It's wrong to "ghost" people

[Dangerosa]

@constanze

I found Miss Manners Explanation in the linked post quite interesting. Basically, it was less about “women feel unsafe/ are not taught to say “no” so they communicate indirectly” it was more “sure, it sucks now - but if she had told you explicitly with reasons why you suck, it would’ve dragged on as you tried to disprove her, and would’ve hurt much more. This way you can Keep believing she missed out on how awesome you are, instead of Hearing her tell you how much you suck”.

I hadn’t considered that aspect.

And both are valid - neither is “mean” or rude- one is purposely trying to prevent being mean - her (or him) telling you how much you suck is not pleasant (and we all know that ‘it isn’t you, its me’ is crap - if you are interested in continuing a relationship and the other person doesn’t feel a spark, it hurts, even if s/he says “you are a wonderful person but…”). The other is protecting herself.

Oh, and if you need someone to tell you that its over in order to move on after a date or two or three, you are falling into nice guy needy (or crazy girlfriend needy). At this point its casual enough that you both should still be looking - if not actively seeing other people.

[wonky]

@Dangerosa

Yep. But you are making your opinion of them other people’s business by stating it on a public message board. Any individual ghoster in question hasn’t.

I’m perfectly okay judging people by their actions, adjusting for mitigating factors as I become aware of them, and sharing what I believe to be mitigating factors with others when I think they are relevant. That’s what ethics are, a judgment of right behavior and wrong behavior. This entire thread is about whether something is ethical or unethical. Saying we’re not allowed to think about that and come to any conclusion is extremely odd.

[kayaker]

@wonky

I can’t agree with this, unless you are limiting this to specific types of relationships. Dated a couple of times? Sure. Married to for ten years? There should be a reason.

Ghosted after ten years of marriage and you don’t know the reason?

That’s the reason.

[wonky]

@kayaker

Ghosted after ten years of marriage and you don’t know the reason?

That’s the reason.

Ha! Yeah, you got me there.

[Pantastic]

@MaxTheVool

I just feel like you’re having a totally different conversation than I am. I made it very clear that I was merely trying to evaluate sudden-cessation-of-communication in a vacuum.

You did not make it very clear, actually - you only added it to your latter response to me, it was not in the initial post that I responded to at all. That discussion doesn’t make any sense; if the sudden-cessation-of-communication is in a vacuum, then there is no preexisting relationship to worry about, so there’s no obligation to respond at all. If you’re really evaluating it in a vacuum, then every ghosting is fine. If you’re not, the ‘in a vacuum’ is just a cop-out.

But it’s certainly justified at times. Things that are, in and of themselves rude, are certain the reasonable, ethical, justified course of action, at times.

No. I refuse to call someone taking a reasonable, ethical, justified course of action rude, period. The word and concept is worthless if reasonable, ethical, and justified actions count as ‘rude’.

Well, you might not be, but I am, which I think explains a lot of the disagreement. If nothing else, I think it’s obvious beyond even needing to discuss that if two people’s entire interaction consists purely of 3 or 4 terse texts over a few days, there’s no real relationship there.

It’s not obvious beyond even needing to discuss, as people have explicitly stated the opposite during this thread, and I made it clear (well before your ‘in a vacuum’ comment) that I was talking about ‘no real relationship’ situations, such as Chronos’s ‘going on a single date’ obligation, or the Acsenray’s ‘if the other person expects a response’ criteria (which, amusingly enough, means that by his standards you can be guilty of ghosting someone you have never responded to even once). It’s what I was actually discussing (and quoted).

You keep using the word “obligated”. There are plenty of things that decent humans do that they are not obligated to, such as, say, giving up seats on a crowded train to someone who is obviously elderly or pregnant. I think that’s a polite thing to do. I think that not doing so, in a vacuum, is rude. That doesn’t mean anyone is obligated to, and it certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t circumstances in which it’s entirely reasonable/appropriate NOT to do so, due to the specific circumstances.

If you say that ‘the polite thing to do’ is X, then you are saying that a person has a social obligation to do X or be considered rude. You may not literally use the word ‘obligation’, but you are claiming that something that fits the definition of ‘obligation’ exists. Also, you’ve gone even further than this - you claimed that someone who chooses not to follow the obligations that you claim are not obligations would have to be sociopathic not to do so, and that not doing so is violating one of the basic tenants of human ethics. So it’s not just ‘or be considered rude’, it’s ‘not be considered a person completely lacking in empathy and labeled with a condition that is associated with being a highly dangerous criminal who’s also violating basic tenants of human ethics’.

