Yes. Woman can also kill men*. An individual woman can be stronger than an individual man (or 10 average uni students…)
That doesn’t Change the statistic likelihood for a normal woman to Encounter a male creep is very very high, but for a normal man to Encounter a female creep is rather low.
Obviously it would be better if the creeping + rest would be considered so unacceptable that women could behave just like men, and everybody would stop this ghosting. Until we get there, however, it’s unfair.
Though they will on average get double the sentence.
I don’t see Chronos as declaring his/her preferences constitute etiquette, but rather a belief that simply not responding to somebody after a date isn’t good etiquette, under the meaning of ‘etiquette’ ‘generally accepted customs’ or some such.
A couple of your posts have muddied the waters by making arguments that seem to say there isn’t or shouldn’t be any such thing as etiquette. Such as ‘how about if two books about etiquette disagree?’ Such a hypothetical implies any disagreement invalidates the concept. But do any books on etiquette actually say it’s fine to ‘ghost’ someone’?
IOW I think your position as you’ve defended it is just as vulnerable to the come back ‘well that’s just what you’d like to see’ as Chronos’ position is. Etiquette and customs definitely exist. I think you’d do better to show a consensus that etiquette doesn’t include any rules about pre-emptive refusal to respond to people in particular situations (one date, etc) than start off on how etiquette doesn’t exist or shouldn’t because there isn’t 100% agreement or an official process of adjudication.
My own impression of etiquette is that today’s coarsened culture you can generally get away with much more rude behavior, especially if you can weave in some victimology theory about the tribe/group of the person you are being uncivil to vs. your own. But ‘first dates’ have always been a somewhat special category of trial offer with no commitment to much of anything. On balance though IMO yes it is uncivil according to remaining concepts of etiquette to refuse to respond ‘no thanks’ to a polite follow up invitation for a second date. (note: there is no obligation to respond to any communication that’s not itself civil, nor to respond to anybody who can’t ‘no’ for an answer once it’s been given, whether they remain ostensibly polite or not). And if you have a real relationship with somebody (beyond a few dates) then general etiquette AIUI says to break off the relationship in person, if there’s no specific reason to think that particular person is going to respond abusively or violently; obviously one should avoid face to face contact with any such person. The foregoing obviously requires some judgement calls, as does life in general.
I wasn’t talking purely “this person might kill me!” I’m talking about people who are overly invested in a relationship that barely exists and who will behave in inappropriate and creepy ways.
Lots of reasons - the hiring is outsourced to another company, the HR department handles it and the recruitment officer’s ability to mass-mail or not has no impact on the rest of the company’s ability to do business… things like that.
Also, not sure how it is in the US, but most job applications here in Australia, particularly for entry-level work, get a LOT of applications - sure, a corner store isn’t going to get 200 applications for a weekend retail assistant role, but I’ve worked at places that won’t advertise on Seek or wherever because they don’t want hundreds of applications from patently unqualified people.
You don’t believe that Chronos’s preference is that people send a break-up text after one date if they don’t wish another? I don’t agree, and think it’s obvious enough that it falls into ‘is the sky blue’ type of arguments, which I don’t engage it. If you think that Chronos does not prefer what he’s advocating for, but instead that he doesn’t prefer it but believes that etiquette commands it anyway and that he is arguing against his own preferences, you’d need to get him to state that for me to give it any credence. This ‘generally accepted customs’ concept clearly doesn’t fit, as what he’s complaining about is clearly NOT a ‘generally accepted custom’. “I want X” does not mean “X is a generally accepted custom”.
No, I have not made any arguments that say or imply that there is no such thing as etiquette in general, I have just argued against the concept that there is an ‘etiquette’ that demands a particular action that Chronos wants against the wishes of the majority of people. Etiquette is something reached through social consensus, not imposed on people who object to it by people who clearly aren’t all that social in the first place.
