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Not replying back, rude or not?

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Tanakalian said:
I've been roleplaying for more than 25 years, but it really is a thing of very recent to not reply to either a PM, or stopping an ongoing play totally out of the blue.
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or stopping an ongoing play totally out of the blue

This! This right here! lol

I don't so much mind if I reach out to someone and they don't reply. That pretty much tells me all I need to know about the person (i.e. he or she isn't worth my time). I will always try to let someone know if I don't think it's going to work out and I might not think it's going to work out and still give it a try just in case I'm wrong! However, I hate it when I've agreed to play with someone and they just drop the story without telling me. That bugs the hell out of me. I will always understand if someone comes to me and says, "This one isn't working out. I'd rather not continue." I respect that so much. I respect it if someone tells me that something has come up and they are going to take awhile to post. However, if someone just stops responding, I always make a note that this person may not be someone I want to have contact with in the future unless they come back and explain that something IRL happened that prevented them from continuing (I've had that happen, myself). I've even instituted a rule for myself that if I send a post and two weeks goes by and I don't hear back from them, I'm going to just assume that the story is finished and I'll re-post that character/story to see if anyone else has interest. I understand that some of that may be harsh, but I'm too old for all of that.

But, yeah, I understand the feeling that it's a little on the rude side if someone doesn't just shoot you a message letting you know they aren't interested.
 
This whole thread discussion is one I wish I could have read when I first started interacting on roleplaying sites years ago. It has been a growing experience for me to say the least. I have definitely found that, "courtesy comes as courtesy goes". I used to be(sad to admit) that butthead that would pm a girl a racy proposition without even reading her profile. I quickly learned that, although this is an internet roleplaying venue, we are still people in real life. That means that however I interact with someone in real life, I need to use that same courtesy online. This mentality also includes patience sometimes, which applies more to men since we are so quick to want to get our "jizz out" with a womans response. Reading the full profile and engaging interaction based on what profile communicates will get one alot further. Otherwise, we are just saying to that person, "I don't care about you, I just want a quickie". Sometimes we also need to remember, we all different people from ALL OVER THE WORLD here online and we all have different personalities with different personality quirks. Communication and interation may not always be fulfilled in the way we want it to. Ultimately, hitting upon the original question, "is it rude to not respond?", ...its already been said on this thread, "why would you want to RP with someone who doesnt have the courtesy to respond anyhow?. My final thought, as you can see I can go on and on, is have fun, bring pleasure to others and enjoy life. People will be rude, yes, but find those who arent and enjoy the site!
 
Laa said:
On the one hand, rejecting people can be anxiety provoking... On the other hand, being ghosted is also anxiety provoking. If you're in a good mental space and you're not busy, rejecting someone is the mature thing to do, as it makes the site a better place for everyone. If you're anxious about the lashback, then it's fair enough not to reject them. I'd love to say that it's always rude, because it really does hurt my feelings, but I can't say that and not have dove too deep into my own biases to see clearly.
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appreciate you putting your feelings out there about anxiety...i definitely can relate...this is an area where I've needed the most growth. Even when I finally learned to be courteous and thougthful in my pm, i would have anxiety if they didn't respond right away..."Oh, why don't they like me...what did I say wrong, etc", which are thoughts founded on personal self-esteem issues and other psychological defecits, rather than reality. I have, and continue to learn to be patient and stop worrying. It hard to get past some of our own biases, but its part of the growth process that is required to let go, be free and have fun
 
Yeap. RP'ing really does bring out some of the worst anxiety in me, but it's not like that anxiety isn't rooted in my general psyche. IE: It's not like it creates the problem, it just kinda "rips it out into the open". Which gives me a space to develop my personality, which is neat... If it wasn't so painful at times. >.>

And yeah, those thoughts are the worst. I keep thinking I'm one mistake away from being ghosted in my RPs. Well, maybe not literally one mistake, but... Yeah.
 
Definitely understood...innate anxiety has the habit of popping up in so many of the activities we engage in such as this...but like you said, this gives us the space to develope our personality which is the healthy thing to do!
 
Always reply. Even if it’s to turn them down. I’ve always appreciated a reply even if it’s to say they aren’t interested. At least I know I can move on.
 
