The scene: girl meets boy. Girl and Boy fall for each other, for a while, and have a fun, but not forever relationship. Girl and Boy both know it’s not “it” so after a few months Girl takes the mature high road and nicely breaks it off with Boy. Well done, Girl.

And no less than five minutes after, Girl’s friend calls her to tell her she’s so sorry about the breakup.

But how did Girl’s friend, and the rest of the Web, and the rest of the world know about said love loss almost as fast as the words, “This has been great, but ...” were coming out of Girl’s mouth?

I think we all know the answer to that – and it’s no carrier pigeon.

It’s a modern-day case of OSM: Obsessed with Social Media. And ladies, it’s multiplying faster than the phone numbers in Jon Gosselin’s black book.

Before the scent of Girl’s perfume had faded, Boy had already changed his Facebook profile to the always gossip-provoking “single,” Tweeted some lovelorn emo song lyrics and even changed his Gchat status to the male equivalent of “girls rule, boys drool.” It hit fast, it hit hard, and it, understandably, hit the top of Girl's pissed-off level. OSM struck again – taking Boy and Girl with it.

It’s hard not to catch OSM – endless free ways to get your 15 minutes of fame in cyberspace using nifty handheld devices and suck-you-right-in Web sites. And, while the vast digital world has literally changed the way we communicate forever, is it always necessarily for the better? Especially when it goes beyond wall posting and into relationship roasting?



Undiagnosed until now, singer John Mayer has picked up OSM somewhere in his Hollywood travels and it’s manifested itself in the form of generally hilarious Tweets (he caught a good strain – from Jessica Simpson perhaps?). His latest outbreak includes a series romance denials with The Hills star Kristen Cavalleri, including “My Milli has never slam danced with her Vanilli” and “I have never Bensoned her Hedges, nor have I attempted to Bartle her James.”