Ghosting (in the context of online messages) is not only "not that bad" but is usually a total non-issue.

It's not uncommon that I am ghosted myself and sometimes I accidentally ghost people - although I try not to.

When I've ghosted people it usually happens because one person isn't bringing much to the table, but insists on sending very frequent greetings.

In other words, I'm not finding the exchange fun and it feels high maintenance, but there's no clear cut moment where I should tell them I want to cut it loose - which, by the way, some people take extremely poorly.

Eventually they'll send a generic 'hi' while I'm busy with work, I'll read it and forget about it and suddenly I've ghosted someone.

This works both ways - my fault is that I don't initiate enough and sometimes my responses can be lacklustre, usually because I'm going through a busy period or I'm tired.

When this happens to me I view it as a non-issue. It probably wasn't personal, I don't know their full story, and sometimes they even ping me months later and we hit it off.

In subreddits dedicated to meeting new people, complaint threads about being ghosted are very common.

The comment sections are often full with people empathising with the OP and speculating on the negative personality traits and motivations of the presumed scumbag-ghoster.

My real 10th dentist view is that if a person finds themselves so affected by being ghosted that it causes them mental distress, they probably aren't ready to be interacting with strangers in the way they're trying to.

tl;dr: people generally have good intentions, ghosting is rarely an intentional attack, and being ghosted shouldn't be a crushing experience.