I usually don't talk much on the forums, but this topic got my attention as it is something that frustrates me how commonplace this is and how the people who do it often feel little to no guilt over it.

Unless someone is being rude, creepy, or can't be bothered to type properly, then just say what's on your mind. If they become unreasonable, then you can ignore them. Simple as that.

Not replying to a conversation because you lost interest in the RP you're discussing is rude, especially if you were giving them the impression you were very interested up until that last message. I usually wait a week or two for a reply before moving on. During that time, I avoid starting too many new discussions with potential RP partners so I don't end up in more RPs than I can handle simultaneously. That's up to TWO WEEKS of my time wasted that I could have been talking to someone else who is now too busy to start a new RP.
 
Ditto what Rainy said. If a person has taken the time to send you a PM, the least you can do is a quick response back.

If I had a penny for every PM I sent out that never got a response, well, I'd be set for life!
 
I definitely in general think that a response is polite but if someone messaged me with something that was in no way connected to my search thread, where was clear they either didn't even see it or didn't bother to read beyond the title, I probably would have just not responded before I become a staff member. Because yes they put effort in, but it was effort that was 100% for them and didn't take me or my interests into account whatsoever.

Now I generally give them a little nudge towards paying attention to what the person they're messaging wants before they try and contact someone with an idea.
 
It is rude, in my opinion, but it's the nature of RP. With the number of people that use this site, not everyone is going to reply (or can reply) to every PM they get. Don't take it personally. You may have caught them at a bad time that you know nothing about. They may not be a good match for you and not want to say so. Or they may be jerks that you're better off without.

Also, look at it this way. If you're going to get silence, it's least painful at the beginning when you have nothing committed besides an idea and a desire to RP. Silence after you've started planning or after you've started the RP is worse. So, if it happens to you, don't get discouraged. Keep reaching out and you'll probably get a good experience. You'll remember the good times a lot longer than you'll remember whoever ignored you.
 
Well I'll chip my two cents into the pile here as well cause I've had a few of these recently.

Is it rude?
Oh most certainly its really rather blatantly rude to not give any response, assuming the person did clearly read your Request Thread. I would not say however that not getting an immediate response is rude, we do have lives and sometimes we can't get to replying immediately. And of course sometimes we need to sit on an idea overnight to decide if we like it or not. I find that behavior entirely reasonable.

The comments I've seen about "If it'd be rude in real life its rude online" I certainly agree with, and the counterpoint I've seen about "Well you don't bother someone in real life who's listening to music, on their computer, etc" I would disagree with. Simply because your time frame of response is rather loose, you can finish what you're currently doing and get back to it later. And any reasonable person isn't going to go "Hey, they read my PM, and I didn't get a response after ten minutes? WTF!? ARRRGGGG" or anything of the sort. But after a day or two its become rude. Of course the content of said message is important, the catcalling comparison I saw is a fine one, anything you put in a pm to someone should be related to what is on their thread and any questions you have really shouldn't be answered already in their thread. Ignoring people who didn't read is fine and dandy I find, if they can't take the time to read your thread and think about it, they aren't going to take the time to actually read your rp responses and think about it either.

Now do you dwell on it?
No one shouldn't, get annoyed for a moment and move on. Personally I just add them to my ignore list at that point, because if they aren't going to respond to me now, they probably won't respond in the future either. So having their thread appear as I look through the forums is a waste of my personal time and excitement for new rps.

As far as the ghosting related topic goes that I've seen brought up.
Well that is quite rude. Not replying back same day is fine and all, some people have different rp habits. I'll bug someone if I don't receive a response in what had been their normal sort of window of response and they've been online. Just to make sure they didn't lose track of our rp because that is an issue as well. When you get a lot of replies it is very easy to lose track of rps.
But ignoring people and ghosting is very rude. I don't care if you just aren't feeling an rp anymore, I'm fine with dropping it and if we're a good match rp style wise I'm quite willing to work out something else with you if you're up for it. But it is rude to not say anything even when directly asked.
 
It depends.

