Hi - so uh... I'm sure there are at least a dozen other threads in this vein on this forum, but uh... figured I might make one.
Long story short, I've gotten ghosted a lot recently and went from about a dozen plus RPs down to ... three...
Three RPs...
And out of all of these RPs, I've had 12-15 that have just disappeared without notice. A few of the writers and I keep in contact, and one of them let me know why they wouldn't be replying anymore, but at least a dozen have just... poof, disappeared in the past year.
And I know people ghost for various reasons, and it's not always because they want to but - regardless, it sucks.
So...
TL;DR - What do you do to try and get back into the swing of things after being ghosted? What gets you motivated to start another RP again? 'Cause I want to try and start up one or a few more, but I'm terrified of it going absolutely nowhere all over again - what're your pick-me-up strategies when this sort of thing happens to you or your writing partners / friends? :o
I think this topic belongs in this forum
Long story short, I've gotten ghosted a lot recently and went from about a dozen plus RPs down to ... three...
Three RPs...
And out of all of these RPs, I've had 12-15 that have just disappeared without notice. A few of the writers and I keep in contact, and one of them let me know why they wouldn't be replying anymore, but at least a dozen have just... poof, disappeared in the past year.
And I know people ghost for various reasons, and it's not always because they want to but - regardless, it sucks.
So...
TL;DR - What do you do to try and get back into the swing of things after being ghosted? What gets you motivated to start another RP again? 'Cause I want to try and start up one or a few more, but I'm terrified of it going absolutely nowhere all over again - what're your pick-me-up strategies when this sort of thing happens to you or your writing partners / friends? :o
I think this topic belongs in this forum
Been on both sides of this coin...
Heads - Ghosted - have been ghosted semi-regularly the last two years I’ve been here. I take the meaning of ‘ghosting’ as when someone just quits communicating altogether, be they delete their account & characters (line-out), or just stop replying to the RP & OOC messages. A couple of times I was just blocked outright. A handful of times I had a PM saying they have to quit, which isn’t really ghosting. I personally am pretty calloused from disappearing co-writers and just shrug when it happens. If the story is good I save it in my archive. I don’t let it bother me that much and I keep on searching for good writers to rp with. The sad thing about this is I tend to expect to be ghosted when I start RPs, so may not put my all into the new RP, which isn’t fair to my new co-writers.
Tails - Ghosting - I have ghosted (and have been accused of ghosting) people as well. I try to make every effort to let co-writers know when I will be away for extended periods of time, and some don’t like waiting more than a week for a reply. I also try and let co-writers know if an RP isn’t working out. 2020 was a bad year for me ghosting as I managed to be stupid and did time in exile and couldn’t respond. I also sometimes suffer from ‘white-page syndrome’ where I look at a reply and I sit and try to come up with a response. Some days I have nothing, and some days it just flows out like water.
One of my ‘pick-me-up’strategies is to go and edit old stories for a bit. It gets my head out of the rut and back into how much fun co-writing is. Not sure my ramble answers your question too well.
Heads - Ghosted - have been ghosted semi-regularly the last two years I’ve been here. I take the meaning of ‘ghosting’ as when someone just quits communicating altogether, be they delete their account & characters (line-out), or just stop replying to the RP & OOC messages. A couple of times I was just blocked outright. A handful of times I had a PM saying they have to quit, which isn’t really ghosting. I personally am pretty calloused from disappearing co-writers and just shrug when it happens. If the story is good I save it in my archive. I don’t let it bother me that much and I keep on searching for good writers to rp with. The sad thing about this is I tend to expect to be ghosted when I start RPs, so may not put my all into the new RP, which isn’t fair to my new co-writers.
