Halloween is Over. No More Professional Ghosting!
This was almost a threaded post on Bluesky, but it got longer in the drafts and I realized it’s probably better suited for my blog. Mostly because it’s less likely to get reposted in front of people I don’t know if it escapes containment.
Something that really sucks, not naming names because it happens a LOT, is when you’re invited to be a part of something, stream, podcast, TTRPG project, actual play, voice work, what have you… and either nothing comes of it, they went with other people, the project failed to launch, maybe any number of valid reasons, but… you get ghosted.
However–and this is the truly crappy part–you can see the people or team responsible for the thing still posting, continuing to hustle other projects, gin up other work, and farm more engagement1… when they haven’t had the decency to get back to you and formally say things didn’t work out. Again, for whatever reason, even a form of “we’ve decided to go in a different direction” is better than silence.
Professionally, I am a “circle back” person, I will always check in to make sure a piece of information didn’t get dropped, a reminder didn’t get snoozed, a status update didn’t get missed, a confirmation isn’t drifting in the wind… all of that.
But when it comes to streamer and creator stuff, I’ve just sort of given up more often that not. At least in my day job, I’m getting paid to track someone down. But for freelancing… especially for streams, projects, games, or appearances that don’t even pay anything aside from possible exposure or in product?
However, if it is a paid opportunity and you owe me money, then it’s gonna be on like “$2!” from “Better Off Dead”.
I just can’t be bothered anymore. And I hate that.
It leads to me not trusting others in the space and sometimes seeing the space itself as “less professional”. Which, everyone can have their own opinion about the baseline professionalism of space that is primarily made up of freelancers, many of whom don’t derive a steady contractual income.
A lot of us have to do “what works” and often there ain’t nothing wrong with that. Except that we’re all in the same space and we’re all human beings with feelings and memories.
You don’t want to be the person that someone is happy to share a drink with at a convention, and later turns to their friend like, “Nice person, wouldn’t try to work with them again, though.” And I don’t deny that I may have started out in this space as that kind of person, but I truly hope I’m not now.
At the very least, I’ll reply to your email or DM. 😉
- Which can be the worst because it’s always a similar format. “Who do [I/we] know that [is a type of artist/streams a certain game/plays a particular TTRPG/is attending an upcoming event] and is interested in an opportunity?” And you see the post get a lot of attention, but you never really see the result. It’s same feeling as when a company posts an open position because they’re required to, even though they have already selected an internal candidate. ↩︎
