GUELPH, ON – An eight week relationship ended abruptly last Sunday evening when three emoticons were used symbolically during an instant messaging conversation.
Following a two hour on-line chat session between Tim Hortons coworkers Samantha Spears, 22, and Mathew Juliard, 26, three emoticons were used to terminate the relationship. Spears used a cartoon boy, an addition sign, a cartoon girl, an equal sign, and a cartoon thumbs down to convey the fact that they were no longer a pair.
The troubled couple had recently been facing some problems and the two-hour text messaging conversation was an attempt to resolve their differences.
Spears and Juliard had devoted the evening to “[texting] things through,” Juliard told reporters.
Juliard recalls feeling dazed.
“It happened really fast,” Juliard said. “For a second I just sat there, staring at the emoticons.”
After collecting himself, Juliard hurriedly sent Spears a cartoon image of a broken heart and a round circular face with tears flowing furiously out of its eyes.
“I simply could not have better described the way I felt without those two
powerful emoticons,” Juliard told reporters. “The way [Spears] made me
feel was too horrid for words alone.”
Julliard added: “Only emoticons were able to accurately depict
my sorrow at that point.”
Juliard attempted to change Spears’ decision regarding
the break-up by sending her a cartoon rose, but at that point Spears had already
logged off the instant-communication device.
Juliard then made repeat phone calls to Spears, which produced busy signals, and revealed that she might have still been online.
