Got it.
I have a question for you. On this board, we can block people. We can only say we are blocking someone in the pit.
Is it rude to block someone and not tell them? Is it rude to skip someone’s posts and not tell them?
I would say, not generally, because the SDMB is many-to-many, not one-to-one.
An exception would be if there was a long-established dialog between two posters on a particular topic, where they’d been arguing back and forth about it for ages. In that case, if one of them suddenly decided “hey, we’ve been posting twice a day each in this debate for months now, but, fuck it, I’m sick of this, we’re not getting anywhere” and just blocked the other person more or less out of the blue with no notice or notification or obvious provocation… I would definitely consider that rude.
Of course, just suddenly dropping the conversation and never returning to it after lengthy dialog is also rude, assuming it didn’t suddenly turn abusive or something. But I think the real question is if you do that, and then after a few days the other person PMs you and says “hey, still waiting for a response for you in that debate” do you just ignore that as well, or do you respond with a terse “sorry, I think the conversation has run its course” or something like that? (Of course another difference here is that if you continue to post in other topics, they will certainly know you are alive, as opposed to the “For all I know she was hit by a bus” aspect of ghosting.)
So if someone says “I’m going to marry a same-sex partner, and I don’t care if some bigot doesn’t like it” they’re being sociopathic? If someone says “I’m going to continue reading the Bible/Quaarn/Torah and don’t care if some other-religion people disapprove”, they’re being sociopathic? People who are not doormats don’t worry that people they have no connection to may not approve of their actions, and will dismiss the accusation that they’re acting as ‘socipaths’ if they don’t consider the feelings of people who they have no obligation to consider when deciding how to live their lives.
And again you never would have posted your blanket dismissal of women’s experiences if you really believed this, because you know that dismissing people experiences causes people emotional pain. You’re clearly trying to apply this ‘you’re sociopathic if…’ rule only to people that aren’t you and to behaviors you want to control, it’s obviously not a principle that you personally, much less all major moral systems, actually holds.
A decent non-manipulative human being does not try to guilt trip someone into taking actions that have a high cost and/or risk to themselves by accusing them of being sociopathic for not catering to the whims of random near-strangers that they have no obligation to.
If you’re expecting formal goodbyes every time someone stops posting to a particular thread or gets sick of an argument, you’re going to be disappointed a lot. The idea that people are obligated to make a formal exit to any thread they post very much in is just weird and not supported by a read of threads on this board (or just about any forum). I don’t know where you get the idea that other people are not allowed to prioritize how they spend their own time and energy, but if someone gets tired of a message board thread they are generally going to just exit it.
The reason I asked that is that you are coming from a place that has no similarity whatsoever to where I’m coming from. (I will occasionally make a comment like “this is my last post in this thread” or, more commonly, “this is my last post on this topic in this thread.” But that’s not to avoid being rude. It’s to remind myself that I think the topic has gotten ridiculous.)
Let me clarify a bit. If there’s a conversation going on, and the other person posts something that I just don’t feel like responding to, I just won’t respond. I mean, every thread on the history of the SDMB has ended at some point, obviously.
The key difference is, if I get a PM a few days later saying “hey, still curious to hear your thoughts about whether pandas are cuter than koalas”, I’d like to think I’d take the two seconds necessary to respond with “sorry, too busy” or “I have nothing else to say” or whatever.
Which actually is a clarification I wanted to make wrt rudeness and dating, as well. If two people go out on a date, and then after the date, neither one ever calls the other, well, are they both “ghosting” each other? In my eyes, are they both being rude? Not at all. However, if one of them a few days later sends a message saying “hey, had a great time on Thursday, interested in seeing each other again soon?”, that’s when I think a reply is polite. There are relationships and conversations that just drift down into nothingness, no harm, no foul. It’s when one person is clearly hoping/waiting for a another response, or another date, and the other person just flat ignores them that I find potential rudeness. (Although, again, I’m generally thinking about this topic in the context of relationships that are more established than just “we went out on one date”… but I recognize the ambiguity in the topic.)