Tails - Ghosting - I have ghosted (and have been accused of ghosting) people as well. I try to make every effort to let co-writers know when I will be away for extended periods of time, and some don’t like waiting more than a week for a reply. I also try and let co-writers know if an RP isn’t working out. 2020 was a bad year for me ghosting as I managed to be stupid and did time in exile and couldn’t respond. I also sometimes suffer from ‘white-page syndrome’ where I look at a reply and I sit and try to come up with a response. Some days I have nothing, and some days it just flows out like water.
One of my ‘pick-me-up’strategies is to go and edit old stories for a bit. It gets my head out of the rut and back into how much fun co-writing is. Not sure my ramble answers your question too well.
rolled 1d2 and got a natural 1.
Note: Two sides of the coin
It's a good ramble in that it shows how roleplayers treat eachother and OP was juggling a dozen of them, hence this thread.
At times like these I focus more where I know my energy will be returned and less where it isn't, which almost always involves falling back on friends I can trust to talk ocs and commiserate; they also get offered my hand in RP before I consider casting my line back out to strangers.
I find it also helps having diverse outlets where I can ride out creative setbacks: short-term and MMO RPs, tabletops, oc art servers, etc. (Your art is lovely, you'd fit in anywhere.) I like this hobby but it's the last place I'd recommend having too many eggs in one basket.
At times like these I focus more where I know my energy will be returned and less where it isn't, which almost always involves falling back on friends I can trust to talk ocs and commiserate; they also get offered my hand in RP before I consider casting my line back out to strangers.
I find it also helps having diverse outlets where I can ride out creative setbacks: short-term and MMO RPs, tabletops, oc art servers, etc. (Your art is lovely, you'd fit in anywhere.) I like this hobby but it's the last place I'd recommend having too many eggs in one basket.
For my experience, since it happened to be ghosted quite a few times (but also, many of those were on me... the hell was I expecting playing on Discord?) I developed a disillusioned approach to any new RP partners I'm meeting with, meaning I don't put any expectations towards them or the RP itself until the story starts to get shaped. This works quite well, since if I'm getting ghosted, I don't feel anything towards them, neither good nor bad, I'm purely neutral.
This has proven useful multiple times since I believe people should remember they hold a little responsibility towards their partners. Even in this chaotic era, I find hard to believe you can't send me a line of text explaining why you stopped writing (unless, as mentioned in many others topic around the web, you lack the guts to do this... If it was me, I would prefer to appear somehow rude but to show respect to the other by, indeed, risking feeling bad or even receive a couple of insults. Silence is the fertile soil for doubt, and doubt can fester like a tumour onto your mind because you can't decide if it's you or them who are at fault). Thus, if I'm not reflecting my way of living onto others, not expecting them to follow my code of being a civil fella, I don't exactly feel bad or anything if they ghost me... it's not like I've also done the same for them, by creating thousands of potential scenarios in my head and wrote the best piece of RP I could possibly produce because of them; that was for my pleasure and my self-satisfaction, nothing more.
As Rogue pointed out, however, this comes with taking precautions towards anyone, in my case being very detached from the start of the RP itself which is, indeed, unfair towards the new good-willed players, but then again... my personal well-being is more important than the one of a perfect stranger, at least for something like this.
One thing that helped me greatly to avoid ghosting's silent-torture is to discipline my mind (as I do with practically everything, but that's another story) by telling it "I'll check this site during this time-span of the day\week, and this time-span only". This avoids keeping yourself checked multiple days a day if she\he responded, again giving food to the doubts and, directly, to the pain that comes with it. As a plus, it makes it impossible for you to check your "ghost" partner profile activity, which is a recipient for ire and rage because it pushes you towards the idea that she\he is a dick: she\he responded to various topics, another RP, even created a new character, but couldn't message even a line to me?
While it could be true (with a considerable degree of certainty, I would add), it still gives the other part a way to attach to yourself emotionally and, as such, hurting you, indirectly or not.
What if you start to tell yourself that you are the problem since you didn't notice how much she\he was a duck before? Nonono, perhaps he has another important life issue to cope with, what bad person I am for even thinking bad... but he\she responded to XXXX, that witch, how could she\he?