I've had PM requests or entire stories ghosted on before which have left me feeling hurt because of the time that went into them. On the flip side, I've done my fair share of ignoring requests.

Often it's a combination of obvious things in their message:

a) they didn't care enough to read my request (I've posted historical drama prompts and received messages asking if I want to play a naughty schoolgirl for them to punish)
b) pressing for kinks or themes that are firmly on my no-go list, or
c) they say "hey, are you available / interested in RPing?" and... that's it. They give me absolutely no idea which plots (mine or theirs) they're referring to and how we can develop a story together. This is a huge pet peeve of mine and it immediately gives me a poor impression. RPing, to me, is collaborative writing. I'm not going to waste my time playing 21 questions to figure out what you want.

Communication is a must-have because I want to make sure the story is going in a direction we both enjoy, and if not, what the next steps should be. So, in situations where the very first message shows me they clearly aren't interested in my preferences or collaborating on any level, I don't feel bad about staying silent. It's just a straight up bad impression.
 
@Andronica: About c), I usually just answer "Yeah sure, what did you want to do?" or some other iteration of that query. It's very rare that people don't have an idea following that query, in my experience. If they don't, I just turn 'em down then.
 
Kind of a mixed bag for me, mostly leaning on rude though.

It kind of sucks when you go out of your way to send a PM to someone when spotting a thread that looks incredibly promising and the plot listed on there just seem perfect and... nothing. Or they do respond to you maybe once or twice even while being relatively active, but then just stop even after promising you they're interested to take you up as a partner. Kind of a stinger. So I ended up not seeking people out and just be the one to wait for others.

Granted, I'm not perfect, I've had people come up to me that I never responded back to but then... they were the kind that would just say they saw my RT, were interested and that's it. Even when I give that someone a chance to further explain themselves, get them to talk a little and they still just talk to you with little snippets of words that give nothing away on what they are like as a RP partner. It just becomes such a struggle to respond back to them. When I'm talking to people I want to get something from the other person still, yes, I have a plot in my RTs that I've laid out, but it's not set in stone if there are ideas from them that can be discussed about. But when nothing is given and even I have to drag every word out of them, I very quickly loose then interest to just respond back. Followed by feeling bad about it.

So yeah, kinda rude.
 
Laa said:
@Andronica: About c), I usually just answer "Yeah sure, what did you want to do?" or some other iteration of that query. It's very rare that people don't have an idea following that query, in my experience. If they don't, I just turn 'em down then.
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I'll have to second that one. Even if the idea isn't one of mine but something that is based on my stuff they likely have some idea for why they're contacting me. So I'll figure 'you know lets see what they're thinking, who knows I might like it.'

And in regards to B) on Andronica's points, sometimes kinks aren't readily obvious what's a no go or not. There's plenty of times people have old f-lists on their long running request threads or forget to put their f-list on one thread and not another and you're being responded to on the one that doesn't have it. Sometimes people consider kinks not related to some idea, like I'm sure some guys don't associate pegging with subbing as a male but I do. And sometimes when people ask about kinks its more a matter of trying to narrow down ideas they want to pitch. I've got plenty of ideas that I would not pitch to some people but I'd pitch to others just based on what kinks they're into. There is some wriggle room on this point I find. And I'll check my thread just to make sure I answered it sometimes.
 
Laa said:
@Andronica: About c), I usually just answer "Yeah sure, what did you want to do?" or some other iteration of that query. It's very rare that people don't have an idea following that query, in my experience. If they don't, I just turn 'em down then.
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I agree with this one, I have people who send me pages of an idea and some who are just asking if something is still available or if I am interested in RPing with them. The ones who just give the wanna RP with me stuff, I try to give benefit of the doubt and at least ask about it. What I get from there depends if I keep on bothering or not with them, but I still at least give a no thanks to them. And I often get people who are asking if an idea is still open, which is great too because I know some ideas I put out there I get a bunch all at once and hate for someone I don't end up writing with to end up putting a ton of time into something to PM to me, but there was no point to it.

