Brian Laird on WNYC.

So say you're messaging someone, maybe over text, email, or on a dating app, and it's going

really well.

They're responding quickly, even enthusiastically.

Everything seems okay.

So you send a text. A day passes without a response. No problem. People are busy. Then a week passes. Then two. You send a follow-up. Nothing. They vanished with no explanation. Ghosting.

The term for this phenomenon haunts our digital and actual lives.

It's frustrating and puzzling and evokes some questions with no clear answers.

What happened? Did I do something wrong? My guest, Kyle Cheka, staff writer at the New Yorker,

an author of the weekly column, Infinite Scroll, asks another question about ghosting in his latest column.

Is it inevitable?

We'll take some of your stories about ghosting by not just people you're involved with romantically,

but also by friends, which is part of this, 212-433.

WNYC, as we welcome Kyle to the show and back to the show WNYC uh sorry 212 433 WNYC or 212 433 96992 call or text

hi Kyle welcome back to WNYC

Hey Brian thanks for having me.

So many listeners might only be familiar with ghosting in the romantic context, two people

on a dating app, for instance, but ghosting is much broader than that, right?

I think so. We can kind of get ghosted in any aspect of our lives.

And this book I reviewed in my column kind of

goes through friendship and jobs and even kind of society itself.

When is something ghosting, by the way, as opposed to just, you know, not asking someone out again

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