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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
In no way would I consider read for 2 days as ghosting
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.
Treating your personal relationships like soliciters is not healthy.
I genuinely don’t understand your comment. Care to elaborate, please?
Yes
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
Oh. Name-calling. Original.
Eh. I get it. You don’t owe anyone an explanation. Unless you’ve been dating for like 8 months or something
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?
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