I know of no books on etiquette that claim that it’s required to send a break-up text after a single date. The burden of proof is on the people claiming that ‘etiquette demands’, and in general on the people who claim that an action is required.
No. I am not the one making the blatantly false claim that etiquette demands that people do something, Chronos is. Therefore criticism on that point doesn’t apply to anything I’ve said, because I didn’t make the ‘etiquette demands’ justification.
I’m not really sure why you’re acting like I claimed they don’t exist. I just disagree with the assertion that ‘etiquette demands you do what I want!’.
On balance though, it is unintelligent to claim that ‘etiquette’ demands an action from people based purely on your own preferences. Where is your support for this assertion? What etiquette experts agree with you, which books claim it, is it in common usage, and so on? That is the problem with the bald claim of ‘etiquette demands’, it is not based on anything but YOUR personal preferences. Miss Manners, who’s considered much more of an authority on etiquette, completely disagrees with your assertion that an in-person breakup is required, and did so back in 1981 (so not as part of ‘texting culture’ or whatever you want to blame for rudeness). When your ‘etiquette demands’ contradicts Miss Manners, I’m going to need more than ‘someone on a message board says’ to believe it.
Since people might miss it as it was buried in my reply to Corry El, how do any of the people insisting that a clear and clean breakup communication is required by etiquette or decency reconcile this with the fact that Miss Manners says the exact opposite? When one of the most widely-accepted authorities on etiquette disagrees with what you say ‘etiquette demands’ or that is the only decent thing to do, it really makes it clear that you’re simply declaring your preferences to be ‘etiquette’, and aren’t referencing anything supported by social convention or etiquette authority.
Exactly. In reading this thread, it seems like this explanation isn’t even being considered as in “ghosting is purely a texting thing”. NO IT’S NOT. Those of us who actually learned how to do so as young’uns IRL paved the way.
(bolding mine)
I suppose this could go hand in hand with what I’ve always understood as “fragile ego” (I was going to say male but some females are just as afflicted). There is a type of person out there who simply cannot accept no for an answer. The person who goes postal after suffering in silence for so long trope is rooted in this. When you’re young you lack the experience to suss out such types. When you find yourself entangled with one, you learn how to ghost fast.
A similar situation happened with me in college. Over spring break he’d gotten my “Dear John” letter (written only because I had no luck telling him in person that I was no longer interested), jumped in his dad’s car, and drove over 24 hours from four states away to show up first at my house, where he almost gave my mother a heart attack. She had no idea he was going to show up as I had no idea he’d even done this, so she told him I was visiting a friend in another city. He then took off for my friend’s without knowing where exactly she lived. He got to the city, found a phone book, found her house, and proceeded to scream for me because she refused to let him in. I didn’t want to talk to him. TL/DR: Called the cops on him for disturbing the peace and harassment.
So yeah, sometimes ghosting is the only way to get one’s message across. It’d be nice if everyone had the capacity to be kind, civil, and to graciously accept rejection, but unfortunately that’s not the case.
I don’t believe that’s clear, maybe Chronos can comment. Seems to me possible from what was actually said Chronos thinks this it’s required by general custom to make some response to an invitation to a second date but wouldn’t personally care if that wasn’t the custom.
By making the argument in general ‘what if two sources disagree’ I believe you have. There will never be unanimous agreement on what it is generally accepted etiquette.
But that is moving the goalposts to implying an obligation of the person who wants no more dates to proactively communicate that, which nobody said. The point made was simply that if you’re invited out a second time by somebody you already went out with, it’s civil to communicate to them ‘no thanks’ and uncivil to ignore them. That’s based on what I believe is a pretty universal rule of etiquette that you give the courtesy of a response to an invitation by somebody you know and are on good terms with. Under the golden rule that that’s how most people would want to be treated, the basis for most etiquette. Going on a first date means you know the person by any common sense definition. Whether the person behaved on that first date acceptably enough to still be offered common courtesy is more of a judgement call but I don’t think in practice there would be that wide a variation in judging that.
