The term ghosting is defined as the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication. (Also, how sad is it that it actually has coined definition.) Whether you are ignoring your co-worker, friend, tinder match, mom, I can guarantee you that everyone, at least once, has ghosted on someone.
And it's understandable. That's how our society is built now. If you don't like something, you stop using it and move on to something else. If you don't want to be in a conversation, you ignore it and move to the next conversation. But when you begin to do that with every conversation, you are no longer communicating. You're just being childish.
Ghosting is easy because if you don't like how the conversation is going, you can just exit out of your messaging app and pretend it never happened. But the problem is that the other person that's involved with that conversation can't pretend like it never happened. The intention behind the ghosting is still there. Whether you are mad at that person, feel uncomfortable, or just don't want to listen what the other has to say, the receiving communicator will still know what you're feeling because you can't think of a response. The "ghoster" just couldn't face their issues and decided to hide behind a screen. And that's infuriating. If you can't handle the responsibility or responding, you shouldn't be able to start a conversation at all.
Of course, it's easier said than done, but we need to get back into the habit of finishing conversations. We need to be able to face our problems and know how to communicate them to others. We need to understand true interaction if we want to be able to have a real relationship with other people. So stop being annoying. Stop being childish. Respond.
