Article
Attention
Culture
Digital
Ghosting
Psychology
5 min read

Ghosting is not immature, it’s plain cruel

The dehumanising behaviour hiding in plain sight.
On a dark street someone checks their mobile phone for messages.

‘Do you really believe that the moon only exists when you look at it?’ 

It’s a great question. Do you know who asked it? It sounds rather Shakespearean, doesn’t it? It’s got a touch of the – ‘that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ - about it. 

But not so.  

Interestingly, it was Albert Einstein who asked this question. He asked it again and again – unable to relax into any answer his contemporaries could offer him. He thought, at least initially, that he was asking a question about quantum physics. But he wasn’t; not really. Einstein was asking what it means to exist, what it means to be. 

And that means that he was actually asking a theological question. And I, for one, would appreciate it if we would get into the habit of asking it too, just phrased a little differently. I’d like us to ask something a little like:  

Do you really believe that the person only exists when you text them back?’ 

Yes, I’m imploring us all to take an Einstein-esque approach to the phenomenon of ‘ghosting’.  

Ghosting, just to make sure that we’re all one the same page, is the act of abruptly and completely cutting off all forms of contact with another person, offering no form of prior warning nor any kind of subsequent explanation. To ghost someone is to perform a social cut and run, a relational dine-and-dash, if you will. This, of course, can happen in all kinds of contexts – in work situations, in friendships, and in the most niche of circumstances. There’s an incredibly popular podcast, the title of which – ‘My Therapist Ghosted Me’ - is a tongue in cheek reference to one of the presenters being inexplicably cut off by their own therapist. Ouch.

And so, ghosting causes a social injury, it inflicts a heart wound. Being ghosted, we are coming to realise, is a rejection of the most absolute kind.

But where this phenomenon is reaching astounding heights is in the context of romantic relationships. The technological age in which we live, where the majority of romantic relationships are now being initiated and established online, has meant that we’ve got ghosting down to a fine art. It’s become all too easy. And apparently, nobody is immune.  

Just recently, Billie Eilish – Oscar and Grammy award winning musical genius and all-round cultural icon - explained how she had recently been the victim of an almighty ghosting. She said,  

‘it was insane. I was like – “did you die? Have you literally died?” It was somebody that I’d known for years, we had a plan (to meet) and the day of… nothing. I never heard from him again.’ 

Imagine being ignored so suddenly and completely that your first instinct is that the person must have died, only to realise – they hadn’t died, you were just disposable to them. This is happening all of the time, there’s a generation of people who are having their sense of self and of the ‘other’ defined by this very phenomenon. 

What’s incredibly interesting is that in the span of a few short years, psychologists and relationship therapists have gone from speaking of ‘ghosting’ in terms of emotional immaturity, conflict avoidance and a lack of communication skills, to regarding it as a form of cruelty and even abuse.  

It is not primarily the intent of the ‘ghost’ that is causing psychologists to speak of ghosting in increasingly serious terms. Most ‘ghosts’ are cowardly, perhaps, but not sheer evil. Rather, it is the extraordinary depths of hurt that the behaviour inflicts (intended or not) upon the person who has been victim to it.  

We are learning that there are all manner of harmful things that ghosting does to our brains and all kinds messages that it sends to our self-esteem. Namely, that we weren’t enough for that person, that we’ve failed somehow, that we’re disposable, that we misread the situation, that we misread them, that we’re deficient in almost every kind of way.  

These lies inevitably fill the gaps left by the silence of the other person. False explanations, usually of the most self-depreciating kind, take advantage of that fact that no explanation was offered by the person who hurt us. The bewilderment itself becomes a form of torture. And so, ghosting causes a social injury, it inflicts a heart wound. Being ghosted, we are coming to realise, is a rejection of the most absolute kind.  

Ghosting is the symptom of a society in which we kid ourselves into thinking that people only come to life when our thoughts turn to them or our eyes rest on them.

But I think there’s even more to it. And this is where I return to Einstein’s question, and my modern, admittedly much less cosmic, re-imagining of it. Because underneath it all, I think that ghosting is a theological issue.  

To ghost someone is to act as if they do not exist because you have averted your gaze from them. It is, therefore, to deprive them of the fullness of their existence. Or, at least, to deny it. It is an act of deep diminishment. Do we really believe that the moon only exists when it is looked upon? Ghosting forces us to similarly ask – do we believe that we only exist when we are looked upon?  

So, you see, it goes deep. It cuts to the core of what it means to be.  

Ghosting is the symptom of a society in which we kid ourselves into thinking that people only come to life when our thoughts turn to them or our eyes rest on them. If we can’t see the suffering we’ve caused, it isn’t happening. If we’ve cut someone out of our life, they aren’t existing. At least, we can behave as if they aren’t.  

One could argue that it’s a form of dehumanization, one that’s hidden in plain sight.  

And that, alongside all of the other reasons (or perhaps undergirding them), is the reason that I think being ghosted cuts us to the core; it brings into question the very reality of our existence.  

‘Do you really believe that the moon only exists when you look at it?’ 

Einstein’s question may feel a little abstract but it’s actually as tangible and personal as it gets. 