Yes you keep asserting this. But other than assertion, then adding ad hominem (‘unintelligent’), your argument isn’t too convincing that a second date invitation is a special exception to the general etiquette rule that one should respond to an invitation not ignore it.
It’s not a matter of ‘personal preference’ in terms of what I want. I’m married so that particular case is irrelevant to me personally. Again Chronos can reply if there’s any particular personal element for him or her.
I already gave a clear no to this idiotic line of argument, but you persist in trying.
As “There will never be unanimous agreement on what it is generally accepted etiquette,” making the statement ‘etiquette demands you do X’ is absurd, because it’s clear that etiquette doesn’t actually demand that thing. Thank you for proving my point. Also I find it fascinating that none of the people arguing about what etiquette demands have cited any authorities on the subject or agree with common usage.
Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, not a good argument.
That’s actually literally what Chronos said and I disagreed with, that “if you’ve gone on a date with a prospective partner… etiquette demands some sort of cut-off”. It’s not moving the goalposts to talk about what I was talking about in the first place. What is moving the goalposts is…
THAT, adding multiple brand new significant conditions, is moving the goalposts. The original dispute was not about merely responding to a specific invitation, but about expressing a lack of general interest. Also, the ‘on good terms with’ is a condition that you’ve suddenly added - the original statement from Chronos did not include that rule, and it radically changes the behavior that is demanded.
And I don’t believe your ‘universal rule’ claim. Provide some cites to back your ‘universal rule’, or stop appealing to the authority that doesn’t actually exist. Oh, also provide a cite to back ‘that’s how most people would want to be treated’, as we have multiple counter examples in this thread. The fact that you have personal preferences for a thing doesn’t make it universal.
The number of dudes who send dick pics and lewd solicitations after a first date and believe that’s reasonable shows that in practice there is a huge variation in judging appropriate behavior. The number of people (especially women) that I know who found gigantic red flags on a first date also demonstrates the huge variation.
I don’t need to prove a negative, you need to prove that your claimed etiquette rules are actual rules and not just your personal preferences backed by a fallacious appeal to authority. And I certainly don’t need to prove a statement that I never even made in the first place, asking me to prove your strawman is just absurd.
If it’s not personal preference, then cite some authority beyond your personal preference. I’m not sure why you think that being married means you can’t have a personal preference on this topic, but you clearly do have a preference.
Indeed. I am married and have no specific recollection of ghosting anyone or being ghosted, at least how people seem to be defining it. I know there have been people I talked to and then drifted away from, but I didn’t attach any particular importance or meaning to it.
(Of course, had anyone stated that they insist I make a declaration before drifting away, I would both remember them and would have done more than drift.)
Right, people drift sometimes, and a single personal meeting (maybe not even called a date, at least in the older part of the thread) just isn’t an intense commitment. The insistence on a Declaration of Intent Not To Date after such mild contact is weird and off-putting, and trying to claim that the Rules of Etiquette require it is even more off-putting. The fact that the only etiquette authority cited (by me) argues against a direct Declaration of Intent Not To Date just highlights that it’s not a real etiquette rule.
I think there is some conflation going on in this thread. Some people, like me, are talking about what you owe someone after a date. Others are talking about what you owe someone after being married for 799 years.
I want to quote myself from earlier in the thread to be sure people are actually aware of my position and not mistaking it for something it’s not:
In reading elsewhere about ghosting, I’ve seen this type of disclaimer multiple times:
Bolding mine.
I just want to be clear about what people are actually arguing.
I’d say several dates doesn’t count - committed relationship does (committed not necessarily meaning monogamous). If you haven’t had discussions about establishing the state of your relationship (are we monogamous, are we going to see each other next weekend, do I buy you a Christmas present, do I bring you to my parents for Thanksgiving) you don’t have discussions about breaking off the relationship you never agreed you were having.
