Dating can get old, but given how fast it evolves, it shouldn’t. Every year, new ways to date emerge…as do new ways to be disappointed while looking for love. In 2020, there’s no shortage of new dating trends and terms, many of them quite funny (if you don’t happen to be on the receiving end of them). Plenty of Fish recently surveyed its members ages 18 to 50 in the U.S. and the U.K. to find out how they’ve been treated while wading in the dating pool, and it ain’t pretty. Whether it’s being stuck on a date with a blabbermouth narcissist or being stalked by your new partner’s ex, there’s never a dull moment in the dating world. If you’re on the market, be on the lookout for these funny new dating trends!
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Dating Trends 2020
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Cause Playing
Ever had someone you dated and dumped (or were dumped by) reappear to ask for something? It could be a donation to a charity, a signature on a petition, or to volunteer on a political campaign. If so, you've been cause-played. Sixty-one percent of daters have experienced this begging-for-a-favor behavior.
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Dial Toning
One step less intense than ghosting, this dating trend is when a prospect gives you their phone number but doesn't respond when you contact them. Sixty percent of daters have been left in the lurch like this, listening to the deafening sound of silence despite their attempts to connect.
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Eclipsing
You know how some couples resemble one another? Eclipsing is kind of like that, but they copycat their partner's hobbies instead, even if they're not really into cosplay or Fortnite or (God forbid) figure skating like their better half is. Forty-eight percent of singles have found themselves twinning with a partner in the activities department.
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Exoskeletoning
This dating trend is the skin-crawling scenario where your partner's ex reaches out to you continuously, either to befriend you or simply cyberstalk you. Twenty-two percent of daters have been creeped on by their partner's ex (and the other 78 percent just aren't aware of it yet).
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Fleabagging
Desperate times call for desperate measures, which is why all of us have found ourselves in relationships that don't really work but we're too terrified of being alone to leave. Fleabagging is the phenomenon where you date the wrong person even though you know better. A whopping 63 percent of women have copped to doing this while 38 percent of men have similarly stooped to this pathetic level.
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Glamboozled
Getting canceled on sucks, but never so much as when the "can't make it, sorry" text comes after you've spent the past hour primping and trying on everything in your closet in search of the perfect outfit for your (now non-existent) date. If this has happened to you, then you know what it's like to be glamboozled, and you're not alone; 45 percent of daters have been left all dressed up with nowhere to go.
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Kanye'd
Three guesses on what this dating trend means. Never mind, that's too easy. Getting Kanye'd is the when your date won't shut up about themselves and won't let you get a word in edgewise. Forty-five percent of singles have been subject to an egomaniac's monologue while on a date.
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Type Casting
If you took Intro to Psychology in college, you might be familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality test, or, if you're a self-help book fan, you're familiar with the term "love language." If you only date people who are compatible with either of those tests' labels (INFJ, acts of service), you're type-casting and you need to stop. Twenty-seven percent of daters have been asked about their Myers-Briggs or love language by a potential partner (and we'd bet none of them asked that person out on a second date).
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White Clawing
Attraction is a tricky thing. Sometimes, appearance draws us in but we're dead bored with our flame's lack of depth. And yet, we stay, because the eye candy is so satisfying. That's called white-clawing, and 27 percent of daters are guilty of doing it.
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Yellow Carding
Most people have been on bad dates; it's rarer, however, that someone calls their bad date out. If you have, congratulations on having balls and consider yourself among the 27 percent of daters who have refused to stay silent in the presence of offensive behavior. We salute you.
