Silence Is Your Answer: Ghosting and the LA No
Recently the New York Times published an article on ghosting, the phenomenon of ending a friendship or romance by simply halting all communication. The person in question vanishes, becoming a ghost.http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/fashion/exes-explain-ghosting-the-ultimate-silent-treatment.html Various readers wrote in to say this was merely "radio silence" with a new name and the added slight of blocking the ghostee from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. But I saw it as the social extension of the established and often abrupt entertainment industry practice that signals the official end of interest in a film project or (in the case of actors) person. It's called the LA No.
I experienced it firsthand in the 90s when, unbeknownst to me, my then-boyfriend showed my novel-in-progress to an agent. Not only did the agent love it but he immediately started casting the movie version: I can see Johnny Depp as the brother! I was baffled and flattered, and then more baffled when the agent stopped returning my boyfriend's calls. He was never heard from again, so I don't know what drove his initial enthusiasm, or its demise. (For unrelated reasons, I never finished that novel, though I've since written another--more on that later).
Soon after I moved to Beachwood Canyon, my realtor told me about a couple of his clients. They had been living together for two years and were planning to marry and start a family, hence the house hunting. Then the man simply cut off all communication with the woman, who had no idea why: there had been no signs of discord. There was just total--and, as it turns out, permanent--silence.
Over the years I've been ghosted by two women, both single friends who ceased to communicate once they were married and had children. Having supported both their marriages, I was pained that this could happen without a word of explanation, much less an argument. Gradually I came to understand that they had no use for a friend who had been close to them in their most discontented single days. Clearly I reminded them of the past, so I accepted it and moved on.
Much to my surprise, I recently ran into one of these women at a wedding, who behaved as if nothing had happened and no time had passed. However, when I pointed out my son, a man she had last seen as a 10-year-old, she was visibly stunned. "Is that his girlfriend?" she asked. "No, his wife--they've been married almost five years," I said. Perhaps she expected a wedding announcement, but it was her silence that precluded it, not mine.