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.

  • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    72·
    2 days ago

    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:

    1. Send texts primarily to exchange information or make arrangements to meet.
    2. If you want to have a conversation, either meet in person or have a phone call.
    3. 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.