(btw, your comment about refusing to get gay married because it might bother others is an interesting one, I’m pondering how best to respond to it…)
That’s not how [del]the force[/del] sociopathy works. Have you never heard of sadists or sadism before? They are the group that take pleasure in causing pain to others, while people who suffer from APD just give no fucks. Sadism is not inherently connected to antisocial personality disorder, someone can suffer from either, both, or neither.
So if you could please stop slurring everyone disagreeing with you by incorrectly implicating them as monsters with your use of questionable psychological terminology, that would be great, thanks.
We live in a world of butthurt…where people get offended if you look at them wrong or deign to not accomodate all their special snowflake “needs”.
I do not support intentionally hurting anyone. But reasonable, non-sociopathic people know that it is impossible to have a 100% harm-free existence. You kill things with every step you take outdoors. And you someone’s feeling wrong everytime you assert your boundaries. Such is life.
Some people do better with an explicit “let’s stop talking kbye” approach.
Other people would prefer a fade, at least when it comes to casual contact.
So why should we assume the former is automatically the least harmful tactic?
I appreciate the example that Robot Arm gave and agree that what the woman did was terrific. But I can think of other interactions where I wouldn’t blame someone for turning into a ghost…even when doing so is guaranteed to cause hurt feelings. I don’t think a person has to be a sociopath to simply value their feelings over someone else’s.
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Someone who makes decisions that affect other people, and does not factor at all in their decision-making how that decision affects other people, is severely lacking in empathy. And sadsim usually refers to physical pain. If there’s someone who delights in, say, going into a grocery store and knocking a bunch of stuff off the shelves because they know it will cause frustration and mental anguish for the employees and they get off on that frustration and mental anguish, well, I don’t know what that word would be, but it wouldn’t occur to me to call them a sadist. (Most likely a jackass teenager, but I’ve never heard of anyone actually gaining sexual gratification from it.)
I’ve always heard sociopath used to mean someone who just doesn’t see others as humans with actual feelings at all. Someone lacking in empathy. And while clearly my remarks are coming off as far more condemnatory than I intended, I continue to stick by my basic point. Ghosting carries with it the potential cost of causing unhappiness to others, and one who decides to ghost should be aware of that.
A perfectly reasonable question. So you go out on a date with Joe. A few days later he emails you and says “Hey, I had a great time, want to do it again?”. You don’t want to do it again. If your honest belief is “just ignoring this email is just as likely to cause less pain to Joe as responding in the negative”, and also it’s easier and safer for you, then hey, win win, or at worst, win draw. And if your honest belief is that a rejection email, while nicer for Joe, increases your own unhappiness/risk/danger sufficiently that that overrides being less nice to Joe, that’s also perfectly fine. Everyone places their own happiness above that of a near-stranger, and no one would expect otherwise.
What I object to is a response of “which action would make Joe happier? I dunno. I don’t give a fuck. Why would that possibly matter to me? I don’t have any obligation to Joe”. Which is in a sense true, but which seem (to me) to just utterly fail the basic tenets of empathy.
I don’t have an obligation to Joe that exceeds my obligation to myself. Add that to I don’t read minds, I can’t tell if Joe would be more upset with an outright rejection, or if he’d prefer I fade away. And then I can’t tell if Joe is really into me and feels a deep connection or “I had fun, lets do it again” is him just being polite because there is nothing better out there right now and I don’t smell like six cats and he might get laid if we went out on another few dates but there would be a certain relief if I just never responded because not smelling like cat piss isn’t a high bar and he knows it and I’m not seeing why you even get to the question of “what would make Joe happier?” Its so irrelevant because it isn’t a question I can answer.
You’ve given me an example where you think a ghost approach isn’t very nice. And I can’t find fault with it.
But I’m not the one who is coming up with blanket “thou shall not” rules. I don’t think people should ghost people no matter what. But I also think ghosting is totally appropriate in many cases.
Let’s say instead of Joe asking for a second date, he asks if you will have sex with him. Or you obligated to give him a response? Or is it totally okay to not spend another second on him and just block him? After all, someone who is that bold should be able to handle just about anything, right? And after all, he doesn’t seem to care that his question creeps you out, so why should you care about his feelings?
Are you missing a negative in that second sentence?
