My old person trait is that I think 'ghosting' is completely unacceptable and you owe the other person a face-to-face conversation.
It isn't a hard and fast rule, just an observation. For some, it is just an interjection, and that's undeniable.
One weird thing for me is that I came online in the brief era between when simple smiles, the old colon parenthesis, were a thing but lol wasn't yet. Habits already defined, I guess.