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the connection to ghosting is brilliant! I'm reminded of my immigration application that has been in "2 weeks left to process" status for the past 13 months lol.

I will add that what feels most agonizing is when a person (or organization) has _some_ responsiveness, but it's completely unpredictable, like when someone is super attentive for a brief time and then goes into long stretches of complete silence

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Indeed! An expected lack of reaction is something we can at least understand and prepare for, which makes bureaucracies and publishers ignoring my novel submissions grudgingly acceptable. But "intermittent ghosting" is really hard to deal with.

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Wow this is wonderful Étienne, love the polarity of responsiveness vs ghosting and there's so much to unpack with it. Especially how you bring up that angry twitter beefs would be prefereable to this ghostly absence of a reaction the recent algo gods have summoned. Reminds me that the toughest form of abuse to overcome isn't necessarily violent acting out, but neglect. In orphanages it was found that infants who are physically taken care of, but not emotionally engaged, held, and attended to, actually die. Responsiveness isn't just a nice to have, we need it.

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