I hope I don’t come off as trying to establish blanket rules for how people should actually act in real life situations, particularly how women should act in real life dating situations (shoes which I have obviously never been in). And I have two answers to your question:
(1) It’s your decision. You (hypothetical you) are the one there, living your life, experiencing what you experience. I would never judge an actual person for ghosting in real life, barring a fairly contrived and extreme hypothetical
(2) As for what I would do if a similar thing happened to me, all I can say is… it depends. I mean, it’s impossible to live one’s life and never expose oneself to danger from other people, without being a hermit. I don’t think the right answer is either “never do anything without exhaustively analyzing how it will affect every other person anywhere near you, and make sure all of their needs and wants are tended to”. But neither is it “make decisions purely based on your own needs and desires, with no consideration for other people at all”. Life is complicated.
(Warning: wandering WAY off the topic of ghosting here.)
That’s a genuinely interesting and tough ethical question.
Let’s start with two extreme situations:
(1) You are friends and roommates with someone who was assaulted recently by someone wearing a black hood, and when your friend sees black hoods, he or she has a severe PTSD reaction. He or she asks you to avoid wearing your favorite black hooded sweatshirt around the apartment. Do you do so?
(2) You want to marry your same-sex lover but people in the community say that it’s against god’s will and your marriage will cause them distress. Do you bow to their whims and not get married?
Now, I think we’d all agree that the decent and correct thing to do in (1) is to do your best to accede to the request, and in (2) it is not to accede to their request.
But in both cases it’s someone saying “hey, there’s a thing you’re doing that makes me unhappy. Can you stop doing it so I will be happier?”. What’s objectively different between the two situations, if anything?
There’s one obvious difference, which is that the first request is vastly less onerous in the first situation. It seems like the same ethical rules should apply for big and small requests, because it seems nice to say “the right thing to do is the right thing to do, no matter how hard or easy”, but let’s not kid ourselves, obviously we’re more likely to do a small easy thing than a bit impactful thing.
Aside from that, the big difference is that the first request feels reasonable, while the second request is clearly (clear to us?) bigotry. But I’m having trouble putting my finger on the precise objective difference there.
-Is it that bigots are bad people, therefore we shouldn’t respect their wishes? I don’t think so. If your neighbors are homophobes that doesn’t make it OK to steal their stuff or let your dog poop on their lawn
-Is it that they have no right to tell you how to live? Well, sorta, but at the same time, isn’t that true of any request anyone ever makes about anything?
-Is it that their request relates to something deep and personal? Well, yes, but if my next door neighbors said “hey, we think horror movies are evil and radiate an evil aura that will infect our children even through the walls because of witchcraft, will you please not watch horror movies?” I would certainly refuse, even though watching horror movies is in no way part of my identity.
-Is it that this request, if made to everyone, would damage society? I think it might relate to this. If everyone agreed not to have gay marriages just because it upset some people, then millions of people would be forever miserable. Therefore it’s a request that no one should make in the first place.
None of those feels quite right, though. Interesting topic.
Correct. However, of all the people disagreeing with you, I don’t see anyone saying that it doesn’t factor in at all. They are saying that other factors are more important.
This is incorrect. Sadism is the exact word to describe the behavior you describe. Per the dictionary sadism is “The tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others.” Anecdotally, the most sadistic motherfuckers I’ve ever met all got off more on psychological suffering and humiliation than they did from physical suffering.
If your remarks are coming across more condemnatory than intended, maybe you should change your terminology.
And now for my key point … damn near everything you do carries with it the potential cost of causing unhappiness to others. That is an impossible moral standard to meet. I could get a new job, and cause unhappiness to the people who didn’t get it. I could ask a woman on a date, and make her less pretty friend unhappy. I could walk down the street eating a sandwich and cause unhappiness to a hungry homeless person. Are you going to argue that getting a new job, asking someone on a date, or eating in public are immoral as well, because they have the potential cost of causing unhappiness to others?
Right. My being in the world means other people are going to lose space or have to stand in line or see that I have preferences or hear my voice.
But I disagree with one thing you said. I do discount other people’s feelings at times. Not just override them, but absolutely ignore them if I consider their wants unreasonable or picayune. There is a certain threshold at which things move from “get the fuck over it” to “I’ll consider factoring that in.” But things that fall into the first category aren’t things I’m going to factor in.