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.

Again, we are failing to communicate. It’s certainly possible that I chose my words poorly. The point I was trying to make is that, as a happily married man, I can’t really understand what it’s like to be out in the dating world, which is why I’m interested to hear people’s experiences. In fact, I found Dangerosa’s remarks to be very illuminating.

The words you wrote and I responded to explicitly said that you do not believe the lived experiences of women with women who recieve violent threats, and explicitly accused them of laziness. Trying to turn what amounts to ‘I don’t believe those lies and think they’re really just lazy and using it as an excuse’ into ‘I’m interested to hear their experiences and am not trying to pretend to have walked a mile in their shoes’ doesn’t work. If you want to revise your earlier position that’s fine, but acting like I’m being unreasonable for responding to the position that you wrote isn’t.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@kayaker

Ghosted after ten years of marriage and you don’t know the reason?

That’s the reason.

Unless your spouse wrongly believes you’ve done something to violate your vows…then you wouldn’t know the reason.

Not a likely scenario I admit, but conceivably possible.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[actualliberalnotoneofthose]

Not only is ghosting sometimes necessary but doing the opposite would be poor etiquette in certain scenarios. It’s much stranger to have “closure” or something with someone you had 1 date with, for example.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Dangerosa

What I’m saying is that if your ghosted, it doesn’t make any difference what my reasons are for doing so - its none of your goddamn business. You are not entitled to an explanation for why you were ghosted any more than you are entitled to an explanation of why she doesn’t want to see you any longer.

I don’t think it’s necessarily that the ghostee expects to be told why, it’s more about being told, period, that it’s over. Come to think of it, if you don’t want to come right out and say it, it would be kinder for both of you if you simply block the other person.

I know that “everyone” is expected to read all the signs and not miss a single hint, but the truth of the matter is that not everyone can do this successfully 100% of the time.

In the days when everything was done by phone this wasn’t an issue; you just knew when to stop trying. I’m not sure why texting and emailing makes it so much more difficult.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[Nisslbody]

It’s rude and shitty to ghost someone you’re in a relationship with. How do you know when you’re in a relationship with someone? When you have a conversation about it, and set expectations with each other. If you haven’t done that, but you have been seeing each other (in person) once or twice a week for at least a couple months, it’s also fair to say that you’re involved enough to merit an actual breakup. If you are getting so attached to the idea of a relationship with someone that after only one or two dates, you think courtesy demands a breakup, you are probably not emotionally ready for dating. In that situation, non-response = non interest; move on.

FWIW, I think it’s lovely to tell people “I had a nice time, but I didn’t feel a spark; good luck!”, but I’ve also had multiple people freak out on me and try to whine, cajole, berate, stalk, and/or guilt me into “giving them a chance”, which is most certainly why people more often just stop responding instead of being politely explicit about their lack of interest.

[Pantastic]

@Nisslbody

It’s rude and shitty to ghost someone you’re in a relationship with. How do you know when you’re in a relationship with someone? When you have a conversation about it, and set expectations with each other. If you haven’t done that, but you have been seeing each other (in person) once or twice a week for at least a couple months, it’s also fair to say that you’re involved enough to merit an actual breakup.

Again, I’m going to disagree with the second part - I don’t think that hanging out with someone 8 times (once a week for two months) suddenly imposes a need for an actual breakup. This is especially true since ‘seeing’ is a vague word; it can cover something as casual as “see you at the group thing on wednesday”, or as low commitment as “Fridays have been boring, you’re my booty call so I called you a lot”, making into a relationship that needs to be broken off at the discretion of the person not doing the breaking off is just unreasonable. The idea that one person gets to decide ‘there is now a relationship that places obligations on you’ without the second person’s input into that decision is just wrong.

[Dangerosa]

@Pantastic

Again, I’m going to disagree with the second part - I don’t think that hanging out with someone 8 times (once a week for two months) suddenly imposes a need for an actual breakup. This is especially true since ‘seeing’ is a vague word; it can cover something as casual as “see you at the group thing on wednesday”, or as low commitment as “Fridays have been boring, you’re my booty call so I called you a lot”, making into a relationship that needs to be broken off at the discretion of the person not doing the breaking off is just unreasonable. The idea that one person gets to decide ‘there is now a relationship that places obligations on you’ without the second person’s input into that decision is just wrong.

Or, differently said, if you expect words when someone dumps you, you need to use your words to explain that you feel you are in a relationship that is worthy of that.

