World's first Facebook divorce?

Look, I've had enough of these stories too. But at the same time, I'm drawn to them like a rubbernecker observing an overturned circus truck.

Emma Brady, a 35-year-old Englishwoman, discovered that her husband, Neil, was leaving her when she read his updated Facebook status: "Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady."

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mrs. Brady tried to take a sanguine view of this most public of dumpings: "What upset me the most was not the fact that Neil had written he had ended his marriage, but the comment from a girl in Canada who said: 'You are better off out of it.' It hurt me that he had been speaking to someone else about it."

You see, romance is not dead. Whatever your Facebook status says.

(Credit: CC V Miramontes)

Quite naturally, Mrs. Brady looked on the bright side of her husband until the bitter end. She even waited for him to return to the happy family home before popping some inquisitory remarks: "I asked Neil if he had anything to tell me, and he simply said no. He acted like everything was fine, so we carried on as normal."

In fact, all this only came out when Mr. Brady pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife some time later. He is now living with his mother and is adamant that his Facebook posting could not have come as a surprise to his wife. "I'd had enough of her," was his florid summation.

Perhaps there is a case, though, for Mr. Brady to work on his communication skills. (He is, as you'd might have guessed, an IT consultant.) But can we please ask that everyone get all of their vaguely newsworthy personal laundry out of their Facebook system as soon as possible so that we can focus on the important things in life? Such as the fact that the world is ending, and Facebook needs to sell more ads.