We’ve all been here: you’ve been talking with someone, you’re snapchatting them, texting them, you send each other memes you think they’ll appreciate; life is good. You’ve gotten into a rhythm of having generally flirty conversations, and it’s fun! Then, one of you decides you want to try and make “just talking” something a little bit more than just talking. You shoot your shot and cross your fingers. They open your text, your snap, or DM, and you wait for that notification that says they’re typing. You keep waiting. You wait a little longer, maybe they had to go do something. Eventually, you realize that this person is not going to reply to you. You had a good thing going and you were reading the signs, so you made your move, only to be ghosted.
Why has ghosting become such a normal thing in recent years? Obviously, it’s not a new thing; people shoot their shots and get rejected all the time and always have. However, in our age, rejection is made even easier and more common thanks to social media.
I think it’s a similar reason to why we saw an increase in bullying with the popularization and widespread use of the Internet and social media in the late 2000s/2010s. People feel very powerful behind a screen; talking to people online gives us this false sense of anonymity, as well as a boost of confidence to say things we may not say in person. In terms of cyberbullying, this sense of power leads to trolling and harassment online, masked by screen names. In terms of relationships, this results in us feeling bolder, flirting more, and feeling very connected to people who we often don’t even talk to very much in real life.
People meet their partners on dating apps all the time, which was a thing before Tinder, Bumble, etc.… online dating is not new. I’m sure before the age of smartphones people sat at their desktops waiting for an IM to be responded to after matching with people on ChrisitanMingle.com and the like… but then, you could leave your home office to go out and do everyday things, and then come back to the computer to check your matches later. Now we carry around our dating lives in our pockets. They are always on us, and we are always waiting for a buzz to come from one particular person. Whether you met someone on a dating app or at a party where you got their Snapchat, you are now constantly aware of whether or not your phone is buzzing with a new message from them. When technology plays such a large role in our relationships, this allows for technology to either better the relationship, or slowly deteriorate it.
Our social media masks allow us to meet people online, but they also allow us to, in a way, feel like someone else. I’m guilty of this myself, I have multiple Instagram pages, two Twitter accounts, and on each of these accounts, what I post is catered towards who follows and how I want to come across to these people. I would never post a picture meant for my finsta on my real Instagram, that would be ~*sO uNcOoL*~, right? I’m sure I’m not alone in this boat; though we may not care to admit it, we all in some way want our social media accounts to portray certain things about ourselves and hide the things that would make our feed look funky. Similarly, when we flirt with people online, we can carefully word what we want to say next, delete and reword until it’s perfect. It’s a weird thing that there isn’t an equivalent of in traditional, real-life flirting. Like some people like to Facetune their Instagram pics, some of us like to perfect messages to people, so that we come off nonchalant and chill. I am neither of those things in real life, so why do I try to seem that way when I’m snapchatting some guy?
It’s because we can, so why not? And it pays off too, right? We perfect every message and selfie down to the last detail so that we can keep having flirty conversations with the people we are interested in. It’s fun that’s why we do it.
However, sometimes, it’s fun to flirt online, but we don’t actually want anything to come from it. This is what leads us to ghosting each other and being ghosted. It’s a pretty nasty thing to do to someone. It’s equivalent to going from talking – verbally, in person – to someone every day, then suddenly avoiding them at all costs the next day. It’s nasty, but we do it anyway; we meet someone, IRL or online, and start chatting online… we talk to them all day, or if nothing else, send specifically curated memes or cute selfies when we run out of conversation. Then maybe someone catches feelings, but maybe the other one didn’t want anything beyond flirty Snapchats and memes. So, they get uncomfortable, and because this is a relationship built nearly –if not entirely– on social media alone, they feel no obligation to respond to you shooting your shot. They don’t have to see the look on your face if they say they don’t want to go out sometime, and they don’t have to think of an excuse to leave the conversation (because this is all happening behind your respective screens!). So, they just don’t reply. They ghost.
This hurts for a while because, if you’re shooting your shot, you probably actually wanted to get to know this person more in real life. But now they’ve stopped replying so that won’t happen. After you get over it and tell yourself that you deserve better than someone who ghosts (which you do!), you’ll probably post a cute picture of yourself, showing them what they gave up. Then, chances are, you’ll start the cycle all over again.
We flirt online because it’s fun. Being behind a screen gives us a chance to say bold things, to carefully craft the perfect texts and snaps. In a way, social media has been a blessing for a lot of people; I know plenty of people who found their perfect matches thanks to Tinder or the like bringing them together. In another way, social media’s effect on relationships has been giving people an easy way to dip, or even to break up. You would be hard pressed to simply stop talking and walk away in the middle of a real-life conversation if you didn’t want to keep talking. That would be weird, can you imagine?? You have to say ‘bye’ in some way or give a reason for why you need to walk away. You don’t need to do that on social media. You can just leave the person on open and not think about it ever again. It’s a two-way street; communication behind a screen can give us the confidence to give each other compliments, ask each other out, flirt up a storm. Or it can give us the power to hurt each other, either through harsh words, or, as it is in ghosting, by not saying anything at all.
Ghosting is a weird thing that’s gained popularity over the last few years. Unlike other social media trends, I don’t think ghosting is going away anytime soon. It’s in our nature to avoid conflict, and ghosting allows us to do that very easily