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Is ghosting pretty standard on BM?

First, I will like to say I'm glad to find out I'm not the only one who gets 'ghosted.'

The warning signs are quite apparent as someone like me, who experienced them on a day to day basis.
  1. Lack of posting
  2. They're on, but clearly not looking at your post.
  3. They leave you on read
  4. They haven replied within the following days.
Either way, you know when someone leaves and that's just reality. You can't march into the inbox and demand for a reply, because that would result into an automatic block. All you can do is ask if they're interested and see what they say next.

In situations, I've been told my posts weren't so the greatest. Am I offended? No. I can agree it is my fault since I never had any interest in reading but more writing. Ironic, but the truth.

To be honest, its better to be ghosted than told they aren't interested anymore. Some are nice with it, some are nasty with it. Overall, I do think we should certain levels of roleplaying?

  1. Beginner level (More like playing around; 1 sentence to a paragraph)
  2. Intermediate level (A little advance, but still chill)
  3. Advance level (You're way up there)
Anyway, this is why I provided a writing sample so others can know I how write.
 
It got to a point where getting ghosted is so common, the moment I catch a warning sign, I'm ending it then and there.

It got bad enough I can't even discuss RPs with people that I approach.
 
It's a normal part of the internet RP experience, no matter the forum or chatroom. If I notice that a partner stopped posting, I just find a new roleplay to fill the slot. No reason to give it a second thought.

Then I've had people come back, sometimes years later, asking to resume an old scene. If I'm feeling it, why not? Should I get pouty and say no on principle?

I'm sure I've done it myself, too, without even noticing. Got busy, things happened, lost track of a scene, forgot it was my post, then it got buried down the list somewhere. Meanwhile someone's out there getting pissed off, thinking I've snubbed them. It probably happened.
 
I think it just happened to me. I was in a PM with someone, we were working out story ideas. When I went to ask a question about the plot, I noticed that I no longer had the option to reply in the thread. Then, under conversation participants the person's name is gray out with a line through it. Conversation info shows there's still two people in the conversation though.
 
For me so far, different people reply at different paces. Some people reply in minutes, others reply after a few days.

Some of the questions I ask require a bit of work too. Maybe I shared an idea for a setting and my character and some possible paths, then based on that I ask how they see their character, the relationship between our characters, and a narrowed down plot path. For questions like that, I actually would prefer for someone to spend as much time as they need to think it through and come back. Or maybe they don't come back, which is fair enough because it's quite a heavy effort. It's only worthwhile if they find it as fun as I do.

Same with actual RP threads, a post might shape the direction of the posts that come after. Sometimes it needs time to plan, and the right state of mind. And I totally understand if the other side wants to do it but can't find the time or energy for a while and then it kind of drops off.
 
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Phoenut said:
I think it just happened to me. I was in a PM with someone, we were working out story ideas. When I went to ask a question about the plot, I noticed that I no longer had the option to reply in the thread. Then, under conversation participants the person's name is gray out with a line through it. Conversation info shows there's still two people in the conversation though.
Click to expand...
That person effectively left that conversation. That's a decision you as a user have to make.
 
I don't think ghosting here is any more common than elsewhere. I mostly think that people are forgetful beings and sometimes it happens. I get why people ghost even if it's shitty, sometimes you just don't have the energy to say something, say you'll do it later and then you forget about it.
 
From what I can tell, it's a really serious and pervasive problem here on BMR. Then again my 20 years of RP experience have been largely on two other forums and nowhere else, so I can't rightly say if it's something largely that happens on ERP sites. I've always built up a rapport with old partners, even if they were short-term ones, so I tend to take it pretty hard when I get ghosted.
 
I think sending "can't rp any more" is courtesy... If you need to, don't explain and even block me if you are soooo afraid of my reply. But this is courtesy. Barring catastrophe.
 
They're common, and it's a widespread thing. It is less frequent in small-time places (which are usually long lasted, tight knit, and/or share enough in common for this to be much less likely). A public place like this? Very wide range of people, and results. The reasons are pretty varied, but I think I covered the widest gist for smaller communities vs larger communities having the problem.
 
Ghosting is super common in rps. It is the MOST common ending for an rp.

When someone just doesn't log in for weeks or months on end, that is NOT ghosting. Ok, it MIGHT be ghosting but it could be something in real life, like moving, ill health, computer/internet problem, and the person has no ability to contact you with the courtesy of 'sorry, can't continue'.

