Article
Attention
Culture
Digital
Ghosting
Psychology
5 min read

Ghosting is not immature, it’s plain cruel

The dehumanising behaviour hiding in plain sight.

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

On a dark street someone checks their mobile phone for messages.

‘Do you really believe that the moon only exists when you look at it?’ 

It’s a great question. Do you know who asked it? It sounds rather Shakespearean, doesn’t it? It’s got a touch of the – ‘that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ - about it. 

But not so.  

Interestingly, it was Albert Einstein who asked this question. He asked it again and again – unable to relax into any answer his contemporaries could offer him. He thought, at least initially, that he was asking a question about quantum physics. But he wasn’t; not really. Einstein was asking what it means to exist, what it means to be. 

And that means that he was actually asking a theological question. And I, for one, would appreciate it if we would get into the habit of asking it too, just phrased a little differently. I’d like us to ask something a little like:  

Do you really believe that the person only exists when you text them back?’ 

Yes, I’m imploring us all to take an Einstein-esque approach to the phenomenon of ‘ghosting’.  

Ghosting, just to make sure that we’re all one the same page, is the act of abruptly and completely cutting off all forms of contact with another person, offering no form of prior warning nor any kind of subsequent explanation. To ghost someone is to perform a social cut and run, a relational dine-and-dash, if you will. This, of course, can happen in all kinds of contexts – in work situations, in friendships, and in the most niche of circumstances. There’s an incredibly popular podcast, the title of which – ‘My Therapist Ghosted Me’ - is a tongue in cheek reference to one of the presenters being inexplicably cut off by their own therapist. Ouch.

And so, ghosting causes a social injury, it inflicts a heart wound. Being ghosted, we are coming to realise, is a rejection of the most absolute kind.

But where this phenomenon is reaching astounding heights is in the context of romantic relationships. The technological age in which we live, where the majority of romantic relationships are now being initiated and established online, has meant that we’ve got ghosting down to a fine art. It’s become all too easy. And apparently, nobody is immune.  

Just recently, Billie Eilish – Oscar and Grammy award winning musical genius and all-round cultural icon - explained how she had recently been the victim of an almighty ghosting. She said,  

‘it was insane. I was like – “did you die? Have you literally died?” It was somebody that I’d known for years, we had a plan (to meet) and the day of… nothing. I never heard from him again.’ 

Imagine being ignored so suddenly and completely that your first instinct is that the person must have died, only to realise – they hadn’t died, you were just disposable to them. This is happening all of the time, there’s a generation of people who are having their sense of self and of the ‘other’ defined by this very phenomenon. 

What’s incredibly interesting is that in the span of a few short years, psychologists and relationship therapists have gone from speaking of ‘ghosting’ in terms of emotional immaturity, conflict avoidance and a lack of communication skills, to regarding it as a form of cruelty and even abuse.  

It is not primarily the intent of the ‘ghost’ that is causing psychologists to speak of ghosting in increasingly serious terms. Most ‘ghosts’ are cowardly, perhaps, but not sheer evil. Rather, it is the extraordinary depths of hurt that the behaviour inflicts (intended or not) upon the person who has been victim to it.  

We are learning that there are all manner of harmful things that ghosting does to our brains and all kinds messages that it sends to our self-esteem. Namely, that we weren’t enough for that person, that we’ve failed somehow, that we’re disposable, that we misread the situation, that we misread them, that we’re deficient in almost every kind of way.  

These lies inevitably fill the gaps left by the silence of the other person. False explanations, usually of the most self-depreciating kind, take advantage of that fact that no explanation was offered by the person who hurt us. The bewilderment itself becomes a form of torture. And so, ghosting causes a social injury, it inflicts a heart wound. Being ghosted, we are coming to realise, is a rejection of the most absolute kind.  

Ghosting is the symptom of a society in which we kid ourselves into thinking that people only come to life when our thoughts turn to them or our eyes rest on them.

But I think there’s even more to it. And this is where I return to Einstein’s question, and my modern, admittedly much less cosmic, re-imagining of it. Because underneath it all, I think that ghosting is a theological issue.  

To ghost someone is to act as if they do not exist because you have averted your gaze from them. It is, therefore, to deprive them of the fullness of their existence. Or, at least, to deny it. It is an act of deep diminishment. Do we really believe that the moon only exists when it is looked upon? Ghosting forces us to similarly ask – do we believe that we only exist when we are looked upon?  

So, you see, it goes deep. It cuts to the core of what it means to be.  

Ghosting is the symptom of a society in which we kid ourselves into thinking that people only come to life when our thoughts turn to them or our eyes rest on them. If we can’t see the suffering we’ve caused, it isn’t happening. If we’ve cut someone out of our life, they aren’t existing. At least, we can behave as if they aren’t.  

One could argue that it’s a form of dehumanization, one that’s hidden in plain sight.  

And that, alongside all of the other reasons (or perhaps undergirding them), is the reason that I think being ghosted cuts us to the core; it brings into question the very reality of our existence.  

‘Do you really believe that the moon only exists when you look at it?’ 

