I've recently started to re-engage with my PhD data. Unlike how I usually describe it, my PhD is probably best summarised as looking at the ethics of relationship negotiation within new media environments. While my research wasn't looking at my life, my life certainly looked at my research! Going back to that data, while being single and occasionally submitting myself to the torture of dating, has got me thinking. About ghosting.
For the unfamiliar, ghosting is the practice of seemingly disappearing into thin air. It usually happens before people have even met; you're chatting away to someone on a dating app and then suddenly they just disappear. Or they just stop replying to your messages. It also happens in the early stages, where after going out on a date or two contact suddenly stops. But really, it can (and does) happen at any stage of a relationship. All of a sudden, somebody just disappears.
To be clear, I am not against ghosting. I have experienced it plenty of time, both as the ghoster and the ghostee. It is certainly not the ideal way to end contact with someone, but seriously, when do people actually behave ideally?
New media technologies (which is an awful term... they're hardly new, but anyways, it's the one I'm sticking with for now) have not so much changed the types of relationships people have, but have created a hypervisibility and contactability. And this has at least changed the potential ways people can engage with each other.
The phenomena of ghosting is hardly new. People have been fucking off without saying a word forever, so let's not start with the whole "OMG kids today don't know how to interact like proper people" bullshit. I mean, hello, the whole "He just went down to the shop for a bottle of milk" trope. What is new is the potential to conduct digital surveillance upon one's ghost.
I could talk about the ethical implications of this, the ways in which people could behave to achieve some sort of idealised niceness around the awkwardness of ending relationships, in their various guises. I won't. Because, post PhD, current living in the actual world of being a single woman, I don't believe promoting an ideal is the way to go.
The other night I had drinks with a friend who is also using Foucault's later work in his PhD. We had what was for me a very liberating conversation about Foucault's neoliberalism. We acknowledged that, at the end, he turned to neoliberalism. Not as a wholehearted embrace, but as something which could be queered and co-opted into leading an ethical life.
The downside of this, which came out in my PhD findings (probably not as eloquently as I would like) is that the ethical framework he describes can be used in hugely unethical ways. When you develop this acute understanding of how power operates within your interpersonal relationships, you're faced with this red pill/blue pill situation. Do you use this knowledge to promote equality within your relationships, or do you use it to get what you want? That choice is up to the individual, and while Foucault is often said to be encouraging the even distribution of power, I think the reality is more complex than that. I think he was maybe a bit more OK with letting the world burn than is usually discussed. But that's a rather undeveloped critique best left for another forum another time.
As the night continued, my friend and I discussed our various experiences of dating and the complications that arise in negotiating relationships and feelings and that desire to not be a dick. And, of course, how to manage the situation when the other person turns into a dick. For me, this is where that desire not to promote an idealised niceness comes in. This is where I see Foucault with his matchstick burning shit down.
There is a huge discourse surrounding dating etiquette, in general, and a growing body of opinions/advice on how to deal with dating in new media environments. But telling people what to do is not the answer. People deal with shit differently, and saying things like "cyberstalking your ex is unhealthy and you are bad at doing breakups" is really unhelpful. Who is this person who is good at doing breakups? A sociopath?? Breakups are shitty and awful and they hurt, and there is no reason why being ghosted by someone you've never met should hurt less than the end of a long term relationship. Life is not linear or simple and the idea that we should all just be nice is ridiculous.
Despite my actual, certified recognition as an expert on relationship negotiation, I am constantly turning to my friends any time I have to deal with negotiating pretty much any aspect of a dating type relationship. Because there is no rule book; nor should there be. How people relate to one another is going to be unique to the context of that relationship and trying to fit it into some external framework is only going to cause everyone involved grief. That much I can put my stamp of expertise on.
Recently, I've had a lot of contradictory advice given to me, and this is why I think it's problematic to promote some sort of standard of how people should interact with one another. It is easy to get lost in these discourses about what you should and should not do. I found in listening to all these other voices that I was both losing myself and losing sight of the context of what I was negotiating. I was getting caught up in these external judgments (which may or may not have actually been happening) over how I was behaving. I was ignoring what my own needs are and how best, for me, to meet them.
How we use new media technologies, individually, in our negotiations of relationships is going to produce different things for different people in different contexts. There is no magical singular way to behave that will mean everyone is nice to one another and nobody gets hurt. And one person's strategy for mitigating the hurt they cause to somebody might actually be perceived as quite harmful by somebody else. The best we can do is engage authentically with ourselves and those around us, and, because we can't avoid hurting people, be accountable for what we do.
This brings me to the seance, which I am defining as the attempts at contacting someone who has ghosted you. Again, I place no judgement onto the seance, or onto the ghost's response or lack there of. Because while there is a need to be accountable to the person you've hurt, that need does not come at the expense of yourself. It's a tricky thing, negotiating that desire not to be a dick with what can sometimes be a legitimate need to be kind of a dick. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to manage this conflict. At the end of the day, you're the one who has to live your life. You're the one faced with the consequences of your actions. So you're the one who gets to choose.
I cannot overstate how much I am saying there is no overarching right or wrong here. The only advice I'll give is this: think your actions through and do what's best for you.