[Nisslbody]

@Pantastic

Again, I’m going to disagree with the second part - I don’t think that hanging out with someone 8 times (once a week for two months) suddenly imposes a need for an actual breakup. This is especially true since ‘seeing’ is a vague word; it can cover something as casual as “see you at the group thing on wednesday”, or as low commitment as “Fridays have been boring, you’re my booty call so I called you a lot”, making into a relationship that needs to be broken off at the discretion of the person not doing the breaking off is just unreasonable. The idea that one person gets to decide ‘there is now a relationship that places obligations on you’ without the second person’s input into that decision is just wrong.

You have a point; I was unclear that I intended “seeing each other once a week or so” to mean “going out on unambiguously romantic one-on-one dates”. I do think that after two months of steady, unambiguous dating, a breakup conversation of some kind is probably warranted… although in all things, context matters, and individual circumstances vary. Nobody is truly entitled to another person’s time or energy, but there are varying degrees of social appropriateness to communication. There are no hard and fast, easy-to-follow rules for breaking it off with someone.

[MaxTheVool]

@Pantastic

The idea that one person gets to decide ‘there is now a relationship that places obligations on you’ without the second person’s input into that decision is just wrong.

I continue to fundamentally disagree with the way you’re framing this issue.

There’s never any obligation. It’s not like the level of rudeness of ghosting someone starts at 0, then stays at 0, and then suddenly goes to 100.

Rather, at least in my opinion, it gradually increases as the relationship grows closer and longer. The more communication you have, the more you are a part of your lives, the greater it grows.

BUT, and here’s the key point where I think we disagree… something being rude doesn’t mean that it’s an obligation. And something not being an obligation, and even being a clearly sensible decision, doesn’t mean it’s not rude.

I’m going to make an analogy here, please recognize that analogies are not perfect equivalences, yada yada yada.
If you’re out at dinner with someone, is it rude to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, and just slip out the back door and never see them again, right in the middle of the fish dish? I mean, that is OBVIOUSLY rude, right, something no one could possibly disagree with?

But… suppose you get a call while you’re in the bathroom and a friend is letting you know that they have some information which leads them to believe that there is a 15% chance that the person you’re having dinner with is a notorious sexual predator. What do you do?

Well, I don’t know what I would do. But I certainly wouldn’t blame you for just leaving ASAP (assuming this is someone who you’re on a date with, doesn’t know where you live, etc). But it’s still rude. And while you’re deciding what to do, you should factor into your decision the affect your action will have on other people. Other people in this case presumably being your dinner companion. Because that’s what decent human beings do. They consider how their actions affect others. BUT, and here is the keyest point, CONSIDERING how your actions will affect others doesn’t mean that that factor has to be the deciding one. It’s entirely reasonable to make a subconscious calculation like “well, 85% chance he’s not a sex predator… in which case me ditching him is rude, will cause him some pain. But 15% chance he is a sex predator, sorry, dude, that’s just too much. Gotta ditch you.”

You should consider the effect your actions will have on other people because that’s an insanely basic facet of every system of human morality. If an action you take is likely to cause someone some amount of unhappiness, that’s a thing you should consider, something you should weigh in. And if you weight it, and decide that other factors, such as your own personal safety or convenience or sanity are more important, that’s utterly fine.

[Pantastic]

@MaxTheVool

I continue to fundamentally disagree with the way you’re framing this issue.

There’s never any obligation. It’s not like the level of rudeness of ghosting someone starts at 0, then stays at 0, and then suddenly goes to 100.

If there’s no obligation, then the level of rudeness is ALWAYS zero. The only way one is rude if if one has an obligation to communicate and fails to do so. So either you’re asserting that their IS an obligation, or you’re agreeing that it’s not at all rude.

BUT, and here’s the key point where I think we disagree… something being rude doesn’t mean that it’s an obligation.

Yes it does, no matter how much you put your fingers in your ears and deny basic English. If you assert that ‘you must do X or you will be considered rude’, you are asserting that there is an obligation to do X, period. This dodging and trying to claim that you’re not asserting that there is an obligation doesn’t change that fact.

You should consider the effect your actions will have on other people because that’s an insanely basic facet of every system of human morality. If an action you take is likely to cause someone some amount of unhappiness, that’s a thing you should consider, something you should weigh in.

The idea that you’re supposed to cater to the whims of dangerously obsessed people who assert that they will be emotionally hurt if you don’t do exactly what they want is not an innately basic fact of any respected system of human morality. Stop pretending that it is, and stop trying to cast “I want to tell women that they’re bad if they don’t do exactly what I want” as you being the moral person.

