Age: The word – new-ish, the concept – ageless.  Ah, wait, I know this one! Is it clean eating until you look like a ghost? Or die of boredom and actually become a ghost? No. It’s when you’re going out with someone and then you just … don’t, any more. You stop returning calls, texts, emails and basically unilaterally absent yourself from the relationship. Which is now no relationship. Because you’re not there. Like a ghost. A cruel, cowardly, morally repugnant ghost.  That’s scarier than any ghoulish phantom. I know. And, apparently, nearly 80% of millennials have experienced it.  Yikes! 80%? What is WRONG with the world? Is nobody good any more? Is nobody kind? Is nobody upstanding, compassionate, less than wholly, irredeemably selfish? No. Swipe left.  It must indeed be a Tinder-y, Snapchatty modern phenomenon. I mean, in this digital age, aren’t we all just pixellated shadows of ourselves anyway? Why not ghost when you have no real connection? When we are all just phantasmagoria in the Cloud? It’s a brutal, disassociated world out there all right. Though you can also “ghost” more positively.  How so? It also refers to leaving a party without saying goodbye.  I’ve been doing that for years. No one has noticed yet. I should probably make more of an effort at parties. It’s also known as the Irish goodbye and the French exit.  I am neither Gaelic nor Gallic. I just can’t be arsed. Some people do it because it saves the host being interrupted a million times by people bidding farewell. The party can keep running smoothly.  That’s nice. I do it because I suddenly become so overwhelmed by the fact that I’m out, with people infinitely more capable of having fun than I, and music, and talking, and noise and people that I have to go before I kill. You’re a spectre at the feast before you ghost. Respect.  Do say: “Thank you for this gift of sexual congress. I do not wish to take our relationship further, but I wish you well in all your future endeavours.”
Disappearing without warning from parties and friendships is a common practice, but now the ‘French exit’ has become a regular way for millennials to end relationships