You send a message. No response. You wait a day and send another. Still nothing. You send a third, then a fourth. By the time you stop, you've said everything there was to say to someone who had already decided not to respond.
From the outside, this is obviously the wrong move. From inside it, it felt like the only option.
Why does this happen?
The game
Game theory studies situations where what you do depends on what someone else does, and what they do depends on what you do. Every game has three components: players (the people making decisions), strategies (the moves available to each), and payoffs (what each combination of moves produces).
The texting situation is a game. You have two strategies: send another message, or don't. She has two strategies: respond, or don't. Each combination produces a different outcome for both of you.
The equilibrium
Games settle into patterns. Each player is responding to the other, or to what they expect the other to do. When each player is doing the best they can given what the other is doing, the game has reached an equilibrium. This is why the same situations keep repeating across different people. The structure of the game produces the same outcome reliably.
Dominated strategies
Some moves are bad regardless of what the other person does.
Another text message: if she was going to respond, she doesn't need it. If she wasn't going to respond, it makes her less likely to. Either way, sending it makes your position worse. This is a dominated strategy. It loses to another available option in every possible scenario.
The lesson: never play a dominated strategy. A bad bet can still pay off. A dominated strategy never can.
Every article on this site identifies the dominated strategies in a common social situation, so you can recognize them and stop playing them.