Can you believe it's been ten years since the term "ghosting" first spooked the dating scene? Since then, the number of terms for the most minor dating actions and refractions has piled high. I'm no stranger to this; I myself coined "orbiting" back in 2018. By 2020, I was over cutesy dating terms for bad behavior…but that hasn't stopped the internet from spawning new terms.
Here are some new dating terms coined as of 2025, because this year apparently isn't bad enough:
Banksying
This mouthful refers to the elusive, anonymous artist, Banksy. According to USA Today, Banksying means slowly moving away from your partner, or sabotaging your relationship, as one of Banksy's art pieces, "Girl With Balloon," famously self-destructed.
On TikTok, breakup expert Amy Chan (who once spoke with Mashable about her breakup bootcamp) said that while checking out from one's relationship isn't new, the prevalence now shows how conflict avoidant people are. And in the age of fearing to be cringe, being vulnerable in those tough conversations seems more difficult than ever.
Floodlighting
"Floodlighting," coined by vulnerability expert Brene Brown in her 2013 audiobook The Power of Vulnerability, is essentially oversharing. But why is a term thought up over a decade ago making waves in 2025? Because folks on the internet accused a contestant on the Netflix dating show Love Is Blind of doing it.
To expand on the term, "floodlighting" is sharing too many intimate details in a relationship too soon. According to Brown, this isn't the same thing as vulnerability, and works to repel actual vulnerability. In The Power of Vulnerability, Brown shared an example of oversharing about fears to people you don't know well or to a large group, and then those people push you away and you think no one cares.
"It's how we protect ourselves from vulnerability. We just engage in a behavior that confirms our fear," Brown wrote.
Throning
While much discussed at the end of last year, throning is still talked about, and may be more relevant than ever. It means dating someone to enhance one's own reputation or social status. As you can guess, this has gone on for eons — think about royal marriages of yore — but has a shiny new name.
In the age of online daters caring about physical appearance (such as height), age, and income status, it's not too far of a leap to know some people want to climb the social ladder through their partner.
What modern dating terms mean
Honestly, none of these actions are new, as evidenced by the definitions of these terms. While they can mask the bad behavior daters exhibit, they can also encourage conversation about them and (hopefully) inspire change.
Daters recently told me that they're over dating apps and want to meet in-person. One major reason is because of behaviors like this. Meeting people through a screen can render them less real than the flesh-and-blood person with emotions, memories, and desires. This isn't a new criticism of dating apps — and dating apps themselves seem to be trying to lean into more tech to solve the problems that tech caused — but it bares repeating because it keeps happening.
Ghosting, "orbiting," "micro-mance," Banksying, floodlighting, throning…the list goes on and will continue to. While I'm still over coining new terms, it seems like we have to change the dating culture in order for these terms to become obsolete.
