Shirtless selfies and unfollows: How Zayn is using social media to break up with Gigi

Some women change their hairstyle after a breakup. Some guys … post shirtless selfies on Instagram. Well, that surely seems to be Zayn Malik‘s m.o.

Since the news broke that Zee and Gee, as in Gigi Hadid, are no more, the former One Direction singer has been flooding his stream with ab shots. We’ll be the first to admit that they’re impressive — though we hope that he is eating right and getting enough rest amid his personal drama. (He has been candid about having had an eating disorder.)

In this modern age of love, Malik is leaning on social media as he goes through this very public split. In addition to collecting a staggering number of likes (more than 4 million) from his legions of fans for the shirtless Instagram photo spree — never bad for a bruised ego — let’s not forget that it’s on social that he announced his breakup in the first place. Some stars issue statements through publicists, but he went right to the people … of Twitter. He posted that he and Hadid had parted ways — and beat her to the punch in doing it. His message went live 12 minutes before hers.

And while he said that there is nothing but love — as well as “respect” and “adoration” — between them after their two-plus years together, it seems like there’s a little drama too. After his announcement, he did a social media purge and stopped following Gigi and her mom, Yolanda Hadid, who said Z was “like a son” to her. In fairness, Yolanda may have inserted herself into their breakup drama with this Instagram post:

For the record, Gigi and Yolanda are still following Zayn. We imagine they are privately plotting when to unfollow. For now, we wonder what they think of his shirtless photos.

Yolanda is firmly in Gigi’s corner online and Zayn is getting family support as well. His sister Safaa Malik made quite a statement with this. We’re not sure who the “horrible people” are that she’s referring to, but we can guess.

As Zayn uses social media to work through the split, his fans are using social to process it as well. They have had a burning question on their minds about the high-profile parting of ways — namely, they want to know what is to become of Zayn’s tattoo of Gigi’s eyes.

Oh, the internet. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it hurts so good.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

• Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik break up: A timeline of their romance

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