Review
Books
Culture
Football
Sport
5 min read

The book to help you fall back in love with football

Neil Atkinson’s Transformer isn’t the straightforward biography of Jurgen Klopp.
A fan holds an upside down football scrarf that reads 'Juergen is a red'.
Fan fervour, Anfield.
Lloyd Kearney on Unsplash.

Transformer is a fun book. I don’t mean to sound trite, or to damn with faint praise when I say that. I mean it. Transformer is a fun book, and frankly too many books I read aren’t fun.  

David Foster Wallace used to say something similar (yes, the same David Foster Wallace whose novel Infinite Jest is over a thousand pages and has actual honest-to-god endnotes): much of contemporary print media has lost its ability to be fun. And isn’t that what we’re in this for anyway? 

And that is, I think, why Transformer feels like such a relief, honestly. None of the trademark scouse humour and levity that has made The Anfield Wrap such a successful and appealing football podcast is lost in the transition to text. It is a funny book. It is a fun book. 

Of course, there’s a lot here that you might expect to find in a book about Klopp, too, like discussions of key games throughout Klopp’s time at Liverpool. There’s also lots of what Atkinson does best: insightful and thoughtful reflection on the nature of contemporary football. Whether this is the nature of tickets and ticket prices, the state of TV football punditry, or why Liverpool fans (generally) don’t sing the national anthem, there’s much here for football fans and non-football fans alike to mull over and learn from.  

But it’s also worth noting what’s not in the book. There’s no real prolonged deep dive into Klopp’s personality here. I don’t say that as a criticism, more as a matter of expectation-management for potential readers. This isn’t a biography or a character study, although there are elements of this, for example, in the chapter on Klopp’s ongoing footballing rivalry with Pep Guardiola.  

Whole pages, even chapters pass without Klopp being mentioned. If you’re going into Transformer hoping to learn about Klopp’s upbringing, his playing career, his faith, you’ll likely be disappointed. But that’s fine, because Transformer isn’t that book. 

So much of the book is awash with the warmth of friendship and humour and life. 

Get updates

Transformer is not a book about Jürgen Klopp. Obviously, ostensibly it is. Klopp’s tenure at Liverpool drives the book forward; provides its pulse. But this doesn’t explain why there is a whole chapter on the meaninglessness of football without Divock Origi. And it doesn’t explain the inclusion of sentences like the following: “27 November 2019: Knives Out is released, meaning Sadio Mané has competition for most flamboyant performance from a Liverpudlian in a calendar year.” 

But it’s not even really a book about Liverpool, or football in general. Or Benoit Blanc. It’s a book about fun. About joy. About life, why it matters, why it’s good, and why it’s better with others.  

It’s really a book about love. About loving a football club and loving and being loved by others in the midst of loving that football club.  

Atkinson states up front that this book is about the people he has known and loved during Klopp’s time at Liverpool. It’s his version of this story. But in being his version, he allows it to be my version, too, and yours. “I am going to refer to people and places you may not know and we may not always trouble ourselves with descriptions. You don’t need to worry. That’s because these people, they are your friends. They are you.” 

And this is why the book’s most emotionally fraught moments hit as hard as they do; because so much of the book is awash with the warmth of friendship and humour and life. When moments do stand out in stark relief from the very fun and love that Transformer is keen on have us believe in, they thereby make the case for their importance all the more clearly. 

An insistence of the fundamental unseriousness of football is an act of gleeful rebellion. It is to play a different game. 

Much has been said about Covid and football under Covid. Atkinson’s compassionate, understated treatment of it is genuinely beautiful at times. “People pass away, unmoored from time, separated from loves ones in the grimmest circumstances, and no one quite knows what to do.”  

When reading Atkinson’s memories of the inner turmoil of his last interview with Klopp – “It was hard because I wanted to talk to him. At him. With him. I just wanted to list all these things has been part of with us, but, of course, he is more interested in you, in your world” – it’s hard not to be transported back to the sheer shock of his abrupt leaving.  

In case it’s somehow not clear yet, let me state it here: I think Neil Atkinson is one the most compelling and insightful thinkers in and around modern football. This is in large part because of his insistence on what many forget: football is a game. It is supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be a fun game you enjoy with your mates.  

We are in a world of nation-states and quasi-nation-states acquiring football clubs for political purposes. One with relentless discourse about the minutiae of every refereeing decision. A world where there is a constant, low-level feeling that I am yet again being ripped-off and taken advantage of for having the audacity to want to watch a football match. So, an insistence of the fundamental unseriousness of football is an act of gleeful rebellion. It is to play a different game.  

“I don’t see anywhere near enough people writing about happiness in general, especially within the realm of football where grumpiness has become the order of the day.” Transformer is the apotheosis of modern footballing grumpiness. It is sincere, and earnest, and vulnerable. And I love it for this.  

If you are looking for a comprehensive biography of Klopp, this isn’t it. This is something better.  

When I spoke to him about Transformer, Atkinson said he wanted the book to show that football fans were normal, complex people. That they were accountants from Altringham, and theologians from Liverpool (if we can count theologians as ‘normal’ people). Transformer absolutely bristles with humanity. 

Humans were made for community, for mates, for each other, and for last-minute Divock Origi winners. Humans were made for football.  

If you want to remember why you fell in love with football – or if you want to understand why others fall in love with it – I can’t think of a better book to read than Transformer