Have you been Zombied? Be wary of the new online dating trend

As if ghosting wasn't spooky enough, this new trend comes back to haunt online daters.
Shutterstock / urbazon
Samantha J. Gross22 March 2017

If you're entering the dating landscape in today's era of app-based dating, you've probably felt the frustration of trying to communicate with a potential match, only to have it go totally awry.

Maybe you've been ghosted (ignored) or breadcrumbed (strung along). Or perhaps you were benched (re-assigned to the back-up list) or mooned (muted). These daters make using Tinder or Bumble a total nightmare, but a new trend has emerged.

This new phenomenon is as scary as it sounds: being zombied - the next dating fad that's bound to drive you up the wall.

It starts off with similar behaviour to ghosting, where someone you have been chatting with goes days without responding or acknowledging your message. In the worst cases, they will visibly "read" your message and fail to respond.

After a while, you might give up on the ghost ("Good riddance", you think) and start talking to someone else. You might even go on dates to move along with your life, until suddenly ...

They come back!

Yes, risen from the dead, zombie-style.

About a year ago, the website PrimeMind defined the term: “To be zombied is to have someone you care about disappear from your life altogether only to have them bring a relationship back from the dead with an out-of-the-blue text or interaction on social media.”

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Lisa Bonos of the Washington Post, wrote about her experience being zombied for the first time in her column Monday. She said she had casually made plans to see someone, but when the day came around, he ignored all of her messages.

Four months later, she woke up to a text trademark of these so-called "dating zombies": “Hey stranger, long time no talk".

Francesca Hogi, a dating coach in Brooklyn, told Bonos that zombie-ing is “incredibly common.”

“As our technology advances and it becomes easier to contact people out of the blue, we see it more often,” Hogi said. “All these very casual ways of reaching out and contacting people, I think it gives [people] permission to say: Hey, the risk is very low. She’s not going to curse me out on the phone and hurt my feelings. She’s just going to ignore my text message.”

But what if you are the zombie? Hogi told Bonos that the best way to handle the situation is to acknowledge the passage of time and own up to the act.

"Just do it respectfully and like a grownup", she said.

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