But I feel like that’s precisely what I’m arguing… at fairly verbose length. So why are we disagreeing?
Every action or inaction anybody takes carries with it the potential cost of causing unhappiness to others. Maybe me breathing causes a claustrophic person unhappiness when we share an elevator, should I attempt to hold my breath anytime someone gets into an elevator? But if I do that, maybe me holding my breath makes them sad because they have a skin condition and think I’m holding by breath because they smell bad! OH NOES I AM A SOCIOPATH NO MATTER WHAT I DO!
The argument that ‘this might possibly cause some unhappiness to someone, therefore you shouldn’t to do it’ is just stupid. And I’ll note, again, that it’s always a ‘you’ shouldn’t do it - the actual you clearly doesn’t apply this reasoning to your own actions.
Do you realize how absurdly nitpicky your position is? And how much it relies on really precise semantic distinctions that aren’t usually made in ordinary conversation? “I don’t give a fuck what Joe thinks, I don’t have any obligation to him” is what someone who’s mildly annoyed at you (say, because you’re accusing them of not being nice for not following your personal preferences) would say in the situation where a non-annoyed explanation going into full detail would be “The amount of fucks I give about what Joe thinks is completely negligible in comparison to the amount of fucks I give about my own happiness, both because he’s a complete stranger that I owe nothing to, and anything I do in this situation other than ignoring my own wishes and banging him is likely to make him unhappy to some degree, and I don’t even know what response that complies with what I want would make him more or less unhappy in the first place.”
Ironically, what you’re saying that you’ll accuse someone of being a sociopath if they use typical English (‘don’t give a fuck about Joe’s precious feelings’) to describe why they took a decision instead of a weird, cumbersome, overly-analytical phrase (‘I have analyzed the situation and, aside from not knowing what would make Joe happiest, have realized that any of the options that are consistent with what I want contain significant risk to my own happiness, which overrides the trivial background concern that I have over how he feels’). Do you think that accusing someone of sociopathy makes people happy? It clearly hasn’t in this thread, so why are you choosing to make that accusation instead of giving people the benefit of the doubt by assuming they’re speaking normally? Sounds like you’re the actual sociopath in this situation, going around doing things that you know make people unhappy.
It may seem that way to you, but the idea that there is no difference in responding to a low-cost, low-effort request (like ‘don’t put your black hood up while you’re in the apartment around me’) that involves no hostility towards you by someone you’re in an ongoing relationship with (not a dating relationship, just the general term) and responding to a high-cost, high effort request that involves direct hostility to who you are as a person by someone who’s not in any direct relationship with you is not at all sensible to me.
Here’s another problem with this example: What if, instead of “You don’t want to do it again” it’s “I don’t entirely rule Joe out, but I’m not sure I want to, I’ll wait a little before I decide”. Then the next day a friend of yours does something awful, and you’re dealing with that through this weekend, then the next week you’re busy preparing for a big presentation at work, and by the time you think of Joe again it’s been a month and then it’s kind of awkward to say anything. Is Joe already ghosted and harmed to the point of sociopathy at this point? And if not, is telling him ‘no, not interested’ after a month really better than just writing the whole thing off?
Or how about if Joe sends his message, but you’re in finals at school and only get on the dating site for about 30 minutes once a week when you’re that busy, and he just missed your window for one week so it’s two weeks before you even see the message. Has Joe already been ghosted, and hence horribly harmed to the point that you should care, since you didn’t respond to him for two weeks? And if not, is he going to be harmed by a ‘it wasn’t bad but wasn’t great, no thanks’ after a two week delay? (That ‘30 minutes once a week’ is a real example from a friend of mine who was in med school, BTW, it’s not an extreme example just made up to be extreme)
A lot of discussions about dating seem to assume that everyone is treating it as the single most important thing in their life, and that they sit tethered to the dating app. But for an awful lot of people dating is something they do casually, not something that takes extreme priority for their time and attention. A lot of the ‘ghosting’ complaints seem to come from people who treat dating and responding to dating apps as extremely high priority in their lives and also emotionally attach very heavily in response to very mild interactions (like going on one date). I don’t think this is healthy for them, and it’s certainly unreasonable to demand that everyone else put that kind of obsessive attention to it.