Ghost-flaking: the worst of both worlds
Bending reality and disappearing when it snaps back.
If you ever needed an example of writing with the purpose of getting something off the chest, here you go.
Terminology
Ghosting
Ghosting means suddenly ceasing digital communication with someone whom you don’t face in real life unless it is arranged beforehand through said online communication. This can be done by digitally blocking them (you take away the other person’s ability to reach out) or by just letting their messages go delivered without ever being read (they are talking to a “ghost”).
Flaking
Flaking means cancelling plans, particularly last-minute. The person who proposed and put efforts towards those plans may be the flake or the flakee, but it is usually predominantly the flakee since a lack of sunk cost from the flake makes cancellation much less inconvenient for him/her than for the flakee.
Styles of flaking span a spectrum from respectful to heartbreakingly inhumane. Generally, where somebody’s actions fall on this scale depends on two variables: how long they cancel in advance, and the evolution of the perceived probability that they would follow through on their plans over time.
Ghost-flaking
Two extremes of flaking
The most respectful flake will make it clear from the start that the probability they will show up is low due to certain confounding factors (most simply, because they just don’t want to), and will cancel at least a day in advance.
The cruellest form of flaking is the exact opposite of this: cancelling right as the activity was supposed to start – or even later! – whilst having kept the perceived probability of showing up to \(100\%\) all the way before. It is definitionally manipulative – you are leading someone on by manipulating the reality of your intentions into a false perceived reality – and the closer to the activity the cancellation happens, the longer in advance the cancellation was premeditated.
This is easy to see: surely there cannot exist a person who themselves believes deeply, i.e. it is their reality around which all their actions are oriented, that they will show up, and then right as the activity starts, they completely reorient their actions on a whim. Thus, people who flake already had it in mind plenty in advance that they were not going to show up, and every lie spoken beyond the premeditation of the flake is explicitly malicious.
Reality always asserts itself
Of course, as with all ways in which humans try to manipulate reality, it is very difficult to pull this off: reality always reasserts itself because it is the way everything everywhere is and in the limit, it is impossible to run from that which is everything everywhere. Indeed, the shoe always has to drop: reality is that the flake will not show up, otherwise they would not be a flake. Thanks to long-range communication, it is possible without the flake being physically present to keep up the flakee’s perceived reality that the flake will show up, but the lie becomes too obvious and incoherent if someone keeps texting that they “will be there” even past the point the other person is forced to return home. That’s reality asserting itself: you can manipulate the future, but you cannot bend the present. If you have agreed to meet up at 6 PM, it is impossible to convince someone at 9 PM that you “will” be there at 6 PM.
So, in practice, a flake needs more tools than just leading on the flakee, if they want to have a somewhat coherent story when eventually reality shows that they did not, in fact, show up.
Flaking with words
One basic tool is creating plausible deniability beforehand: you start by agreeing to the plans whole-heartedly, and then, the closer to the arranged meetup you get, you sprinkle little breadcrumbs in conversation that reduce the probability you’ll show up to a coin flip. For example, you might go from an enthusiastic “Let’s do it!” to a “Let’s see.” a week before, to an “I feel kinda tired” a day before. This is, again, completely premeditated.
Another tool is gaslighting: when the time comes for the flake to reveal their reality – which, if both people have at least some social intelligence, is a very salient moment in conversation since it is a jagged, binary switch from “yes” to “no”, and such a sudden aberration is difficult to sell believably – they might just act dumb. “Oh, did we make plans? I don’t think we did.” One additional reason this is difficult to sell today is that commitments are often agreed to over text, so the flakee may have black-on-white evidence (or whatever colours your text messages may have) that undeniably shows the flake agreeing to make plans. In egregious cases, it may have even been the flake who proposed the time and place: for example, a flake may send you something like “Do you want to come over at 4 PM tomorrow? Only if you want, of course.” and then when you agree and show up at their door, act like your visit came out of the blue and that it is intrusive of you to want to show up to someone’s door without them wanting to.
However, both the plausible deniability and the gaslighting approach rely on the perceived probability of showing up to be far below \(100\%\). Plausible deniability does so by definition, and the gaslighting approach does so because “I won’t come.” and “Was I ever going to come?” are equally unbelievable messages to receive after receiving confirmation of the opposite up until that point. If you want to flake hard, you can’t do it with words.
Flaking without words
Using your words, you have feigned up until the start of the activity that you were down for it. Clearly, using the same medium to suddenly deliver the opposite message is completely nonsensical and makes you look schizophrenic. So, you just go silent.