Or it could mean that they have found a boyfriend/girlfriend and no longer need the stimulus of written smut online. In that case it IS a ghost situation because all they have to do is take 5 mins to log in and send a mass PM, 'sorry, leaving the site, bye'.

I was on another site once where the admin liked to ban people and give no notice of the ban, so I was waiting for months until I realized, hey I think that fucker banned these three partners of mine, so I'd ask the admin and he'd immediately get all high and mighty and cuss me out a new a-hole. Needless to say, I left that rude douchebag's site.

Now, if someone is online a lot but not responding to the friendly nudge that you sent after 3 or 4 weeks of silence, they are ghosting you and there's no excuse for it. If someone can't find 10 seconds to say, 'sorry I need more time' or 'sorry, your writing stinks, bye', they are being rude and cowardly.

Things to look for in potential partners to avoid ghosting:

1 - People who only rp in PMs.
This way the person can write up a storm in private with others while ignoring you. Certainly, some people genuinely like their privacy, but this is very convenient for ghosting. If you can't write in a thread with me, I can't trust you. I've been burned way too many times.

2 - People who hide their online status.
This is the perfect way to evade people that you're too chickenshit to fess up that you've dropped them, especially if combined with PM play. If you can't tell when the last time someone has been online, then you can't know if they have a real life issue or just avoiding you. It's an extremely convenient ghosting trick. If someone hides their online status, they are most likely reserving the right to ghost you in the future. I do not care in the slightest how many other people you might be writing with, but if you can't let me see when you've been on, then it's my own fault for trusting you. I'm sure that there are good courteous writers out there who hide their status somewhere on the internet (all two of you :p) but I haven't met one. I've had a 100% ghost rate with people who hide their status. Stay away.

I've had people suddenly hide their status as soon as they receive my friendly nudge. I've had this happen more than once. I've also had countless times, someone reply to all of their other threads AND bump their RT while ignoring me for days and weeks on end. Total gutless ghost.

There's no excuse for ghosting. Then there are the people who will whine, 'oh, but the person might get mad at me for dropping him'. Oh really? Two months ago you said 'Oh yes, I'm totally committed long term, just like it says in my RT' and now 3 posts in you're out and you want your partner to be all smiles and jumping jacks? Of course they'll be ticked. You don't need to give a reason, just have the courtesy to say that it's over so they're not left hanging, and can free up a story slot for someone else, and if they DO go ballistic on you, just block them. Let them be the prick instead of you. At least you took the higher road.
 
If someone got banned, not their fault.
On such a site I'd trade emails or discord...
I hide my status and prefer pms because I don't need harassment about when why. But I do not ghost. I ghosted once when the person refused to respect my boundaries repeatedly, and once for a few weeks when my great uncle passed and I traveled on another continent. That's it. I know threads get ghosted too, sometimes I see a beautiful opening and....
 
Yeah, there's really no set list of qualities a person displays that will indicate the tendency to ghost. I've seen people with dangling thread openings too, looking like they wrote the first post but someone ditched them months ago. I've seen some people who complain about ghosting specifically mentioning that they can see the person come online and they feel ignored by them. I think to try to isolate certain stuff like this might not be as conducive to identifying poor rp partners and might actually limit the pool from which you can ask folks to rp.

I don't worry about ghosting or get hung up on the rps that don't work. A lot of people who complain about ghosting are people who like and need a faster pace. That's not wrong and instead of focusing on insignificant traits that might not statistically mean anything, it'd be better to focus on yourself to curate your own experience. It is okay to be the one to say, "I don't want to wait longer than ___" and to tell people you're not interested in the rp anymore if they try to make you wait past that.

Although with the whole world hit by Covid and all the stress and financial inconsistency that brings, I'd hope people were a bit more understanding.
 
I think RPing becomes so much more fun and relaxing when you do it because you enjoy writing more than reading. It lowers your expectations and doesn't make you too dependent on getting replies from your partners or getting them at the quality/speed you deem good enough. That's been my approach for a long while. I've been ghosted a lot in the past even though I filter through my prospective partners very carefully. I don't truly think there is much to do to prevent that from happening. The best thing you can do is to enjoy the journey no matter how short it gets or where the destination ends up being.
 
I always found it strange when people get bent out of shape because they can't see when someone is online or not. Is it really that serious? Sometimes you just don't want to be bothered when you come online to do something other than roleplay or maybe you want to get to certain roleplays not because you are ignoring any others but you have a set goal of what to write to and you don't feel like being asked when you are going to post.
 
