This is why I love the philosophical belief in Karma.
With it, whenever I’m a jerk to somebody, I can rest assured that they had it coming.
🙃
@girlblue50
I am in agreement with you. So....that's really all I can offer. You aren't alone in your view or experience.
It is a crazy world. And yes, it can be really frustrating when people are rude or worse- don’t respond at all. I hope this site will someday provide the read receipts/notices on messages, so the sender can, at least, know if they opened the message. That will help some. I’ve asked for this feature for years.
Every time this topic comes up, I like to remind folks that it's a good idea to communicate expectations and not just assume everyone has the same ones.
Time flows differently for different people. People have different obligations and time commitments. Some have executive dysfunction from ADHD or other conditions causing them to easily lose track of time. Others simply don't prioritize instantaneous communication and are fine taking things at a slower pace.
"Ghosting" should be a term reserved for what it was intended to cover - when people who have made a commitment to each other have one person disappear without warning, or communication of any sort, breaking their commitment. If no prior communication has happened to establish a timeline for communicating with each other, then no commitment has been made. It does no one any good to hold people to unexpressed expectations that they cannot possibly know about.
"Flakiness" is also in the eye of the beholder. Motivation and importance are heavily impacted by a lot of outside factors, and so someone's delay in communication may not reflect how important you are to them nor how motivated or not they are to meet with you.
If communicating within a specific timeframe is important to you, tell people that. If it is a deal breaker, put it in your profile - and be specific, don't just say "timeliness is important" as that is subjective. Use quantifiable time goals, like replying within x hours/days, in order to have your needs be as clear as possible and highest probability that the other person can either meet them or opt out of trying to in the first place.
There was a time when basic human decency wasn't requiring definitions to accommodate people absolving themselves from it.
@Platypus0110 or, one could consider it basic human decency to not expect people to all think and behave the same way - to recognize that we are a neurodiverse species and cannot read each other's minds. It is far more decent to set each other up for success than to play mind games where some people are automatically at a disadvantage.
I don't know. I can remember my dad sending out resumes in the mail and never hearing back. I can remember sending in answers to newspaper classifieds and never hearing back or leaving phone messages for people and not hearing back for ages. That sort of thing isn't new ... it's just that the net makes initial messaging so easy that it creates more opportunities for silence in response.
This is what I was saying before. WE are all analyzing ourselves, analyzing each other. WE need reasons why WE aren't getting replies. WE need replies. WE need the little dopamine hit we get when the message goes ping. Why? Because modern society has trained us to be individuals and to service the mind with little bouts of electronic crack. We feed off it. We are all Richard Nixon now.
The problem is not, 'why doesn't the person message me back?' The problem is that we are chasing the dragon of electric satisfaction with every message we send. The answer in my opinion, and mine alone of course, is to ween yourself off the hit. We have to, as a society, understand that people have no obligation to message us back. The addiction is ours to conquer, not theirs to service. Do yourself a favour. Let it go. Send your message into the void, and if nobody reads it, if there is no reply... who gives a damn. This is hard for me to write because I love the hit too. It took years to train my mind to be able to fire and forget.
Additional: Richard Nixon once told someone that when he looked in the mirror, he saw no reflection.
Tis the interwebs , nobody owes you being a bestie . I've had people from here I was genuinely friends with and spent time in each other's homes ghost me (even blocked) . Maybe it's me , maybe it's them . Who knows but at the end of the day, how much does it impact your life when there are so many lovely beautiful amazing people and things and stuff in the world to be happy about . This will be nothing more than a blip on your life journey , and not even worth losing a minute of joy over .
@pmvines - Nobody owes a stranger a response but ghosting you after having a relationship with them is just cruel and makes you wonder if they were ever really your friends to begin with.
@Mike403 Agreed , it does suck when that happens . All one can do is assume it's either an it's me not you situation and they didn't know how to end it , or that it's you and you did something you didn't realize you did.
I think some people gravitate to online relationships because they can just block the person when they want to end it, no mess, no fuss.
One day two will fall in love online and they will both be AI.
AI to a rancher is a far different thing than AI to the online community.
@girlblue50 Was your original post about society in general, or just referring to actions on this site? Or both?
@pmvines 🤔
Too many double exclamation marks.
Unstable or serial killer. <--rude and judgemental
Blocked her in honor of Spoon.