For the second year in a row, Bumble is running an anti-ghosting campaign around Halloween to encourage people to break off conversations in an honest and respectful manner.
Ghosting is the term that describes the act of ending a relationship by immediately and unexpectedly cutting off all communications. It has become more common over the past few years, especially on dating apps.
The social app hired freelance journalist and author Kate Leaver as its in-house ghosting expert. Her role is to create content that helps users better understand how to healthily end relationships, even if they’ve only been on one date.
Explaining the initiative, Leaver said to Bustle: “Ghosting is extremely hurtful. Take it from someone who has been both the ghoster and the ghosted; it’s bewildering and painful and strange.
“People tend to fill the silence left by the ghoster with their own insecurities. They look for explanations because they have not been given satisfactory closure on a potential romance.”
She said that serious relationships should be ended in a face-to-face interaction, but for anything up to three dates a text message would suffice. The important factor is that there is some form of explicit closure.
A survey of more than 30,000 Bumble users in the UK found that 62% of them would like some advice about how to break up with someone.
Competitor Hinge announced earlier this month that it would be starting its own ‘Ghost Stories’ podcast that will feature people talking about their experiences with ghosting.
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