I get that others don't want to throw a ton of words at you, and put in a ton of work to get you to take an idea. I am kind of the same way, I try to put in as much as I can when sending a PM to someone to at least give them an idea of what got me interested. I know for me though, I am not going to sit and create a character that in the end there was no point to, because the person I PM isn't even bothering to PM me back because they are not interested. And for me I work better working with my partner to figure out where we want to go exactly, and sometimes a tiny bit of input in what kind of character they might want to play against. That isn't always needed, but sometimes I have so many things in my head a little input from my partner helps me to settle on what I want to do.

Like I have said before, we should treat others like we want to be treated. And I know the whole thing of we are not owed a response, which I agree but they are nice to get even if it is just saying 'No Thanks'. And the whole well they were busy, you don't know their lives and such. Which again I agree, I am not expecting responses right away when people are busy or if they have a major crises on their hands. I get that, and understand it. But when you see the same RT bumped the next day, and you didn't receive at least small response back that they are not interested it does feel a bit insulting. But I move on, and like someone else said the person goes into the ignore list because there is no point to look at their RT again wasting my time with someone who has shown they obviously don't want to write with me.
 
Laa said:
@Andronica: About c), I usually just answer "Yeah sure, what did you want to do?" or some other iteration of that query. It's very rare that people don't have an idea following that query, in my experience. If they don't, I just turn 'em down then.
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For a long time I used to follow up asking what they were interested in and I would usually get a setting or pairing. Great! That's a start, right? But then, in my experience, I would end up stuck in a loop of throwing ideas at someone and receiving little to no feedback. It became a muse assassin. I'm all for brainstorming several choices with my partner when one of us is indecisive, but I don't want to get into that cycle where plotting falls squarely into my lap, which was a trend in messages like 'hey do you want to RP?'.

On another RP site I'm part of, members have shotgunned vague PMs as a low effort way of gauging interest (which is a big no-no there due to spam), and that's what I equate these PMs with. If there's not a single mention of my or my partner's interests in an opening PM to let me know where to even start, then I don't feel like my request was actually read and I don't want to reply.

Now, a first impression is more important to me and I won't send "can you please elaborate?" x 10 while hoping for something more than a few words back. These days, if I receive two PMs and one writer says "Hey, we should RP! Here are some of your ideas I liked and why / here are some of my plots that include X or Y things we have in common," versus "Do you want to RP?"... Well, I'm going with the first. Getting a message with some substance is a lot more inspiring to me than an open ended question. I've made great writing partnerships and written excellent stories that all began from a concise PM, but the point is that their first message gave me something - a concept, a character, etc. Those are the messages I'll take the time to read, even if I just end up saying no thanks.
 
I would say it's not rude at all. I would even go a step further to say that expecting a response is the rude position to take as it is making a demand on another person's time and energy.
 
Nihilistic_Impact said:
I would say it's not rude at all. I would even go a step further to say that expecting a response is the rude position to take as it is making a demand on another person's time and energy.
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By that logic, expecting people to respond to one's request thread at all with the expectation that they offer something more than "Hey I'm interested in X" is a rude assumption of someone else's time and energy. Going with your logic, its an entitled stance to take that just because you wrote out a lot of stuff that you deserve a more interesting reply to your thread than a single short sentence expressing interest.
 
That doesn't track at all.

What is the point of contention here is that someone is actively initiating conversation and then declaring those that fail to respond rude.

At no point does the content of the message enter into my opinion here. And to try and expand that to the passive invitation for communication like a request thread is just being absurd.
 
My point is, if you expect more of a response than "I'm interested" like most people who post request threads do and expect someone to thoroughly read through their thread properly. Often wanting what would take 5-10 minutes to do. Then its at least common courtesy to take 30 seconds to respond with not being interested.

Expecting someone to take that time to give one what most request threads want, not responding, and then going so far as to call them rude for expecting a reply is a huge case of entitlement. Your own time is not any more valuable than theirs, and you expected them to give you their time when you posted the thread. Its not unreasonable to expect a little courtesy. Its like holding the door open for someone, its just common courtesy for them to say thank you as they pass.


My use of "You" being the more general sense of course not specifically referring to you personally as I have no idea how you handle your own searches.
 
I'm not usually bothered if they stop replying to a conversation. It's annoying when people ghost on an active RP, though.
 
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