Breaking up with anyone, be they your partner, a friend, or your acupuncturist, is never pleasant. Telling someone who feels a type of way about your mutual relationship that it’s not working out is not something anyone’s very good at. Hence, ghosting’s prevalence.
But, what is life other than a series of unfortunate incidents and new things that no one really wants to do? Enter The Breakup Shop, a brand new 100 percent serious startup that aims to take the difficult and horrible work out of breaking up. Started by Canadian brothers Mackenzie and Evan, the pair told Motherboard, “People are already paying services like Tinder to get them in a relationship, why not pay a service to get you out of one.”
The prices, for what it’s worth, aren’t exorbitant. Ten dollars will get you a breakup text or an email, sent to whoever you’re dumping. If you want to make it personal – so that the dumpee doesn’t think that they’re, oh, at the receiving end of a horrible service designed to milk the humanity out of the interaction – you can have an actual letter sent for $20 or $30, depending on whether you want it customized. Once the deed has been done via carefully crafted missive written by a stranger, another stranger will then urge the dumpee to start the healing process by purchasing a Breakup Gift Pack for a reasonable $80. The pack includes either “The Notebook” or “Call Of Duty” on DVD, some cookies, two wineglasses and a Netflix gift card. Once you’ve used all the items in your box, feel free to use it as a “memory oven” by stuffing all the detritus of your relationship into said box and lighting it on fire somewhere well-ventilated and safe.
The writer at Motherboard tested this service by staging a pre-approved breakup with his girlfriend, and despite the fact that she knew it was coming, it still stung. The phone call she received not only broke up with her, but offered advice on how to handle said breakup, and also mentioned that her boyfriend didn’t want to feel pressured into marriage — something that dude had never said in the first place.
So, if you’re totally chill with two strangers from Canada breaking up with your BF/GF, because you don’t have the stomach to sit down on a couch with the person you’ve been fucking to tell them that you don’t wanna do it anymore, be my guest. Just don’t be surprised if it comes back to bite you on the ass.
[Motherboard]Original by Megan Reynolds