Seriously, “this dude will be upset if I take a nap instead of mowing his lawn, so I must mow is lawn” is just a stupid concept, and no one actually lives this way, but that’s what you’re asserting that every system of human morality holds as a tenant. None actually hold that in theory or in practice, and whining that women who don’t do exactly what you want when they’re not interested in you are violating human morality is an even stupider concept.

[Robot_Arm]

I matched with someone on Tinder a week or two ago. We’d only traded a couple messages, and last night she sent one that said she’d met someone else on the app and it was going well, and she wasn’t the sort to pursue two guys at the same time. I thanked her being nice enough to let me know. She said she’d never just ghost someone.

We wound up having quite a nice chat.

[MaxTheVool]

@Pantastic

If there’s no obligation, then the level of rudeness is ALWAYS zero. The only way one is rude if if one has an obligation to communicate and fails to do so. So either you’re asserting that their IS an obligation, or you’re agreeing that it’s not at all rude.

I think we’re getting to the point of just disagreeing about what words mean here, but I’ll try one more time. I donate platelets fairly often. The way I do it is I donate. Then I forget about it until the Red Cross people call me up and say “hey, can you donate again”, and if it fits into my schedule I do, otherwise I say “call me back in a couple of weeks”. Now, I think it’s a good thing to donate platelets. It is a thing I should do. If I just stopped for no reason other than laziness, an observer would be right to judge me poorly for it. But of course there are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons I might stop. And, crucially, I’m under no obligation to do so. I don’t owe them anything. If they said “hey, we always need to have a certain level of platelets on hand, if we know that you’re going to come in at least every 60 days, that makes our calculations a lot easier” and I agreed to it, I would then have an obligation to do so, and would feel a lot more guilty were I to miss an appointment.

That’s how I see politeness vs an obligation. That’s very far from a perfect analogy, because there’s no one in it who corresponds to the person-being-ghosted, but I’m trying to make a point about what I consider an “obligation”.

The idea that you’re supposed to cater to the whims of dangerously obsessed people who assert that they will be emotionally hurt if you don’t do exactly what they want is not an innately basic fact of any respected system of human morality. Stop pretending that it is, and stop trying to cast “I want to tell women that they’re bad if they don’t do exactly what I want” as you being the moral person.

I have no idea how you could possibly have gotten any of that from what I wrote. To repeat myself, I believe that women should factor “how will this decision affect the other person” when deciding how to act. Because that’s what decent humans do. But it is absolutely reasonable for that NOT to be the decisive factor, as “the feelings of someone I just met” certainly weighs far less than “my own personal safety”. I don’t see how I can be any more clear than that.

Thought experiment: suppose that all dating was done through one big all-encompassing tinder-y app. And the way it always worked was that you would exchange a few messages on this app, and then, if you both agreed, you would move on to a video chat, the equivalent of a first date, but still 100% anonymous, you would never actually meet the person. And after you were done with that video chat, a little box would pop up that would say “are you interested in further communication with this person, y/n”, and you could click yes or no, and if you clicked no, a neutrally phrased message would be sent to them, and then you would be 100% invisible to them forever. But if you didn’t click it, they would get no feedback one way or the other.

Do you think that, if you in fact did decide you weren’t interested in someone, it would be the “polite”, “decent”, “reasonable” thing to do to actually click the no button… in this hypothetical where it would take almost zero effort and be as safe from followup/retribution as can be possibly imagined?

[Pantastic]

@MaxTheVool

That’s how I see politeness vs an obligation. That’s very far from a perfect analogy, because there’s no one in it who corresponds to the person-being-ghosted, but I’m trying to make a point about what I consider an “obligation”.

Again, if you say that someone is rude if they don’t do X, then you are saying that they are obligated to do X if they wish to be considered polite (or ‘not rude’). So regardless of what long analogies you put up, you’re claiming they have an obligation. Whether you ‘consider’ it one is irrelevant, because you are claiming that they are obligated to do something.

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 no idea how you could possibly have gotten any of that from what I wrote. To repeat myself, I believe that women should factor “how will this decision affect the other person” when deciding how to act. Because that’s what decent humans do. But it is absolutely reasonable for that NOT to be the decisive factor, as “the feelings of someone I just met” certainly weighs far less than “my own personal safety”. I don’t see how I can be any more clear than that.

