，我就给他发了短信。如今，我不得不检查所有可能的通讯渠道，到头来只发现被七种高科技拒绝了七次。真是累死我了。”

In a more contemporary depiction of break-up fashion, US actress Drew Barrymore says in the 2009 film He's Just Not That Into You: "I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, so I called him at home, and then he e-mailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies…It's exhausting."

《新闻周刊》援引了美国印第安纳大学传播与文化学院助理教授伊兰娜·格尔森的作品，后者曾问自己的学生“怎样分手比较糟糕”。从学生们的反馈来看，相比分手时收到的信息，那些媒介更让他们愤怒。他们埋怨对方通过短信、Facebook等社交网站而非本人当面提分手。

Newsweek cited the work of Ilana Gershon, an assistant professor of communication and culture at Indiana University in the US, who once asked her students what makes a bad breakup. According to Gershon, her students all responded with tales of outrage about the medium rather than the message, complaining that they got the bad news by text or by social networking sites like Facebook, rather than in person.

受该调查启发，格尔森教授决定深入研究这些新技术是如何改变爱情规则的。在她的新书《分手2.0:通过新媒体切断联系》中，格尔森写道，受访的所有人几乎都认为当面分手是最体面的分手方式，但由于这种面对面的分手不能让他们达到目的，很多人都转而借助新媒体。

Inspired by this finding, Gershon decided to study how new technology has changed the rules of romance. In her new book, The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media, Gershon wrote that almost all the people she talked to agreed that the most honorable way to break up was in person, but many turned to new media because the face-to-face conversations didn't get the results they wanted.

据格尔森讲，现如今，社交网站在年轻人的恋情中至关重要。她采访的一些人称在Facebook上公布分手消息才算真正的分手。其他人通过手机短信分手。

Social networking sites play a significant and public role in young people's romances these days, according to Gershon. Some people she interviewed will claim that a breakup isn't official until it is "Facebook official". Others broke up over cell phone texting.

格尔森采访的很多人都很向往以前那种基于现实生活而非虚拟网络联系的恋爱关系，比如：戴着男友的大学联谊会会徽或穿着他所在大学的外套。

Many of the people Gershon interviewed expressed a fond feeling for the "old days" when relationships were marked by real rather than virtual symbols of connection, like wearing a boyfriend's fraternity pin or his varsity jacket.

另据格尔森透露，无论是泪流满面的当面说分手还是短信说分手，分手总是一件难事。她在接受《新闻周刊》采访时说：“现在唯一的不同就是，我们可能有50种方式说分手。但这些方法都一样伤人。”

According to Gershon, a breakup has always been hard to do-whether it involves a tearful face-to-face confrontation or a short text message. "The only difference now," she told the magazine, "is that we might actually have 50 ways to leave a lover, and they all hurt."