Sending a card in return

[yudi]

I got few cards in return. I never put return address on the cards. They sent me message asking my address. Usually they were newbie or member with same interest with me.
There was only one time I wanted to send card in return. It was to a school account. Unfortunately the teacher didn’t reply my message.
I saw many profile who wishes for gotochi promise to send 2 cards in return

[elikoa]

@Seeing_the_Elephant

I was absolutely puzzled when the person said they didn’t want extra postcards. What are we even doing here? We can make of Postcrossing what we want, but I thought the idea was to send and receive postcards-and perhaps make new friends.

I am very puzzled by your comment instead… So because we are on a postcard website we are supposed to constantly want postcards? I am not a collector and I like sending more than receiving, I can do without return cards. When I am offered one, I sometimes accept but sometimes it is out of politeness (sometimes because they insiste, I mean it is nice of them), sometimes gently refuse.

The one-time nature of the exchange appeals to some of us. If you want to establish a friendship you can do swaps and get penpals. I have quite a few penpals and it is a different relationship. Sure, on a couple of occasions I continued the exchange with someone who was my recipient in Postcrossing, because we exchanged a few messages and decided to keep corresponding, but it is not a rule.
I actually agreed with every single word of the post that puzzled you…

@Seeing_the_Elephant

Instead of accepting this gesture in grace or at least a polite no thank you it turns into punching a gift horse in the mouth, except with silence. Better still, rather following up with the offer, a comment on this forum should suffice.

Honestly, it’s a deeper comment of society and human nature. Ghosting is quite popular these days.

Isn’t this a bit dramatic? A lot of people don’t reply to messages on the site because the postcard-thing is the main interaction. Maybe some people prefer to keep to themselves and others are more eager. I would never not-reply to a message myself, but sometimes you might not know what to say if someone wants to shower you with love or postcards, and you don’t feel like it…
Is it ghosting if you never asked for the interaction in the first place? Doesn’t ghosting imply that a form of relationship existed?

I never sent a return card, to me the official exchange is cool as it is, you get a short-lived conection with a stranger.
Certainly there is no case when you “should”, since what you signed up for is send a postcard to someone, receive a postcard from someone else.

[mchay]

@Seeing_the_Elephant

I was absolutely puzzled when the person said they didn’t want extra postcards. What are we even doing here? We can make of Postcrossing what we want, but I thought the idea was to send and receive postcards-and perhaps make new friends

you are absolutely right. the postcrossing site is to send and receive postcards, and that is exactly what i am doing, no? i do however enjoy the sending part more, so i don’t want a thank you card for every card i send. technically i already get a card for the card i am sending, that is how the whole system works.
i don’t agree on the whole ghosting thing but you might be right that it is a bit rude to ignore the kind message of someone. that is my personal thing, i love writing cards but i am terrible with online messages.

that’s all i have to say about it, i agree with everything @elikoa said.

[Seeing_the_Elephant]

Thank you and @elikoa for the responses. It’s a weird dichotomy we’re in where we simultaneously love snail mail and are yet are on this forum. We’ll send out a postcard and it usually takes 2-3 weeks to arrive and then it comes with a thank you email. Which also makes sense, but doesn’t. Even weirder still is it’s one sided nature. By the way I love all of it!

Here’s a real life example: I send postcards to friends and family all the time and they never respond. Not a big deal. They will rarely bring it up in phone calls either. Not a big deal. But when I come to visit them they’ll have my postcards on their fridge, mantle, etc. Now this makes me smile. Most times I forgot I sent it to them.

[isagv]

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. If a newbie has an address on the card I do for 100% because I know how hard it is to wait until first card arrives.

[Xute]

Even though this topic is ‘old’, I want to respond)

I write a suggestion to send a thank-you postcard maybe to 40-50% or received cards on official site, especially when someone sends me something weird, and is a weird-postcards-admirer him/herself, maybe half of the requests are answered. There are periods I want to send thank-you to every received card, but then I think it’d be too much and just write long nice hurray messages.

For me writing a thank-you is almost same random as on official site (of course sometimes unexpectedly thank-you grows into a penpalship, but penpalship sometimes grows from liking too much of someone’s sent gallery too…) And sometimes people send me huge thank-you envelopes and don’t want anything in return. I believe that there is some sort of postcrossing-karma which always evens the good you sent to the good you receive even when senders and receivers are different people.