Bowing to the whims of random strangers is NOT what decent people do, and the idea that people are indecent if they live their lives according to what they want regardless of whether random strangers approve is just sick and completely at odds with how most humans act. Lots of guys feel sad if they find out a pretty girl is a lesbian. That doesn’t mean that she’s indecent for dating women without worrying if it makes some dude sad. Lots of Christians feel upset if a Muslim goes to Mosque, that doesn’t mean Muslims are indecent for practicing their religion without worrying whether random Christians approve of it.

I got that from what you wrote because you asked just how sociopathic a woman would have to be to quietly cut contact with someone who’s actually an obsessed stalker that invented a deep connection that she never agreed to or even knew about in the first place, who’s going to feel days and weeks of confusion over someone quietly cutting contact after a single date. The second part of your current statement about ‘well, obviously it doesn’t have to be the deciding factor’ is completely at odds with your accusation of sociopathy. Again, if you want to back off from your earlier statements as unreasonable that’s fine, but it’s your own words, including an accusation of sociopathy, that I’m responding to.

Thought experiment:

That is so far removed from a real-world situation that relating it to this discussion is absurd. And still my answer is no, because you don’t get to unilaterally impose obligations on strangers, not even if they’re female.

[wonky]

@MaxTheVool

That’s how I see politeness vs an obligation. That’s very far from a perfect analogy, because there’s no one in it who corresponds to the person-being-ghosted, but I’m trying to make a point about what I consider an “obligation”.

I think I would define “rude” as doing something you are socially obligated not to do, or not doing something you are socially obligated to do. So I do think there is a definitional gap going on here.

Do you think that, if you in fact did decide you weren’t interested in someone, it would be the “polite”, “decent”, “reasonable” thing to do to actually click the no button… in this hypothetical where it would take almost zero effort and be as safe from followup/retribution as can be possibly imagined?

I’m willing to answer this hypothetical, but I’m confused about it. If a person doesn’t answer “yes,” then is there an option for ever communicating again? Because it sounds like what you’re describing is that they either answer yes or they disappear, with or without an “I don’t like you” note. So if you’re on the other side, you’d know the person didn’t answer yes, wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t the app just have a “yes” option and nothing else?

[MaxTheVool]

@wonky

I’m willing to answer this hypothetical, but I’m confused about it. If a person doesn’t answer “yes,” then is there an option for ever communicating again? Because it sounds like what you’re describing is that they either answer yes or they disappear, with or without an “I don’t like you” note. So if you’re on the other side, you’d know the person didn’t answer yes, wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t the app just have a “yes” option and nothing else?

OK, let me expand on it a bit. At any time, using this app, you can go into privacy and say “silence a user”, and all messages a user sends you will vanish into nothingness forever, with no notification to them that this has happened. As far as they can tell, you might just have dropped your phone in the tub and haven’t gotten a new one.

So after a date with someone, if it didn’t go well, and you wish to not pursue the relationship, you have three options:

(1) Hit “no” on the little dialog that pops up, and they get a message saying “they are not interested, better luck in the future”
(2) Don’t hit “no”, but then go block them
(3) Don’t hit “no” or block them, just ignore all their messages forever

It’s quite clear to me that the polite thing to do in this hypothetical is to hit (1), and for basically the same reasons that I think ghosting is, I won’t saw “wrong”, but at least “rude”. But I’m also perfectly willing to stipulate that in some (many?) (most?) (all?) situations in real life, the factors which make real life different from that little analogy are sufficient to justify ghosting.

[MaxTheVool]

@Pantastic

I got that from what you wrote because you asked just how sociopathic a woman would have to be to quietly cut contact with someone who’s actually an obsessed stalker that invented a deep connection that she never agreed to or even knew about in the first place

OK, I went back to see what I originally typed, and it is this:

How much of a sociopath would someone have to be to NOT want to spare someone that pain?

The key word there is WANT. People who are not sociopaths don’t enjoy causing pain in others. They, in fact, enjoy NOT causing pain in others. Decent people enjoy lessening the suffering in the world. Which doesn’t mean they never take actions which cause pain in others, but only when they weigh other factors as being more important.

When you’re deciding whether to ghost someone, a decent non-sociopathic human being remembers “that’s another thinking feeling human being that I’m dealing with, my actions will cause an emotional response” as opposed to “that’s a human-shaped skin sack, I can predict its stimuli and response algorithmically, but it does not have true feelings and its potential suffering is meaningless”. And then it’s still certainly sometimes reasonable to ghost someone.

Does that make sense?