As if online dating wasn’t hard enough! Woman coins new term CLOAKING to describe a form of ‘extreme ghosting’ that sees people being stood up and then totally BLOCKED by matches
- Dating apps and online dating created online terms including ghosting, breadcrumbing and cushioning to describe a relationship
- Cloaking is a new term to describe the extreme version of ghosting
- This involves a date or partner blocking the person on every form of social media to prevent them from contacting them
- Mashable reporter Rachel Thompson coined the term after she experienced it
- The reporter was stood up by a Hinge date and then blocked on both the dating app as well as WhatsApp, preventing her from contacting him
Online dating and dating apps first brought to light the term ‘ghosting’ — which is one someone terminates a relationship by ceasing all contact with their partner.
After ghosting was first introduced, the term sparked a plethora of other dating terminology including ‘cushioning’, ‘shipping’ and ‘breadcrumbing. Now ‘cloaking’, a new term entering the dating sphere, works to describe what happens when someone experiences a more extreme version of ghosting.
Rachel Thompson, a senior cultural reporter for Mashable, first coined the term ‘cloaking’ in a video after she was stood up by someone she met through a dating app.
Savage: Cloaking is a new term to describe the extreme version of ghosting. This involves a date or partner blocking the person on every form of social media (stock photo)
‘It’s like being stood up, but like, extra,’ Rachel said in the video before detailing her failed date with a man she met on Hinge.
Cloaking, Rachel explained, is not just where someone stops responding to you through text message and dating apps like in ghosting. The person instead takes it to the next level by blocking the person on every form of communication.
‘If you’re thinking Harry Potter invisibility cloak, then you’re definitely along the right lines,’ Rachel said.
She came up with the term after she agreed to meet up with a guy from Hinge for dinner. Everything with the man seemed fine up to the date where they were talking about enjoying pasta at their dinner.
‘He seemed like the perfect guy for me,’ Rachel said about first speaking with him on the dating app. She even shared their conversation on WhatsApp to show how well things were going.
But when Rachel showed up to the restaurant at their agreed upon time, she stood there waiting only for him to never show.
Rachel checked her phone and found none of her WhatsApp messages were going through to the match, which was her first warning sign. She then went on Hinge and discovered she was no longer matched with the guy.
‘It’s really a humiliating thing to go through,’ Rachel said about the experience. ‘But it also is a really common thing. Especially in the age of online dating.’
Rachel’s match went through the effort of blocking her on each form of communication so she could not even tell him what she thought about him standing her up.
The one benefit with matching with the man on Hinge, though, was the dating app reveals the person’s last name after both people like each other.
Rachel was able find both his work email and number in a quick Internet search, but opted instead to message him on Facebook.
‘If you’re going to do bad things in the dating world, at least make sure all your contact details aren’t listed on the internet,’ she said.
Rachel messaged him on Facebook but he notably never read the message.
The writer is not the only one, though, who has experienced cloaking in the world of dating apps and online dating. She found other people on Twitter who had similar experiences with dating matches they attempted to meet up with.
Thus the term cloaking was born as a new way for people to describe how online dating sometimes failed.
With all the terms out there to describe a failed dating experience, there is also the hope people will opt for better dating etiquette rules instead of ghosting or cloaking someone they are uninterested in.