‘A truly terrible dating experience’. With these words, Rachel Thompson described her latest dating experience on the website Mashable. Her experience had such an impact on her that she created a new dating term, ‘cloaking’. And it’s even more extreme that the sadly famous ‘ghosting’.
Discover our latest podcast
Let’s talk for a moment about what ghosting is. Ghosting is a rather harsh break-up technique that occurs when a person cuts off all communication with their partner. They disappear completely. As a matter of fact, this is actually the technique Charlize Theron used to break up with Sean Penn, which just goes to show that celebrities aren’t actually that different from us!
However, although ghosting is hard to live with, cloaking is even more extreme. Instead of just disappearing without a word, the person you’re dating blocks you on all applications that you can use to communicate with them.
Rachel Thompson explained her awful date in detail... She met a young man on the Hinge app and after looking at his profile, the man seemed perfect for her. They discovered they had a lot in common and started sending flirty messages.
The day before their first date, Rachel sent him her phone number so they could find each other. Among other things, they talked about where to eat and picked a restaurant.
On the big day, the young woman sent him a message on WhatsApp before leaving work, just before they were about to meet. She noticed that her message hadn’t been delivered. Nevertheless, she went to the restaurant and sent him a text via iMessage. Again, nothing. She then went back on the Hinge app, where she had met him, and realised that their entire conversation had disappeared.
Rachel Thompson says she felt extremely frustrated, as well as humiliated by the fact that she couldn’t communicate with him. She did however manage to send him a message on Facebook… that he never read.
Take a look at the video above for everything you need to know about cloaking...
