“It’s not you, it’s me. It just isn’t going to work out.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say. Those words are then followed by heartbreak, tears and, modernly, enraged subtweets, gossip, and a disappearing act. We’ve all seen it. This is the modern day breakup. If you haven’t noticed, relationships end very differently than they used to.

The new trend? Ghosting. Not a ghost like Casper, or those spooky things coming up soon in October. Ghosting is the action of breaking up with somebody and pretty much dropping off the face of the earth. Ghosting is now seen constantly in the tabloids, and even just in day-to-day life.

It starts with an “over-text” breakup. No one has the time or the nerve to meet in person or even give a simple call. That would seemingly be way too difficult. Then comes the subtweet. A subtweet is when one person tweets about another, without actually speaking directly to that person by the use of a name or Twitter handle. These tweets can be sad, or just downright demeaning. Megan Murphy, senior, openly stated, “Yeah I’ve subtweeted about my ex and he’s subtweeted about me. It is pretty normal in today’s society.” Murphy is definitely not the only one. Anna Vershaw, senior, laughingly said, “I had a crazy ex-boyfriend, so I broke up with him over text, blocked him on every social media, and pretended he didn’t exist…you could say it didn’t end well.” Ghosting is happening everyday in the halls of PVHS, even if it isn’t seen.

Think you haven’t seen this method of breakup? Well get this. In October 2014, a Huffington Post poll of 1,000 adults showed that 11 percent of Americans had “ghosted” someone. Another survey from Elle magazine polled 185 people and found that about 16.7 percent of men and 24.2 percent of women had been ghosts at some point in their lives.

The big question is why. Why do people resort to running away from their problems to become ghosts? The people who ghost others are hiding from facing their fears. Of course it is scary to break someone’s heart, or perhaps they are afraid of the repercussions. Whatever the case may be, ghosters are unavoidable.

Has technology made this ghosting business worse? Many would argue yes, because it is now easier to post things one would never normally have the gumption to say in person. The ghosters, on the other hand, find the technology quite helpful in making their unrealized titles much more easily obtained. And so the cycle continues. Carry on, Casper…carry on.