American entrepreneur of Armenian descent Alexis Ohanian has proposed that the Armenian segment of Twitter educate wife Serena Williams on “the Armenian Goodbye.”
Responding to a tweet by the tennis legend, the Reddit co-founder jokes that the Armenian goodbye is “scientifically-proven” and offers a link to a page on Urban Dictionary, which defines the phenomenon as a process involving a group of Armenian friends or family, who are saying goodbye to each other, but it takes a very long time.
Ohanian’s comment came after Williams tweeted: “Maj Pet peeve when you say bye to someone on the phone and 10 mins later they are still talking and you are still trying to say bye. 2 people come to mind… can you guess?”
And social media users were quick to remind that goodbyes among Armenians can really take hours.
Ohanian, who famously co-founded social media site Reddit in 2005, and then sold it 16 months later to Conde Nast, making him a multi-millionaire at the age of 23, met Williams’ at a café in Italy in 2015. Two years later, the couple announced they were having a baby and were married shortly after the birth of their daughter.