Zoom Breakups Are Now a Thing. "Zumping" Is Not.

I knew you would do this to me.

I knew you would all start breaking up with each other over Zoom instead of heeding my sound, time-tested, well-reasoned advice to just do it over text, and I also knew you would try to give it a stupid name.

As relationships continue to wither under the stress of quarantine and global crisis, it was only a matter of time before the mass breakups took hold. And with many soon-to-be-exes still quarantined apart, many of those breakups are happening remotely. If there’s one thing we’ve all learned in quarantine, it’s that many forms of personal interaction can be replicated on Zoom, so like the Zoom meetings, first dates and happy hours before them, the rise of the Zoom breakup was inevitable, despite my case for the rehabilitation of the text message breakup.

Also inevitable? Calling it something fucking stupid. As I’ve previously noted, the media loves coming up with cutesy names for online dating “trends” that no human being has ever or will ever actually utter. These terms, including such nonsensical verbal nouns as “whelming,” “orbiting,” “cloaking,” and “haunting,” exist only in clickbaity headlines and listicles, but there’s somehow always a new one joining this imaginary millennial vocabulary.

The most recent addition to this dubious league is “Zumping,” an atrocious portmanteau of “Zoom” and “dumping” given to Zoom breakups, according to the Guardian.

Here at InsideHook, we will not be using this word, much like literally every other human on earth, including those who are actually participating in the behavior it purports to describe — which, by the way, is somewhat unclear out of context. As one InsideHook editor pointed out this morning, “Zumping” could be an equally stupid portmanteau of “Zoom humping,” a thing that is also definitely happening in these sex-starved times, and also definitely doesn’t need a stupid name.

Now please grow up and just break up with each other over text, and remember that this whole thing could have been avoided if you’d just listened to me in the first place.

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