Ghosting - Presumably a more prevalent [or more fiercely felt] experience in the autistic population?

🐝 Bees 🐝 (they/them) Autism resources in bio #stoptheshock #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs said:

I lament that it's awkward to try and have that similar outlining of expectations and boundaries when trying to form new friendships or a stronger aquaintance relationship.

Yes - if this was the norm, I am sure that my life would be much more simple.

..........TLDR = Thanks for educating me on this shorthand, I'd not seen it before.

I think that people in the autistic population probably do think in more detail about this sort of thing and that may be why some of us try so hard to answer messages and questions.  Except if we're tired and overwhelmed, which can be often. 

HP35 said:

It just seems like the safest way of getting rid of someone.

Just interested, what would be unsafe about just saying "I'm sorry I don't think this relationship is working for me."?

You could well be right.  The "swipe left" culture has become normalised in real life too perhaps.

I have been very frustrated by people (mostly relatives) not answering my emails.  Because now and then my email can go astray into a junk mail folder and then you are always wondering.  I think people should always reply to a message, in some way or another, it's only courteous - but it seems like the culture now is that ignoring stuff is acceptable and you are meant to take the lack of reply as an answer????

Any and all of them that are remote......Text message , email, letter, telephone message and carrier pigeon.

Number said:

“Ghosting” is when someone just doesn’t respond to you at all despite you fully expecting them to do so, in any event.

Number said:

I hate the experience…..SO many unanswered questions...and you should be polite and not push for an explanation?  Right??

What communication means are you talking about?  eg. text? email? forum posts? etc.

With regard to the forum, I disabled all my notifications and then, because I can't keep up with reading all the threads, enabled them again so that I'd get notifications when people reply to my comments.

However, although enabled, I don't get these notifications.

So, I'm not ghosting anyone if I don't reply. 

I just haven't seen the comment.

Unless directly asked a question, quite often I 'like' the reply to my comment, in order to signify that I've read it and am acknowledging it.

The only set still disabled is 'Activity from Subscriptions' as I have no idea WT* this is.  It talks about 'blogs' and 'ideations' (I didn't know that was even a word).

Any idea on that anyone?  Should it all be enabled?

Any advice on this would be useful as I would like to acknowledge when people directly mention me or reply directly to me.

Thanks.

I'm not sure I'd notice if someone ghosted me, tbh. I don't tend to contact people unless they contact me first. With a very small number of exceptions, I don't have favourites among people. I'm equally happy to do an activity with all new people as with people I've known for 20 years, so tend to go along to groups that align with what I feel like doing rather than having individual friends. I don't see the point in maintaining friendships after one of you moves away, or gets a new set of hobbies.

I have ghosted probably the majority of people I've ever had any kind of relationship with. It just seems like the safest way of getting rid of someone.

In text form on something like Discord I have a friend who doesn't see messages or is just super busy (she's a mum of 2 kids under 3 so understandable) and we have a mutual agreement that we check in after 2 weeks if we notice the other has "gone quiet" just in case it's an app error or we've benn silently getting overwhelmed and need someone to check in on us.
And I dunno I feel like that is the most healthy social relationship I have it has clear boundaries and expectations we have already discussed, and I lament that it's awkward to try and have that similar outlining of expectations and boundaries when trying to form new friendships or a stronger aquaintance relationship.
Or even maintain an older one after life reduces my social energy further. I had one friendship not make it because it never felt like a "2 way street" and when I tried to have the lets set up some healthy expectations she turned around and tried to act like I was a bad friend even though I was the one always checking in and trying to work on her schedule. And TLDR because this has got off-track but long story short I refused to be gaslit about my participation in the friendship and said lets mutually "just not" then. But I really did feel it acutely when that one ghosted me.

As for ghosting on forums in particular, I dunno I guess I always assumed they asked a question, then got the answer, read it and then left.
I mean it would be nice to get a thanks I guess but I never felt like anyone owed me a thanks when I responded off my own back because I wanted to. And if I didn't have the energy to respond then I simply wouldn't because I'm not obligated to take on others issues on top of my own. But maybe that's just me. And that's also a boundary thing, it's not that I don't care but I have learned I have to prioritise myself like that to survive some days. I also learned I don't have to take it personally if people don't respond to me, I get it, I can be a lot (so can anyone), and they have to prioritise themselves too and that's on them not me.

I often feel like I'm being ghosted but then realise they have earbuds in, wireless earbuds are a huge mistake imo, I mean I get people try to come up and talk to me even when I visibly have wires so surely it's not just me, and not just autists experiencing it. But damn the embarrassment makes me want to drop through the floor.

I am endlessly surprised in both directions - so I am clearly "not twigging" !?  As you say, people are busy and sometimes get back to you weeks and weeks later than anticipated.  Those are uplifting ones.

Unless we are talking public service organisation which hasn't done something they should have, I just tend to assume people are busy and will get around to it whenever.  Maybe I'm just not twigging when people don't actually want to communicate??