Alice Vol. 2 No. 2

GHOST
STORIES
By Sam West
You’ve swiped right and a
match has been made. But
something is … off. Perhaps
he’s too forward. Perhaps he’s too
shy. Perhaps he’s an unironic fan of
Smashmouth with an abiding love for
erotic puppetry. Whatever the reason,
though you might have been virtually
connected, there’s no spark. So what
do you do?
In most cases, the answer seems to
be: ignore him. It used to be that to
end a potential romantic link, you’d
have to have a meaningful conversation
with someone, or at least say you
weren’t interested in dating. But in
the age of Tinder, Bumble and other
dating apps, it’s much more expedient
to just disappear. Hence, “ghosting,” a
neologism for abandoning a potential
partner and ignoring their texts, calls
and notifications.
This might seem cruel, or crazy, or
deeply symbolic of the shallowness of
the millennial generation. (Cue the
thinkpieces.) However, in the world of
online and app-based dating—which
is incredibly young—no one is really
sure about what’s right and wrong. It’s
like Wild West out there.
“Since it’s so new, there’s not a lot of
rules of kind of what people expect,”
said Mo Quinn, a senior majoring in
marketing at The University of Alabama.
“The rules of engagement aren’t
super defined ... one person might
think it’s totally appropriate to send
you this message on Tinder, and you
might find that really creepy and forward.
I think there’s some hurdles
that people are still getting past with
online dating.”
[52] Alice Spring 2017
ghost·ing
the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by
suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.
Regular, face-to-face dating has
all sorts of little, informal guidelines
that have developed over many years.
Not everyone follows them, but they’ve
probably heard them. Three dates
is the threshold for sex. When you’re
getting over a guy (or girl), you can
be miserable one day for every month
you’ve been together. These social cues
don’t exist for dating apps — at least
not until now.
I talked to a few women about their
experiences with apps, with the goal
in mind of creating an official rule of
when it was and was not okay to jettison
a potential romantic partner.
But first, I had to figure out what it
was like to be on the receiving end of a
swift breakup.
LA REGLE D’JEU
I’ve used Tinder before, and the main
thing I remember is that it’s basically
a numbers game: you throw out a lot
of “hey” messages, you hear back from
a few of people, and you have a decent
conversation with a very small group.
Once you start going on dates, things
can get dicey.
Here’s a story that’s similar to what
probably thousands of Millennial men
and women have experienced. Susanna
Kaletski met a guy on an app, they
decided to go out on a date, and it was
… meh. Not bad, not great. He later
didn’t return her texts or calls. And
apparently, she didn’t mind.
“I guess if I had really liked him, it
probably would have made me feel really
bad, but because I wasn’t super into
him, I was fine,” said Kaletski, a UA
senior majoring in English.
Getting to know someone on a good
date is one of the most enjoyable experiences
there is; a disastrous date is
at least a fun story to tell. But no one
wants a mediocre experience. So for
Kalteski, ghosting is an expected part
of using Tinder, and a “no harm, no
foul” experience.
“I think for the most part, it’s becoming
a normal thing,” she said. “I
feel like more often than not it’s not
completely mutual, but people understand
why it happens.”
Going into the writing process of this
article, I couldn’t recall whether I had
ever been ghosted. But then I remembered
a few times in my Tinder experience
when women abruptly ceased
communication with me for whatever
reason. It didn’t feel good, but apparently
it wasn’t scarring enough for me
to recall months later. It’s just part of
the game.
WHEN GHOSTING IS GOOD
Maybe getting ghosted isn’t so bad,
but what’s the benefit of it? Why just
ditch someone when you could have a
conversation with them?
Quinn said she often ghosted guys
she just wasn’t into, but she recounted
one case in which she broke off contact
with a particularly aggressive pursuer.
When talking to people for this arti-