By MATT RICHTEL

When Alexis Gorman, 26, wanted to tell a man she had been dating that the courtship was over, she felt sending a text message was too impersonal. But she worried that if she called the man, she would face an awkward conversation or a confrontation.
So she found a middle ground. She broke it off in a voice mail message, using new technology that allowed her to jump directly to the suitor’s voice mail, without ever having to talk to the man - or risk his actually answering the phone.
The technology, called Slydial, lets callers dial a mobile phone but avoid an unwanted conversation on the other end. The incoming call goes undetected by the recipient, who simply receives the traditional prompt that a voice mail message has been received.
Ms. Gorman used a test version of Slydial that has been available for months. But since the finished product was recently unveiled to the public, more than 200,000 people have used the service, which is supported by advertisers like McDonald’s.
Slydial turns out to be only the latest in a breed of new technologies that fit squarely into an emerging paradox: tools that let users avoid direct communication.
It is part of a trend that some academics, text messagers and creators of technologies say has emerged: We are constantly just missing one another - on purpose.
Unlike text messaging or e-mailing, James Katz, head of the center for mobile communications studies at Rutgers University, said, telephone communiques had been seen as requiring a sacrifice of time and energy and a higher level of commitment on the part of the communicator. Not anymore.
Missed or indirect communication can often actually be preferable, Mr. Katz said. “You pretend to be communicating, when you’re actually stifling communication, he said.
Slydial may turn out to be just a fad. Still, Mr. Katz understands why people may be tempted to use it.
“A phone conversation is like wildfire - you don’t know where it’s going to go, he said.
The company behind Slydial is not denying its duplicitous implications. The company’s Web site, MobileSphere, suggests several appropriate uses of Slydial, including leaving a message for a girlfriend who is a “talker.
Manny Mamakas, 34, a consultant who lives in New York said he had used Slydial to call in sick to work.
“I don’t want 50 questions, Mr. Mamakas said. “I just say, ‘I won’t be coming in; I’m under the weather.’ By the time he hears voice mail, it’s already noon.
He acknowledges that the technology encourages a perhaps not-so-valiant character trait.
“It does make you more cowardly, he said.