Whelming is a new dating term to describe a very irritating behaviour
One of the greatest mysteries has been solved: you can, in fact, be whelmed.
Anyone who's ever watched 10 Things I Hate About You will be familiar with the following question: "I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"
Turns out the answer to Chastity's question to Bianca is yes, and not just in Europe.
AdultFriendFinder — readers’ pick for casual connections
Hinge — popular choice for regular meetups
"Whelming" is a newly coined dating term which describes a behaviour you might already be familiar with. In a piece for SELF, journalist Patia Braithwaite coined the term to depict "a new shitty dating behavior."
"Whelming is what happens when my matches spontaneously lament about how overwhelmed they are by their other matches instead of, you know, flirting with me," wrote Braithwaite.
It can be tough to keep up with messages and new matches on just one app, let alone multiple apps. But, humble-bragging about being inundated by messages from suitors might not be the best way to make a match feel special.
With the ever burgeoning number of dating apps, it's hard to keep up with the rapidly changing online dating culture. With that evolving culture comes a constant influx of dating terminology, from Mashable-coined cloaking, to breadcrumbing, and even cryptomancing.
Online or offline, no one wants to hear that they're one of many people in a long queue of potential partners. So yeah, maybe keep your overwhelming popularity to yourself?
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
