You probably heard of ‘Ghosting’, right? When a person you know falls off the face of the earth without any explanation. Odds are that if you are still dating, you have probably been ghosted and it is totally awful.

Since we are way into 2019, here is a list of the new dating trends you need to know. Let’s list of dating terms in no particular order, but one thing is for sure they all suck.

Trickle Ghosting

Trickle Ghosting got its name on a Reddit thread and describes the situation when you think everything is going great. Slowly but surely, you watch the person in question slowly and gently retreat. They’re progressively less and less available. They don’t text you back for days working slowly their way towards ghosting you. This is also known as the Slow Fade. It’s less aggressive than the other awful dating trends, it still hurts. This gif describes this behaviour well.

FLEXING

Showing off and bragging about “coolness” and wealth is called Flexing, and as you already know, it’s never a good look. Steer away from these types.

POCKETING

This is when your partner doesn’t want you around their family and other important people in their life. Which means they don’t see a future with you. They are obviously wasting your time. Unless you, too, are just in it for the thrill. Literally another term for stashing. When your love interest appears to be in no hurry to seriously commit.

CLOAKING

Cloaking is when your date stands you up, and then proceeds to block you on all communication platforms with no explanation whatsoever. You’ve been blocked.  What sleazy move.

COOKIE JARRING

When you discover your love interest has been dating someone else the whole time and you were the backup option.  If you notice that your date surfaces once in a while – you’re the cookie they keep around for when they want something a little different.

YOU-TURNING

Everyone has had a moment in a relationship or while simply seeing someone new when something unpleasant happens or you realize there’s a massive red flag, and you get the hell out of there real fast. That’s a You-Turn, just like the car maneuver. This is probably not a bad dating skill to have, really.

PAPER-CLIPPING

 

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Who remembers clippy? ? well he’s here to make sure you don’t forget him ?

A post shared by Samantha Rothenberg (@violetclair) on Jul 18, 2019 at 9:29am PDT

Remember the annoying Microsoft assistant “Clippy” that would pop up out of nowhere around your screen?

Brooklyn-based illustrator linked Clippy, the ‘not so helpful’ virtual assistant who would randomly pop up in older versions of Microsoft Office, to people who just won’t disappear after a breakup, with an animated paper clip saying things like “The truth is, I’m damaged, flaky and not particularly interested in you,” and “But I don’t want you to forget I exist.” That’s how the act of disappearing and then reappearing out of nowhere months later got its name.

GHOSTING

Oh, yeah ghosting. This cowardly move involves having the person you’ve been dating suddenly stop talking to you with no explanation whatsoever. No text, no call, nothing. Much like a magician’s disappearing act, poof. They’re gone. Assuming Ghosters disappear for the sole purpose of avoiding the “This isn’t working out” talk. This is pretty low, everyone needs closure and communicating that you don’t think this is a relationship for you is hard but a necessary part of dating.

HAUNTING

This is a creepy one. Haunting is when someone from your romantic past lingers in your digital present by occasionally watching your Instagram or Snapchat story, or sporadically liking your posts. They act like a ghost that keeps coming back to haunt you. So creepy and absolutely stupid.

BENCHING

This is when your romantic interest leads you on for a while but doesn’t really do much to take the relationship anywhere. However, they lead you on. They keep you on the bench until or unless you’re needed in desperate times. Almost like you’re second best and case something goes wrong with their main interest then you’re in.

BREAD-CRUMBING

Breadcrumbing is when someone shows you just enough interest to string you along by making you feel like they might be interested, and that’s it. A flirty text every now and then or a cute Snapchat, but it never leads anywhere. It’s pretty deceiving and dishonest to string someone on when they fully know nothing will come out of it.

STASHING

Have you ever dated someone where you saw them regularly, texted all the time, and had a great time together, but never met their friends or were otherwise never a visible part of their life?

That’s called Stashing. It’s when the person doesn’t introduce you to friends or family, doesn’t post pictures of you on social media. They keep you separate from their life in order to date other people as well? Or worse keep you and their spouse from finding out about one another. Not good, very deceitful.

ZOMBIE-ING

Basically, your love interest comes back from the dead to haunt you. They might blame something happening in their personal life or work to explain their absence.  They suddenly rise from the dead and texts you with a “Hey, how have you been??” like nothing’s wrong. We suggest deleting the texts and ignoring their calls immediately because someone who ghosted you once will probably do it again.

H/T Maxim

Modern dating has brought about some dating terms that are awful.

