In Elizabeth Day’s new book about the fragility of friendships, annoyingly but memorably entitled Friendaholic, there’s a gripping chapter on ‘ghosting’, the process of turning a friend into an ex-friend without explaining why. It culminates in the act of cutting them dead in public. I’ve always found it a haunting experience when someone does it to me, and I hope my ex-friends feel the same way when I do it to them.
It can be a difficult trick to pull off, especially at a big party. I worry that the person hasn’t noticed that he or she is dead to me, and so after my initial snub I move awkwardlyaround the room, glaring at them from multiple directions. By the end of the evening they’re sighing with relief that they’ve been dropped by a loony.
In her bestselling guide to etiquette, published in 1922, the American socialite Emily Post described cutting as ‘a direct stare of blank refusal’ that was embarrassing to witness.
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