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.
In no way would I consider read for 2 days as ghosting
Eh. I get it. You don’t owe anyone an explanation. Unless you’ve been dating for like 8 months or something
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.
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.
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.
Holy hell, what a nightmare. This happened to me once with a woman. She doing it to me, kind of ironic. And I felt mildly annoyed instead of horrified, which I’m aware is male privilege.
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
Whatever, people are busy. Texting means I may read it, I may not. If I do I may respond, I may not.
Certainly is not instant communication.
Pretty much of the opinion that out of sight is out of mind. You are here, you have my full attention, you are elsewhere… surely you have better things to do than text me.
depends. there’s people who to not ghost I’d have to have to have a several hour conversion of them spam texting or attempting to interrogate me and we were never close enough for it to be my responsibility to explain their interpersonal failings to them in detail. I can’t fix the world and if I spend my personal time giving every person I run into whose parents failed to teach them basic social skills an hour+ of psychosocial educational therapy, I would never get anything else done.
Not a fan. Really ruins the whole multiplayer experience when people do that.
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?
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
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.
Depends on how much time you knew someone. But I think generally it’s speaks better of a person not to ghost someone. I’d want someone to tell me, and it’s only right to do the same in kind for someone else.
Yes
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.
Both.
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)
I try to be consistent with online and physical ways of doing things but onine things are not necessarily realtime. So completely ignoring a text would be like ignoring in real life but it might take days for me to respond. I mean I am talking from a perspective of independent adulthood where you support yourself and others and are constantly just a hairs breathe from dropping the balls that keep that support going. But like in college I tended to have a challenging course load so could see it taking time then to. Honestly if anyone expects a return on communication before the next weekend theyre expectations do not meet reality. I also hate texts (and smartphones) and you will get an email response oftentimes before a text response as I am often in my email but not as often checking texts.
