Ghosting had acquired a sequel
Scott and Chris had spent months talking about ghosting, but a listener introduced them to a behaviour which felt even more familiar.
Bobbing described the person who did not disappear permanently.
A bobber would come into somebody’s life, go quiet, then suddenly reappear weeks or months later as though nothing had happened. Scott immediately recognised the usual language: “Hey, stranger” followed by a friendly question about how life was going.
Then, just as quickly, the person would sink out of sight again.
The image worked so well that Scott and Chris spent the afternoon talking about people bobbing up and down in relationships and friendships.
Listeners began admitting that they had been bobbed, or that they were guilty of bobbing themselves. One listener said she and a friend already used the term “breadcrumbing” for men who left occasional texts behind so there was still a trail back into somebody’s life if they wanted to return.
Another story suggested that bobbing could eventually have a happy ending. Liam said he had been ghosted after four or five dates around three years earlier. He unexpectedly bumped into the woman on a night out in November, they reconnected and had been together since December.
To Scott, that made her a bobber rather than a straightforward ghoster.
Helen’s date vanished before he arrived
Ghostbusters then returned to a much more traditional disappearance.
Helen had met a man through a dating app and moved the conversation away from the app. She said he presented himself as being connected to a notable family in Devon, a detail which encouraged Chris to start guessing increasingly implausible famous Devon families.
They arranged to meet in a pub.
Helen arrived early. Shortly before the agreed time, the man messaged to suggest he was arriving outside.
Then nothing happened.
He did not walk in. The messages stopped. Helen waited before eventually giving up and leaving.
Afterwards she discovered that contact had effectively been cut off. The app connection disappeared and attempts to reach him went nowhere.
Scott and Chris tried calling during the show, but the number repeatedly went to voicemail.
There was no satisfying Ghostbusters confrontation, only the uncomfortable possibility that Helen had been blocked.
A listener then pointed out something Scott had not considered: somewhere in Britain, people who had ghosted dates were probably listening to Ghostbusters every Monday wondering whether their own name was about to come up.
Could ghosting be prevented before it happened?
The lack of an answer made Scott think about taking Ghostbusters one stage further.
Instead of contacting people after the damage had been done, perhaps the programme needed to identify potential ghosters in advance.
That led to the joking suggestion of getting psychics involved, turning the feature into a kind of pre-ghosting service.
For now, however, Helen remained without an explanation and bobbing had become the latest piece of Radio 1 dating vocabulary.
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