Forget about ghosting, breadcrumbing or benching. Kittenfishing is the new dating trend you need to know about and watch out for. Possibly as you read this, you have already been victim to ‘kittenfishing’.

What is kittenfishing?

Is when dating app users embellish or inflate the truth to present themselves in a better light. Better than what they are in reality to try and draw in potential lovers. For example, saying they are a few centimetres taller than what they really are or lying about their age and deliberately using older pictures of themselves.

Most people are familiar with the trend, but dating app Hinge was the first to put a name to it. This is how they define the term:

Kittenfishing: the phenomenon of well-intentioned dating app users presenting themselves in an unrealistically positive light. A kittenfisher’s profile is often comprised of photos that are outdated, heavily-filtered, or strategically angled, text that has been ghost-written by a particularly witty friend, and height that has been rounded by more than two inches.

In trying to make themselves look more interesting than what they are, is a sure way to get things to a bad start were there to be a first real date.  So maybe just don’t lie on your dating app, it’s counter-intuitive for everyone involved.

‘Honesty is the best policy’

This still holds true in the modern world of dating. Nothing will come out of a lie, right from the beginning.