You’ve probably heard of a few of them by now: kittenfishing, ghosting and breadcrumbing, to name a few.

Now there’s a new dating trend floating around the internet, it’s called “cloaking“. Like the previous dating terms that have come to exist, it’s a result of the close-knit interaction between dating and digital technology we use on a daily basis.

What is cloaking?

Cloaking was coined by Mashable writer Rachel Thompson after an unpleasant dating experience she had. She describes cloaking like this: Cloaking is when a person doesn’t just stand you up for a date. They also block you on any app you have previously communicated on.

It’s not a nice thing to go through. The digital era makes it easy for strangers to chat but it’s hard to see them as individuals. Treating someone badly, whether ghosting or roaching is a result of that reality, unfortunately. There are plenty of people who hide behind their screens and lose touch with reality.

Why would anyone start a conversation online only to disappear before things even begin? Right? Maybe there’s a bigger disconnect between screen-life and real-life. Maybe there are people who get frightened about meeting IRL.

Cloaking it seems to be about fear, fear of connection, fear of being vulnerable, fear of being real and being honest.

Don’t pull this humiliating act on anyone. If you changed your mind write a text to cancel, it doesn’t take a lot of time. It might lead to an unpleasant interaction but it’s the decent thing to do instead of disappearing and blocking someone. Let the other person know you have changed your mind.

What to do if you get cloaked?

On the last note, do not try to track down your cloaker to give them a piece of your mind. We understand you’re angry, but if they don’t have the emotional maturity or honesty to write you a text to cancel, maybe you dodged a bullet.

Move on because there’s plenty of fish in the sea.

Obviously, it’s every singleton’s responsibility to stay abreast of all these dating terms so they can defend themselves.

The latest one is ‘R-Bombing’ i.e. when a person you’re interested in reads your message but doesn’t respond. Essentially, they ignore you.

We have all experienced that sinking feeling of watching our phone screens waiting for a reply after you know your message has been “read”. Then anxiously await the ‘….’ showing you they are in the process of answering and then no reply.

Oh, yeah, you have just been R-Bombed.

The hardest thing about R-Bombing is the torture of knowing that your message has been read. Why would anyone behave this way, you wonder?
The people who “R-Bomb” are likely to lack basic communication skills, choosing to be silent rather than saying what is on their minds. It could be they fear conflict or being called out for their behaviour.

How do you handle R-Bombing?

You can choose to just leave it and move on. Or wait a while to give them a chance to respond, if they respond. Your actions toward being R-Bombed depends on how long you have been seeing each other. If you have been seeing each other for a short time, letting it slide seems the most obvious thing to do. However, if you have been seeing each other for a while, then you need to decide what is best for you. It’s true that choosing to end a relationship this way lacks closure. One thing is for sure, don’t over think it, because their lack of courtesy, it’s makes it obvious that it’s not you, it’s them who are the problem. They are poor communicators and don’t know how to be honest and authentic.

Another course of action to take against this awful and frustrating behaviour is to change the setting in your phone and turn off both “read” message and “now typing “. Sometimes “Ignorance is bliss”.

Gatsbying is apparently when you, like Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby, throw lavish parties in the hopes of attracting the object of your desire. Just one huge difference: Instead of buying a mansion, reinventing yourselves and throwing wild parties. Millennials just post a photo or video on their Instagram or Snapchat Story, designed to attract that special someone.

Gatsbying is the new millennial dating trend, that refers to showing off on social media in the hopes that someone special will see your posts. Literally, where pretty young things put on a show to get their crush’s attention.

We’re all guilty of documenting our lives a little too much at times. But there can also be an ulterior motive behind why some of us upload videos, photos and Instagram Story. And that is in the hope that your crush will see it and message you.

Aussie model Matilda Dods who coined the trend and described it best in a post about it for TomBoyBeauty

“To post a video, picture or selfie to public social media purely for a love interest to see it.”

It doesn’t sound like Gatsbying is as bad as the other dating trends. However, it is a lot of energy spent in hope of attracting the attention of your crush. Seems like a text could do the job faster and a more direct way to communicate with your crush.

Hope that if you choose Gatsbying to grab your crush’s attention that it’ll go well. That it might elicit that flirty conversation from someone you’ve been secretly fantasising about. However, it doesn’t always work.

What is stashing?

Stashing is when the person you’re dating fails to introduce you to anyone in their lives, keeping you a secret or hiding you.

One day, it sneaks up on you and you slowly come to realise you have been stashed. You’ve been dating for months and all seems fine, except for a small detail. You have slowly noticed that you haven’t met your partner’s family, best mates or any single significant person in their life.

