Do you consider ghosting people a reasonable way to deal with today’s overwhelming and constant information and notification overload? Or do you find it offensive and unfriendly?
Would you equate it to a person ignoring you irl or is ignoring a text different?
For this post let’s assume the people involved are or were in the past friends, and ghosting is leaving someone on “read” for more than 2 days.
Two days is not ghosting if they’re busy or struggling.
Personality and relationship/closeness matters, as well as expectations.
Ghosting can be disappointing and can be hurtful.
Eh. I get it. You don’t owe anyone an explanation. Unless you’ve been dating for like 8 months or something
Depends. Someone toxic that doesn’t respect boundaries? Absolutely. A good friend for no reason? No.
I don’t take ghosting from women too personally. It still stings, but I understand. I’ve heard horror stories of men who will think of any response, even if it’s “fuck off, leave me alone!” as a chance. So ghosting is the way to go in these circumstances.
The woman doesn’t know if I’m one of those men. So again, if I’m ghosted, I try to shrug it off and move on.
A friend, though? They’d better tell me they were in a coma or something. Otherwise they can fuck right off.
What’s crazy is that, personally, I seem to know just as many “Can’t this guy take a hint” women as I know “I’m not good enough for him so I should block him” type women.
I legitimately know two women who had that concern, blocked the guy on everything, and he either made an alt or found an obscure social to DM them on.
Both are happily married and medicated for their anxiety now.
ghosting is leaving someone on “read” for more than 2 days.
This is totally normal behavior. People are busy. Sometimes they read your message and say to themselves “I see this now, but I’m feeling stressed and busy right now - I’ll reply later when I can write a good response.” But then later happens, and it turns out they are tired and forgetful.
Especially if you are just trying to have a casual conversation - people will treat these messages as lower priority and also as requiring more emotional energy, since the conversation isn’t urgent but they don’t want to write dismissive one word responses.
I recommend:
- Send texts primarily to exchange information or make arrangements to meet.
- If you want to have a conversation, either meet in person or have a phone call.
- If a person has failed to respond to a text, then wait until the next time you have some reason to contact them - which could be as simple as “I want to talk to them”. At which point, text them the info you need to give to them and/or pitch a time to meet up or have a phone call. If they don’t respond to this, I tend to follow up with a snarky “HellooOOOoooo”. And then if they don’t respond to that, a sincere message asking if they are okay. If they still don’t respond to that, depending on the friendship, I may either write them off, or ask mutual friends what is going on.
Are you an AI bot?
No. I can write enumerated lists without being a bot, dipshit
The bots are getting feisty these days
For this post let’s assume the people involved are or were in the past friends, and ghosting is leaving someone on “read” for more than 2 days.
This doesn’t match how I’m used to seeing ghosting defined.
That behavior might be unfriendly, but there are a ton of innocuous reasons people do it. People are busy and not every message merits a prompt reply. If someone sends me something that requires more time or attention than I have at that moment like a video or news article, I’m likely to make a mental note to look at it later. I might actually remember, and then remember to send a reply about it. I might not.
It’s maybe a little rude not to respond to something more important or time-sensitive, but I can always ask again or use something more synchronous like a voice call. People are busy, life happens, tech can be unreliable. It’s best not to assume intentional disrespect.
My understanding of the term “ghosting” is permanent or long-term cessation of communication over all channels without explanation. That should be reserved for situations where someone is a physical danger or behaved in a manner so egregious they almost certainly know what they did.
Yeah, there seem to be two definitions of ghosting.
The actual definition is when someone you have an established relationship with cuts off all communication without explaination. For example, if your girlfriend of a year and a half just stopped responding to all texts and calls and blocks you on all socials, that would be ghosting.
Then there is the terminally online and emotionally fragile definition, which is when literally anyone doesn’t respond to your messages with the utmost urgency and priority. Eg, a girl you matched with on a dating app doesn’t keep your endless boring conversations going. Or, as here, a friend doesn’t respond to a text immediately.
Unfortunately, the second definition tends to predominate online, and it’s hard not to feel the cringe when someone uses it.
Texts are literally made for busy people. I don’t understand how you can call later but not have time later to check their text. Calls demand you at the very moment but texts allow you to respond whenever you are free.
Uh sure. Texts allow you to respond whenever you are free. But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. My free time is my own for me to use in any way I please. And if I don’t want to reply to anyone in particular during my free time, no one should judge me for that. I’ll reply to you when I want to. That’s why it’s asynchronous communication. Need something more immediate? Call. Visit. Or try texting again (but don’t send a barrage of texts.)
I am likely to send more texts, but at some point, if someone is not getting back to me in the timeframe I want them to, I will call them to force the issue rather than silently getting mad about their slow response.
I used to talk to this girl on some random app in the early days of social media. We became good friends and would facetime every other day and got to know each other pretty well. This went on for probably about 2 years. She even began to have feelings for me.
At some point, I decided to completely ghost her. The truth is I got this idea in my head that talking to girls on the internet was sad and desperate. But I didn’t want to tell her the truth.
