When Is It OK to Ghost?

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Ghosting” has become an almost inevitable part of modern life – not just on dating sites, but among friends, family and even professional colleagues. But what’s behind this act of digital disappearance, and what does it say about how we relate to each other today? We’ll look at how technology that makes it easier to disappear on people has also made ghosting more socially acceptable, despite its emotional toll. When have you been ghosted, or ghosted someone? Guests: Dominic Pettman, professor of media and new humanities, The New School; author of "Ghosting: On Disappearance" Lizzie Post, a great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post and co-host of the “Awesome Etiquette” podcast; co-president of The Emily Post Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sponsorship of this podcast comes from Stanford Summer Session, allowing visiting students to study at
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0:27.2	From KQED. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We've probably all been there. Had a potential romantic partner stop responding to our messages, or friends drop out
0:39.5	of text chats without explanation, or colleagues and clients abruptly end an email exchange.
0:46.1	The act of ghosting has become so common these days it's almost expected, yet it can feel
0:52.2	really bad. It can hurt and anger us or leave us spinning. Listeners, have you ever been
0:57.3	ghosted or ghosted someone? And what do you think it says about how we relate to each other today?
1:03.1	Joining me to dig into those questions, Dominic Petman, Professor of Media and New Humanities at the
1:08.0	New School and author of Ghosting on Modern Disappearance. Welcome to Forum, Dominic. Thanks so much, man. It's really great to be here. Lizzie Post is also with us, great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post and co-hosts of the awesome etiquette podcast. Lizzie, welcome to Forum. Thank you so much for having me. So glad to have you both. And Dominic, I'll start with you.
1:28.6	We should note, as you do in your book, that the phenomenon of ghosting is not new.
1:33.0	People have dropped communication, stood them up on dates.
1:36.6	You even had an uncle years ago just disappear completely for a while, right?
1:41.0	More than a while.
1:41.9	I still don't really know if he's alive or dead. Oh, wow. Yeah,
1:46.3	I was only about seven at the time. He decided he'd had enough for whatever reason. And
1:52.2	changed his name, moved to a whole new country, and yeah, no, no word sense. So that was an
1:59.8	impressive thing for a young boy to witness to see,
2:03.9	on the one hand, it was sad, obviously. You don't want a family member to just disappear of
2:09.2	their, well, ever, but of their own accord. There's something also impressive about it,
2:14.7	being able to just decide, oh, you can just leave? I didn't know that was an
	...

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