The person who gets blocked is ‘the ghosted.’ Then they come to MTV Base to seek, ideally, closure from the person who on the show becomes ‘the haunted’ or ‘the ghost.’
The hosts descend into a rabbit hole, tracing text messages and social media footprints to find the ghost and hopefully convince them to come on the show. The series, which debuted in the US in 2019 as Ghoshted: Love Gone Missing has quickly found a following, expanding into South Africa, parts of Asia and, starting on Thursday, July 11, 2024, Nigeria.
MTV Base Culture Squad members, Ilooise “Ilo” Omonhinmin and Oluchi “TheIboBlondie” Harrison are the hosts. Just thinking about how the show comes together, one can only but begin to marvel at the logistics.
“It was wild,” Ilo told Pulse Nigeria. “We work with extremely professional individuals. I mean, sometimes when you start talking and you start getting things out there, things get heated. You are seeing somebody that you’ve not seen for two years for the first time. It gets crazy because you can’t really tell people how to feel.”
To find people to participate in the show, they had to put out a call to the public asking strangers to share their experiences of being ghosted. Then they had to sift through the entries, narrowing it down to the more serious ones. And then they needed to convince the ghosted and the ghost to come in front of the camera and confront each other.
“It’s not really one thing we said to them,” Oluchi said of getting Nigerians to come on the show. “It was a conversation. People need to feel like they can trust us when they speak because they understand that we understand their plight and it’s not just about bringing you for a show.”
For some of the ghosted that decided to come on the show, the event had happened years before. The hosts and producers had to scour the country looking for someone who had changed numbers or changed addresses.
“We were Ghostbusters in action. We literally went through rain and sunshine together. There was a time we had to run inside the rain to go and meet somebody,” Ilo said.
But as they went about making the Nigerian version of Ghosted, the hosts were particular about making a Nigerian show and not an American show or South African show for a Nigerian audience. In this season, they had a pair that had taken a blood covenant, a practice that is just as Nigerian as they come.
“We were very sceptical. What do we tell them to do? Do we find a way to remove it?” Ilo said. They decided to leave it in the show.
“We’re very particular about showing Nigeria as is. We were not trying to edit it to make it look fancier. The reason that people ghost people here might be a lot different from why they do it in the US,” Oluchi said.
In modern dating, the act of ghosting has become a common phenomenon, people block numbers at times during the first date itself, even as they profess attraction for the other person or settle on when next they might meet. There have been stories of husbands who ghosted their wives and vice versa. “Some of these stories are the kind of things you’ll read on a Twitter thread,” Ilo said.
“There were times when emotions were overwhelming and it was sad. There were times when I was angry on behalf of the ghosted because, ‘Why are you making these decisions?’” Oluchi said of the show.
With the show, Ilo hopes people can see from another perspective the importance of communication.
“It’s just extremely important that people understand that there are reactions to your actions and that when they say, ‘Communication is key,’ it’s not just for romantic relationships. It is for human interaction. If animals communicate through whatever sound they make, we as human beings must learn to communicate. There’s a certain level of emotional maturity you display when you’re able to articulate what it is you want,” he said.
Oluchi is more interested in both parties coming to a resolution.
“It was important for me that they get closure, both the people who were ghosted and the ghosts themselves. A lot of people cannot move on until they get answers to the question that they’ve been asking for the longest,” she said.