Now, have all this question hammering your mind all day all week, and see how much pain you will endure just because someone had personal reasons to not send you an explanation... is it really worth it? If you would ask me... no, it rarely is. If they don't deem me worthy of even a single line of text, as said, they are not a good investment of my time, considering the offer on the market is not low.
Also because those rare times when someone gets back to you (yes, it can happen) you will still remember the atrocious pain you felt before, and deny them a chance to redeem themselves. I will never cease away someone who wronged me in the past but it's enduring the shame for what she\he did and, with this, tries to fix things between us. Sure, I'm not going to sugar coat my words with them, and I will not never believe just only by their words, but at the same time, I will give them an opportunity to make things right again, even more if they are so blunt to tell me what scared them away (perhaps I wrote a scene wrong for them? I was too pushy? Tell me, and I will understand your position better). In those cases, I'm a strict but fair judge and defendant at the same time.
This has proven useful multiple times since I believe people should remember they hold a little responsibility towards their partners. Even in this chaotic era, I find hard to believe you can't send me a line of text explaining why you stopped writing (unless, as mentioned in many others topic around the web, you lack the guts to do this... If it was me, I would prefer to appear somehow rude but to show respect to the other by, indeed, risking feeling bad or even receive a couple of insults. Silence is the fertile soil for doubt, and doubt can fester like a tumour onto your mind because you can't decide if it's you or them who are at fault). Thus, if I'm not reflecting my way of living onto others, not expecting them to follow my code of being a civil fella, I don't exactly feel bad or anything if they ghost me... it's not like I've also done the same for them, by creating thousands of potential scenarios in my head and wrote the best piece of RP I could possibly produce because of them; that was for my pleasure and my self-satisfaction, nothing more.
As Rogue pointed out, however, this comes with taking precautions towards anyone, in my case being very detached from the start of the RP itself which is, indeed, unfair towards the new good-willed players, but then again... my personal well-being is more important than the one of a perfect stranger, at least for something like this.
One thing that helped me greatly to avoid ghosting's silent-torture is to discipline my mind (as I do with practically everything, but that's another story) by telling it "I'll check this site during this time-span of the day\week, and this time-span only". This avoids keeping yourself checked multiple days a day if she\he responded, again giving food to the doubts and, directly, to the pain that comes with it. As a plus, it makes it impossible for you to check your "ghost" partner profile activity, which is a recipient for ire and rage because it pushes you towards the idea that she\he is a dick: she\he responded to various topics, another RP, even created a new character, but couldn't message even a line to me?
While it could be true (with a considerable degree of certainty, I would add), it still gives the other part a way to attach to yourself emotionally and, as such, hurting you, indirectly or not.
What if you start to tell yourself that you are the problem since you didn't notice how much she\he was a duck before? Nonono, perhaps he has another important life issue to cope with, what bad person I am for even thinking bad... but he\she responded to XXXX, that witch, how could she\he?
Now, have all this question hammering your mind all day all week, and see how much pain you will endure just because someone had personal reasons to not send you an explanation... is it really worth it? If you would ask me... no, it rarely is. If they don't deem me worthy of even a single line of text, as said, they are not a good investment of my time, considering the offer on the market is not low.
Also because those rare times when someone gets back to you (yes, it can happen) you will still remember the atrocious pain you felt before, and deny them a chance to redeem themselves. I will never cease away someone who wronged me in the past but it's enduring the shame for what she\he did and, with this, tries to fix things between us. Sure, I'm not going to sugar coat my words with them, and I will not never believe just only by their words, but at the same time, I will give them an opportunity to make things right again, even more if they are so blunt to tell me what scared them away (perhaps I wrote a scene wrong for them? I was too pushy? Tell me, and I will understand your position better). In those cases, I'm a strict but fair judge and defendant at the same time.
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