Dr Katy Wells

Event details

Ghosting and Decency

John and Jane match on a mobile dating app. After a few days of messaging, John decides that he is no longer interested in Jane. He stops responding to her messages. John has ghosted Jane.             

Is there anything wrong with what John has done? In public debate about ghosting, opinion on this question is divided. Many would insist that John has done something wrong. He has been rude, or perhaps even cruel. Others, however, disagree. Ghosting is simply an appropriate way for John disengage from an unwanted romantic interaction, given the early stage of dating.

Ghosting is a widespread but philosophically under-investigated practice.  The main existing account we have of ghosting defends the ghosting of men by women, but leaves us in the dark about many cases of ghosting, including John’s ghosting of Jane.  In the present paper, I argue that John has done something wrong. Or, rather, he has done something for which he can rightly be subject to moral criticism.  This is because John’s ghosting of Jane, I argue, is aptly understood as an act of common indecency. These are acts which we are not forbidden from performing, and which we do not wrong others by performing, but which we can nevertheless be rightly criticised for performing.