Einstein’s question may feel a little abstract but it’s actually as tangible and personal as it gets. 

Review
Art
Culture
Music
Romanticism
Taylor Swift
5 min read

Taylor Swift’s new album is fine, and that might be the problem

Ego, art, and the quiet tragedy of getting everything you ever wanted

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Taylor Swift, dressed as a showgirl, sips from a glass.
Taylor Swift, showgirl.
Taylorswift.com

Taylor Swift released an album last week and, from what I can see, the world seems to hate it.  

Life of a Showgirl was written and recorded while Taylor was on her two-year-long Era’s tour, hence the album’s title. She would fly to Sweden between tour dates to record with the infamous producers, Max Martin and Shellback. This matters. Why? Well, because this means that each song on this album has grown out of the soil of unfathomable success; record-breaking numbers and history-making impact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the Era’s tour shifted the landscape of popular culture. Many critics have reflected on this context, citing ‘burnout’ and ‘frazzle’ as reasons why this album sits far below Taylor’s usual standard. 

They implore Taylor to take a day off: put her feet up, recuperate, and re-gather her musical senses.  

Then there are the critics who seem to be directing blame toward Taylor’s obvious happiness. If you didn’t know, she’s engaged to American footballer, Travis Kelce – and they, as a couple, are sickly sweet. Honestly, they’re defiantly mushy. They’re cheesy to the point of protest. They’re just happy – and, apparently, therein lies the problem. I’ve heard more than one critic quote Oscar Wilde in their takedown of Swift’s latest offering: 

 ‘In this world there are only two tragedies: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it’. 

This album, they say, is proof that Taylor Swift is victim to the latter kind of tragedy. She’s got everything one could ever want, and the world seems pretty agreed that her music is suffering because of it. We like to keep our artists tortured, thank you.  

For the record, I don’t hate the album. But I don’t love it either. I resonate with The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis who writes that it simply ‘floats in one ear and out the other’. There’s nothing to hate about it, which, I guess, also means there’s very little to love about it.  I’m not outraged, nor am I enamoured – and I say that gingerly, because I fear that’s the worst review of all.  

So, in some ways I’m agreeing with the general consensus – Life of a Showgirl is not Taylor Swift’s best work. I don’t, however, think that her success, nor her happiness, are quite to blame for it. I think those are slightly lazy critiques, they’re shallow scapegoats. 

I think, rather, the problem with this album is that Taylor has made herself the biggest thing within it.  

When introducing the album on Instagram, she thanked her collaborators for helping her to ‘paint this self-portrait’ – the strange thing is that this ‘self-portrait’ feels considerably less honest or authentic than her previous, more conceptual, albums.  

I’ve spent a couple of days wondering why this is and have come up with two theories.  

Firstly, we tend to be far more honest to and about ourselves when we’re able to kid ourselves into thinking that it’s not actually our own selves that we’re talking about. For example, I think of Billie Eilish’s Grammy and Academy Award-winning song – What Was I Made For? – which she wrote to accompany Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie. In an interview, Billie explained how writing a song about a Barbie somehow allowed her the space and freedom to create the most honest, raw, and revealing song she’d ever written.  

We’re self-preserving creatures, you see.  

If we’re knowingly speaking of, writing about, painting or in any way presenting ourselves - our ego gets in the way, preferring us to offer the world a shiny, carefully constructed façade.  

Taylor, in intentionally painting a ‘self-portrait’, has unknowingly offered us less than herself.  

And, now for my second theory. Every good self-portrait is actually about something bigger than its subject; they are able to point toward something more universal than the individual reflected. I think of Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits, the way she used her hair to communicate societal expectations, or how she framed herself with wildlife, or the time she painted a necklace of thorns around her own neck – leaving an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of the beholder’s stomach as they think about the nature of pain and liberty. She painted herself, endlessly. Kahlo pointed to herself in order to point through herself – she was never the subject that she was most interested in, she was never the biggest thing in her own self-portrait.  

Like I say, the problem with Taylor Swift’s okay-ish album is simply that she is the biggest thing within it. The key ingredient it’s lacking is awe; it leaves nothing to marvel at.  

And that’s rare for Taylor.  

I’ve often written that she is a Romantic in every sense of the word; concerned with the feelings and experiences that are powerful enough to knock us off our feet: big feelings, big thoughts, big truths, big questions, big mysteries, big language. These things have always been baked into her lyrics. 

This album, in comparison, feels small. It doesn’t transcend Taylor Swift’s feelings about – well, Taylor Swift. She hasn’t quite managed to point through herself, she is the sole subject of her own self-portrait.  

And therein lies its OK-ness.  

Honestly? Therein lies all of our OK-ness. Taylor Swift may be anomalous in many things, but not in this - the presence of ego means that we’re all prone to self-portrait-ise ourselves. Left unchecked we are (or at least, we can be), what Charles Taylor calls, ‘buffered selves’; thinking of ourselves as the maker and subject of all meaning, shielded from awe and wonder.  

But the best art will never flow from those who think themselves the biggest and deepest subject. Because, quite simply, we’re not.  

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