Ghost-flaking is where you keep the perceived probability of showing up at 100% – or maybe you sprinkle in plausible deniability at the last moment – and then just disappear off the face of the Earth. You leave the flakee hanging in the fog of the unknown.
The flakee will have shown up to the location, waiting with excitement until you do the same, and now the burden of your responsibility is magically shifted to them: it is no longer up to you to tell the flakee that you won’t show up, but it is up to the flakee to tell you that reality has asserted itself and that you don’t have to bother showing up anymore since they have already packed up and left.
Additionally, it is now up to the flakee to come up with a reason for why you didn’t show up, rather than you giving the flakee a reason. Any socially calibrated person will introspect and ask themselves “This behaviour is not how a normal person acts. Did I make this person act abnormally? I’m quite sure I didn’t do anything to cause a sudden change of heart, so their heart never actually changed. That means they lied about wanting to get together all along. Did I make them lie? They must think I’m the kind of person you can’t be honest with.” Indeed, conveniently, the flakee will find an excuse and take accountability in place of the flake.
If the flake ever reappears, this is the only crutch they could lean on. It would of course be more gaslighting, but it is done out of necessity to save face, as there is no excuse for lying and then disappearing.
Finally, if the flakee cares about you, the flake – e.g. you are considered a friend of theirs, rather than being a stranger like on a first date – then by ghost-flaking on them, you send them into a perfect storm of emotional confusion.
- Any time you cancel plans, you cause disappointment in the flakee.
- When you choose to cancel last-minute, you cause anger in the flakee due to their sunk cost (since they spent time planning the activity, getting ready, and going to the location).
- When you are a person they (thought they) like(d), you don’t just drop them from neutral emotion to disappointed, but you drop them all the way from excited to disappointed.
- When you are also cared for by the flakee, your disappearance causes them to worry about where you disappeared to. They can’t know what made you stop responding, so now they fear for your well-being.
So indeed, the flakee feels torn apart by what they feel: you have caused them to go through all the stages of grief (anger, making excuses for you, disappointment) which rightfully makes them want to distance themselves from you, whilst they want to check in with you because they have empathy and care about your safety.
What this says about someone
By your actions, you don’t care about causing such tension in the flakee. You don’t really see them as a person; you see them as an activity to be consumed for your pleasure if you feel like it. They are as optional to you as a dinner reservation; they don’t need to know that you have made reservations at another restaurant, because then they might refuse you the upside you could get from their exploitation.
As we have shown above, it is necessarily manipulative to feign a false reality. Further, it is cowardly not to dare speak the reality that you have premeditated: you could have said “I’m not coming”, but you said “I’m coming”. It is even more cowardly to not take accountability once the reality manifests in the present: you could have said “I lied actually, I’m not coming after all” but you said nothing instead. Perhaps you are incapable of taking accountability because nothing is ever your fault. Or, perhaps you take accountability, but you would rather wallow in self-pity (“Everything is always my fault anyway”) rather than apologise to the people you hurt and change so it doesn’t happen anymore.
Your dishonesty makes your words untrustworthy. If your “Yes” actually means “No” then your words carry no value. You are unreliable. Your inconsistency makes it pointless to organise future engagements, because there is more guarantee that you won’t show up rather than that you will.
But I guess you don’t mind anyway. Why would you even want to hang out with someone you deem such an idiot that you can tell them lies that make them spend effort on you? Why would you want to hang out with someone whom you estimate so beneath you that they aren’t even worth sending a simple “You can leave, I’m not coming, sorry” to? You have all the technology in the world at your fingertips. You literally need only spend 5 seconds and the muscles of a single finger to do this – which is infinitely less time and energy the flakee wasted. Even the late Stephen Hawking could send such a text. It’s not that you can’t do it. It’s that you don’t want to do it. It is an intentional insult, no matter if you are in denial about it to yourself or not.
Conclusion
Flaking is a socially uncalibrated, cruel, premeditated manipulation and exploitation of others, and of all the ways to do it, ghost-flaking is done by those who lack all accountability for their actions.
I have personally never flaked and I can’t even fathom how someone’s conscience could survive ghost-flaking. I suspect I never will.
I wish I did not have to write this essay on my birthday. I don’t particularly care for it, but I won’t say it doesn’t add insult to injury. What do you do when the one who means the most to you, is the one who didn’t show?
