Let’s break it down together. The good, the bad and the ghastly.
Take the hint
If ghost-ees have one thing in common, they were creepy, overstepped boundaries or just didn’t take “no” for an answer. If any of these things apply to you, stop it. If you don’t stop, you deserve to be ghosted.
Haylea Ledbetter said she ghosted someone because they "didn’t get the hint.”
Hints can be a lot of things, so I dug deeper by asking her what she meant.
“I’m sorry, this is so funny,” she said after laughing. (I couldn’t be mad. I am funny. But she persisted.) “Um, like, I thought that I was being pretty clear that I wasn’t interested and apparently that did not go through.”
I asked her how she recommends someone to take a hint.
“Being self-aware, lowkey," she said. "I think that solves most of it.”
I understood what she was saying, lowkey. But when it comes to talking, especially over text, it’s harder than it seems to be self-aware.
Be text-aware
We all know communicating online adds a layer of difficulty. And to make things even worse, there’s a new tone specific to online communication. You need to read between the messages.
It’s called “dry texting.”
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Jessica Lee said that her method for ghosting someone was to “just stop responding, or be super dry and then just cut it off.”
Isabella Lairamore, also a student at UNC, said she doesn't ghost someone completely and opts for a less extreme method than Lee's.
"Because that makes people feel really bad about themselves," she said, "but (its) just being dry until the other person gives up.”
So how does one go about being dry? Laramore recommended sending the bare minimum back when responding to someone and, more importantly, told those trying to ghost someone should simply...
"Be boring.”
The next time you’re questioning whether someone’s into you or not, check to see how dry the messages are. If they wait days to reply, send one-word answers or simply ignore you, that’s Bojangles biscuit dry.
Letting them down easy
Avoiding ghosting whenever possible is the safest bet. That way, you won’t leave them second-guessing everything they revealed about themselves to you. It’s the kind thing to do.
For those who are scared of confrontation, figuring out what to say without hurting the other person’s feelings is just plain hard. Luckily, Tess Palmer offered her advice to those in this situation.
“I would say it’s more about telling them how you feel than placing blame on the other person,” Palmer said. “In the end, that’s really what it’s about — how you feel, not the actions that lead to that.”
In past advice, I've recommended “speaking with your I’s” to state how you feel rather than telling the other person why they’re in the wrong. Try saying how you feel and talking about your perspective rather than bringing the other person into it. I’ve done this before, and it worked.
Getting over it
Your friends have probably told you “whatever, you’re too good for them anyways,” to pull you out of a post-ghost slump. If you’re anything like me, hearing this doesn’t help at all. That’s because there likely isn’t any one thing to hear, say or do to get over someone in the blink of an eye. It takes time.
Let yourself be upset.
Ghosts are scary. And with Halloween just around the corner, they could be hiding anywhere.
Don’t be a ghost this spooky season. And if you have a ghastly encounter, hold your head high. They decided you didn’t deserve basic respect. You might as well give it to yourself.
And that’s just my Two Spence.
@dthopinion
opinion@dailytarheel.com