She tried calling me and texting me but I never replied. Even about 6 months later she tried calling me out of the blue, but again I ignored the call.
To this day she still doesn’t know why I just disappeared on her. It was a horrible thing to do and I’m not proud of it. Ghosting is almost always cruel unless you have a very good reason for it.
I feel bad for her :(
So do I, it was a real asshole thing to do.
Have you tried to make it right?
The thought has crossed my mind many times, but I think that ship has long sailed. It was about 12 years ago and even if I was able to contact her, I can’t imagine she’d be too keen on talking to me.
You’re wrong, and adults usually enjoy little moments like that from the past. You should fix this
I have no idea how I’d even contact her.
maybe OP couldn’t because OP actually died and is a literal ghost
It’s cowardly behavor that dehumanizes people.
Naaaah, if you have five people in a year texting you over and over demanding your attention, then getting even more texts when you reply with “yo don’t text me again,” you’ll learn to ghost very quickly.
I’m not saying that’s everyone’s experience. But understand that not everyone does it for the pleasure of dehumanizing.
Since many have already answered to OP, I will ask another version of question similar to this.
What kind of ghosting is this when people only text you when you text them first? And when you don’t, the conversation never happens again?
Answer: that’s not ghosting. That’s like saying “what kind of lamp is this computer speaker?”
Ghosting is when the other person never responds, ever, even if you send them messages. As long as they respond, again, that’s not ghosting.
That’s just a person for whom you are not a priority in their lives.
The ADHD type. People stop existing when they’re out of render distance.
Not ghosting if you aren’t cut off, imo its not ghosting if you still follow or have each other as friends on any social media, if someone stops responding and removed you everywhere, that is ghosting
I got to be good friends with someone I met at work and we gamed online when we could. We’d be playing a game, and he would always get so angry, raging at the game into the mic (I’m the only one listening, mind you), actually getting angry at a video game. I would find it amusing at first, but it became exhausting after a while, so I would find other games to play or just go invisible on Steam. He’d call me every so often, asking what’s up or if I was playing that night, but I’d find other things to do or say I wasn’t playing much anymore. I really hate lying to people.
It wasn’t until years later he started getting assault weapons, talking conservatively, and becoming toxic in general. I decided to ghost him because I felt I couldn’t trust him anymore. It’s really too bad, as he was a nice guy at first, but something changed in him and it gave me an icky feeling. I suppose it’s for the better, as I have no idea how he would have handled my transition.
You did the right thing. In my opinion, that is a valid reason to ghost someone.
Not a fan. Really ruins the whole multiplayer experience when people do that.
Sometimes you’re overwhelmed, and that’s ok, if the person is toxic then it’s ok to ghost them. However, if you just don’t enjoy their conversation, or have better things to do, as an adult you have the moral obligation to let them know you’re not going to be responding. It’s as easy as “I’m busy so won’t be able to respond to messages as frequently”. It’s not hard, and it’s nice, and it keeps people from feeling sad. If they react to that message in a bad way then that’s on them.
Edit(this does depend on communication style though, I have some friends that we just send each other messages every few months like pen pals in days of yore)
with today’s overwhelming and constant information and notification overload
If that’s the reason, I think there’s an issue with managing notifications. Limit them to important people and there won’t be much more mental clutter than in the past.
Ghosting people for other reasons if completely fine though and is not the same at all as ignoring them in real life.
Limit them to important people and there won’t be much more mental clutter than in the past.
Then you’re still ghosting the less important people, but even more consistently?
It’s immature. Just say you’re taking a break from messaging right now.
Double goes for dating. If you get ghosted by someone, probably a good thing, because they aren’t relationship material yet.
Whenever I hear ghosted what I actually see is they were too afraid to have a conversation. They think it hurts the person’s feelings less. It doesn’t. If anything it leaves them angry and confused.
ghosting is a lot better than having someone show up at your door pounding on it at 11pm screaming how you can’t break up with them.
happened to me more than once, so I ghost now. It’s safer and less dramatic for everyone involved. nobody i ever ghosted has harassed, threatened, or assaulted me. women I’ve respectfully broke up with have a tendancy to do one or more of those things. hell I’ve had situations where she was breaking up with me… and got violent because I wasn’t upset enough for her and that upset her… how dare I take her dumping me well!
and as a man, woman on man violence/harassment has zero social consequence. if anything if i called the cops because a woman was stalking/assaulting me, I’d get arrested.
hurting someone else’s feelings is a lot better than someone threatening violence at me for breaking up with them.
I guess it depends on how you define ghosting and the expectations you want to set with some people. For instance, I recently didn’t notice someone sent me a message a few weeks prior, so when I noticed it I responded right away.
If it’s family I doubt there’s a big expectation to always reply over text. If it’s close friends, sometimes people are just not in the right space to give a good reply so they might not have an answer. If it’s someone you barely know, I think it can be a bit hurtful to building a bond with them.
I regularly have ghosted people for weeks or months though as I’ve gotten older, but that’s more because I’m overwhelmed more. Idk if people want to talk I’m always open for a call, but texting isn’t my focus these days.
Well,
