A new app for Chinese netizens recovering from failed love: the 'Divine Breakup Tool'
A university student has developed a new program to help delete photos and messages of an ex-lover on social media
Breakups have become complicated in the digital age, especially when couples who have agreed to go their separate ways are suddenly confronted with left-over fragments of their relationship in the form of internet photos and social media posts.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in China, where photos of boyfriends and girlfriends are enthusiastically shared online at an alarming rate – until the relationship turns sour.
Luckily, Chinese web-users seeking to remove online traces of their exes may have a new partner to help them ease the pain – the “Divine Breakup Tool” designed by Xie Mengfei, a 21-year-old computer science student in Hubei province’s Wuhan University.
Xie’s program, designed for use with the Chinese social networking site Renren, is actually a downloadable application from the Google Chrome Web Store.
After users download and install it, the application asks for a Renren password and the name of the ex-lover, and then offers a variety of options for cutting off contact.