There's a whole conversation to be had about harmful assumptions made regarding ghosting. Like, how long does it take for someone to be considered a ghost? Some people exaggerate how long they've been waiting for a reply. And like Kimbra said, if you're someone who has a lot of partners or stories, posting to other things first does not inherently equate ghosting on an rp. Posting to forum topics or games without asking a partner for permission or letting them know that you're too tired today doesn't equal ghosting. Then there's the whole other side of the issue that we can't single people out about, is that there are certain toxic or abusive behaviors that push people away. Is it ghosting if someone is stalking/harassing you and you just stop talking to them? (I am not referring to anyone in this thread, I just mean in general, we can't talk about "When does someone deserve to be ghosted? When is ghosting okay?")

But we can't get into specifics and individual details like that because then we're actually referring to real situations and using specific members as examples for what we're talking about, which I don't agree with. It's not okay to publicly call people out. In the general sense, the problem of ghosting is very complicated and for that reason, we can't really solve it.
 
Over the years of role playing I feel like ghosting has gotten worse. I haven't been on this particular site long enough to know if ghosting is a big problem here, but from my experience ignoring people sure is... Or maybe I'm just not good at breaking through and getting rps.
 
I think it has all around, but I'd say a lot of it boils down to how open and dissociated roleplaying is really at - which doesn't help on a site as open as this one where everyone pretty much throws out a 'this is me' post and shuffles off to private messages. I only work well with chemistry, and I'm also taking a lot longer to get stuff out than before. The result is even on my part, not as much dedication as I'd like. I'm beginning to think there's an aspect of raw community being lost in the equation that does contribute to the problem.
 
I think there are two elements to ghosting:
  • I figured that most of the people on this forum are in their 30s and up. Because of this, we don't really share our real emails, real names, real anything, I mean I don't want my clients to my f-list link. So when I'm busy – no one from this forum can reach me, the only way for me to be reached, if I open this forum and check my messages. Or open my specially-designated Discord, to check my messages.
  • And we have jobs, friends, problems, deadlines, relationships, and as we getting older, we probably also started to appreciate things like "Sleeping" and "Me time" a bit more.
This compounds to an effect that people think they are ghosted. But really, it's just a combination of privacy concerns and real life.

This time around, I decided to announce to people from the get-go – that I'm available for the next 2-3 weeks, then no promises.

That said, I don't see ghosting as a problem, I had roleplay revived after 1-3-6 months, and all good and shiny, in fact, I think downtime helped a bit, new ideas, fresh outlook. And if I really want to finish a story, I can copy-paste it to good-old Microsoft Word and finish it myself. If there is a will, there is a solution.
 
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@MaximusDecimus An excellent explanation. People too often interpret long silences as a personal snub, but 90% of the time it really is not. Depending on your lifestyle, your hobbies might suddenly become the last of your 99 problems, and you do have to abruptly drop whatever you're doing and dash away like a firefighter on duty.

It's true that long pauses kill the buzz in some scenes, but can breathe new life into others. If all else fails you can always start a new scene; most of us always have plenty of new ideas waiting to be played. So is it really that big of a deal?
 
MaximusDecimus said:
I think there are two elements to ghosting:
  • I figured that most of the people on this forum are in their 30s and up. Because of this, we don't really share our real emails, real names, real anything, I mean I don't want my clients to my f-list link. So when I'm busy – no one from this forum can reach me, the only way for me to be reached, if I open this forum and check my messages. Or open my specially-designated Discord, to check my messages.
  • And we have jobs, friends, problems, deadlines, relationships, and as we getting older, we probably also started to appreciate things like "Sleeping" and "Me time" a bit more.
This compounds to an effect that people think they are ghosted. But really, it's just a combination of privacy concerns and real life.

This time around, I decided to announce to people from the get-go – that I'm available for the next 2-3 weeks, then no promises.

That said, I don't see ghosting as a problem, I had roleplay revived after 1-3-6 months, and all good and shiny, in fact, I think downtime helped a bit, new ideas, fresh outlook. And if I really want to finish a story, I can copy-paste it to good-old Microsoft Word and finish it myself. If there is a will, there is a solution.
Click to expand...

While it's a well-worked out reply, as for your first bullet-point I have the complete opposite feeling, that most here are (well) under 30. That is, on the female (request) side.

Then again, I probably could list a ton more reasons why people ghost others. It's happened a hell of a lot to me in the last 2 years (think hundreds of times), but I haven't been able to put it down to a couple of things.
 
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