What is the problem with being stashed?

This trend is something that is happening to people all over the world who are dating. What is the problem with being stashed? When you are a victim of stashing, you are hidden from every other part of the slasher’s life. Allowing them to be unconsidered and awful. When you are not publicly and officially together, the stashed is able to tell themselves that you are not actually together, so they are entitled to treat you poorly.

Problem with being stashed is that everything appears to be lovely when you are together but it’s only as long as you don’t exist outside the bedroom.

How do you stop this?

If you allow this to go on, you will start to feel bad about yourself and your relationship.  Not feeling valued and respected in a relationship is not worth.  Time to get out. Leave before this relationship leaves you feeling worthless. Find someone who is happy and proud to be with you by letting everyone know who you are.

The reality of the dating world today is different. Instead, we have a series of scary trends sucking all the joy from dating. To mention a few – love bombing, d*ck and dash, roaching, ghosting – essentially all trendy terms describing people being nasty while dating. With all these negative terms floating around, dating is becoming rather daunting.

A new dating term, caspering, coined by International Business Times, is a kinder term, it’s simply ghosting but in a friendly manner.

This is your guide to caspering, the dating term that isn’t nasty.

You must have heard of ghosting when someone you are dating disappears so suddenly. So sudden you wonder if they have dropped dead. No one likes rejection. Being dumbed without explanation is absolutely the worse where even the toughest of egos will get hurt. Although at times is understandable to cut ties with a date that is behaving in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable. It’s still polite to just send a short text.

Some examples of texts you could use when caspering could read something like this:

” Hey, sorry, we just not a perfect match. I had a great time on our date. Best of luck with everything in the future” or ‘Hey, just to let you know – you’re an amazing person but I just didn’t feel the spark and think we shouldn’t see each other.  I’m going to stop replying to messages and calls. It certainly isn’t a reflection on whom you are as a person. Best of luck with everything in the future.’

So, instead of just ghosting, choose caspering, in other words, go about ghosting in a kind and compassionate manner. Offering an explanation and warning the other person before ignoring their calls and texts. Don’t lead them on, if you are just not feeling it, tell them so.

Sex Educator, Alix Fox told IBTTimes UK that she wants to see people practice more compassionate dating and hopes new terms will emerge to replace words with negative connotations like ‘ghosting’. She elaborates below:

‘I’d like to see more positive new terms enter the linguistic landscape, to make people more mindful about behaving well towards others and themselves, help them navigate the modern dating process more joyfully, and ultimately enjoy happier experiences,’ said Alix.
‘If you’re going to ghost someone, be friendly about it! ‘If you’ve decided you don’t want to chat to someone any longer, that’s fine, but if they’re simply not your cuppa and haven’t been an ass, try to leave them with a compliment or some constructive feedback so they feel bolstered to keep on looking for love.’

We support this kinder and more compassionate manner of dating. Everybody should have a fair chance at love and romance. Nobody deserves to be treated badly when looking for love and their ideal person. Hoping that new and more positive dating terms surface to make dating a pleasant experience for all.

Cheers to caspering!

The reality is that this dating trend is not new at all, it has been happening since dating started. But is now getting the attention of the Internet. This new dating trend is known by a few different names – hump and dump or hitting and quitting and as you can tell it’s self-explanatory. It’s a trend where the culprit uses someone for sex and then dumps that same person or ghosts them. Either way, it’s not a nice thing to experience on the receiving end. Essentially, your date will shower you with attention and fake affection until the day they get you in bed and move on to ghost you or dump you since their sole objective was to have sex with you.

This does not classify as a one-night stand or casual hookup because when you’re hooking up both parties are in full knowledge that they are in for a no-strings-attached hookup and then move on.

D*ck and dash is something very different. It’s misleading someone into believing that there’s more to the relationship than just a hookup. That there is a chance for a committed relationship. This is not okay t, it’s playing with their emotions and finishing hurting them deeply.

Seriously, in today’s day and age, you don’t need to trick anyone to get to have sex with them. Honesty is the best policy unless you want to be known as the dush-bag in town. Women also enjoy casual sex and enjoyed more when they know where they stand.

How do you know if you are about to be being D*ck and dash? If it all seems to true to be true, things are moving too fast and your partner is confessing his undying love for you, we’d suggest tread with caution.

So, before you become emotionally invested in a relationship before it all messing with your mind and emotions, use your gut feeling to decipher what is going on.