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'Ex-Blocker' Helps Erase Heartbreak From the Internet

by Leila Brillson on July 21, 2010 at 04:26 PM

Ex-Blocker on Twitter
As the Swedes of yore so sagaciously proclaimed, "Breaking up is never easy, I know, but I have to go." Those perky blondes were right. The untangling of lives, from reclaiming your teenaged Liz Phair shirt to changing your relationship status on Facebook, is no walk in the park.

Adding to the torment and heartache comes a whole new digital terrain, wherein once-friendly Twitter feeds and Facebook friends suddenly pack a whole new emotional punch. Endlessly googling and fretting doesn't heal old wounds. So, in order to get all 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' for the heartbroken, the Web magicians at firm Jess3 have decided to literally erase the virtual past by creating the personalized, grudge-friendly 'Ex-Blocker,' a user-friendly add-on designed for the major browsers.

A simplistic idea, the Blocker asks the scorned questions about the identity of a relinquished paramour -- Twitter handle, Facebook URL, and first and last name. Then, the Ex-Blocker creates a tailored extension, sensitive to any mentions of him or her. We tried the Blocker for ourselves, using Switched as an example (as this writer's exes primarily live under assumed names somewhere by the Falkland Islands), and it works. Kind of.

Instead of simply erasing any mention of Switched (our imaginary ex), it just threw up transparent windows alerting us that we were trespassing on enemy territory. The website's name was blanked and its tweets prohibited, but Ex-Blocker gave us the option to (gasp) unblock if we so chose.

So, the Ex-Blocker, it appears, does nothing more than serve as a guilty reminder that you are doing some cyber-trespassing into dangerous territory. For those who have the willpower and resolve to look away once the literal warning sign flashes, then, by all means, fool yourself into forgetting with a Firefox extension. Yet, for the lovelorn who need to physically erase the traces of a relationship gone awry (or stop the obsessive 'Why is he friending her?' thoughts that plague the paranoid), we'd recommend how our forebears handled splits. Unfriend, defollow and use some self-restraint. To quote Abba, "It's the best you can do." [From: Ex-Blocker, via: CNET and DownloadSquad]

Tags: abba, BreakingUp, dating, ex-blocker, facebook, jess3, privacy, relationships, top, twitter, web

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