And I believe Emily Post agrees with Miss Manners. It is certainly not established etiquette to call someone up to reject them.
I got “ghosted” by a girl I dated for about 6 months. Hurt like hell.
But then, in my next relationship, I ended up dating a girl for months that I was never really attracted to, just because every time I tried to breakup I always tried to be “nice” about it, and would listen to her, and be reasonable. I would tell her, in increasingly blunt terms with each breakup, that we had no future, but she was determined to save things. We’d get back together for a while, rinse, repeat.
The end result though: many months of limping through a failed relationship, with her self-esteem perpetually circling the drain, was much worse for both of us than a clean break would have been.
So my perspective on things like “ghosting” has changed. Yes it’s an asshole thing to do, and I still would never do it. But breaking up is always going to hurt at least one party terribly.
And if you’re the breaker, it’s very likely you’re going to feel like a bastard afterwards. But if you do things the way I did, you’ll have countless memories of being a bastard over and over.
There’s a key difference, however. Miss Manners isn’t suggesting ghosting. She’s not saying “stop answering phone calls at all”. She’s saying “tell white-ish lies until they get the hint”.
As a married, middled-aged man, I can’t claim to have any idea what it’s like to be a woman in the dating world these days. But I have to say I’m skeptical that it’s often the case that there is someone who is potentially violent/dangerous whose violence/dangerousness is lessened by instantly and mysteriously cutting off all contact (and blocking on all social media) vs a polite but firm rejection (and blocking on all social media). Whereas I can certainly imagine that laziness makes that the easy choice for someone to take, with self-preservation acting as a convenient justification.
And I think you’re vastly downplaying the golden rule aspect of things. I agree that calling it “etiquette” is at best arguable, but perhaps the most fundamental rule of human ethics is to treat others in a way that you would like to be treated. And yes, getting dumped sucks. But then it sucks and you know and it’s over, as opposed to days or weeks of slowly increasing confusion, at the end of which, there’s still the same pain. How much of a sociopath would someone have to be to NOT want to spare someone that pain?
I have done it, or am in the process of doing it. There is this former co-worker, I’ll call him Mr. T, who refuses to stay in the friend zone. I am not interested in Mr. T romantically, and have point blank told him so, but he still persists with come-ons and sexy talk I don’t want to hear. He is an educated man, with multiple degrees, and I like him as a conversationalist and a person…no, actually I take that back. I don’t like him as a person. Here’s why.
Mr. T told me one time he would never want to be with a woman who had been with a black man. My current Gentleman Friend, whom I’ll call Mr. R, is African American. For the first little while that Mr. R and I were seeing each other we kept it rather quiet, just seeing where things would go, but once we felt like making it a longer term thing, I told Mr. T exactly whom I was dating (he knows Mr. R professionally), really hoping that would do the trick, since now I am all “contaminated” in his eyes.
Nope. Didn’t stop it. Mr. T still calls and texts me. I just don’t answer.
Mr. R and myself have had a good chuckle over it, that Mr. T’s torch for me is strong enough to overcome his distaste for any African Cooties he feels I may have picked up.
Not to belabor a point, but if you already point blank told him that you are not romantically interested, then stopping communicating after that isn’t “ghosting” at all. Unless I’m misunderstanding the terminology?
I have hundreds of people I used to talk with but no longer talk to. In some of those cases the other person was the last one to speak, and in some I was the last one to speak. I cannot think of a single instance where one of those people said “I no longer want to talk with you,” and I cannot think of a single instance where I did something horrifying, and yet I am not bewildered and bereft.
So when people in this thread claim that it’s obvious that ghosting someone is incredibly painful and leads to confusion and heartbreak, I can’t help but wonder if we’re all using the same definitions. Are people just calling it “ghosting” when they really feel hurt and otherwise it’s just the normal ebb and flow of human interaction?