If you want to understand the challenges facing young people today when it comes to finding "the one", look no further than their online dating semiotics, aka digital slang.
The swamp of modern, app-based dating is hostile, cold-blooded, superficial and quid pro quo as these new terms make abundantly obvious:
Doxxing: Harvesting someone's online information in order to harass them, often publicly broadcasting private or identifying information.
Eclipsing: Adopting the interests or hobbies of someone you're dating and pretending you like them too.
Exoskeletoning: Contacting an ex's new squeeze — easily done thanks to social media.
Fleabagging: Named after the Fleabag character created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, it denotes repeatedly choosing incompatible people to date.
Glamboozled: Getting fully done up for an online date only to have them cancel at the last minute.
Kanye'd: Your new interest spends the entire time talking about themselves.
Roaching: Hiding the fact that you're dating numerous people at the same time.
Sidebarred: Being on a date with someone who's looking at their phone in front of you.
Thirsty: Desperate for sex. Generally something someone asserts, sleazily or mockingly, about someone else, rather than in relation to oneself.
Thirst Trap: A sexy selfie posted, almost always by a woman, to attract attention.
Vulturing: Staying in the shadows on social media, watching for someone's romance to fizzle so you can swoop.
White Clawing: Showing interest in someone you find basic and boring only because you find them attractive.
Yellow Carding: Calling someone out on their bad online dating behaviour.
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