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I do perhaps 99 percent of my social interaction via "electronic mediation" whether that be texting, email, Facebook, telephone or instant messaging. Sometimes a friend does not reply and then time passes and he/she does not reply to another message and then months go by and he/she does not respond to another message (email, whatever) that may be particularly chosen to be easy to reply to and relevant, entertaining, whatever to his/her interests.
Obviously I wonder if I am being ghosted. But there are lots of reasons a friend might be doing this beyond the possibility that one is being ghosted, ostracised or rejected. He/she may be going through a particularly intense time in their family or in their career or in other areas of their life. They might be helping a friend or themselves get through a serious illness. They might be travelling or trying to make a deadline that is not happening for them. There are lots of things that may be going on. After all, it is likely that you are not the center of interest in their life even if you are a friend for many years.
But since sometimes you are being ghosted, or at least that has happened to me in the past, and so the question is, is it a delusion of reference to interpret silence as a signal of social rejection? Maybe "delusions of reference" lite?
Delusions of Reference on Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideas_of_reference_and_delusions_of_reference
[Addendum: the best algorithm I have found for evaluating if you are ghosted, is as follows: You send short emails at a constantly increasing interval: e.g. 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, etc. Each email is constructed to be easy to respond to. No major questions that require thought. Then if you still dont hear from him after some long period of time, you assume you are ghosted and try not to worry about it.]
[Addendum: my friend got back to me, so I am not exactly ghosted, and he is probably just very busy. However, it definitely makes me wonder if I have overstepped some bound, so we will see.]
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