You’ve been chatting for weeks. Conversation has gone down a storm. You’ve traded a few photos, and your love interest is hot – like, really hot. You finally arrange to meet up, arriving five minutes early (obviously, because you’re a stand-up bloke), and the date walks in – only to look so completely different to their photos that they risk a charge from Trading Standards.
Sound familiar? Well, congratulations, you’ve fallen victim to the latest crime of online dating – ‘kittenfishing’.
Just a shade below the better-known sin of catfishing – in which someone pretends to be a completely different person – kittenfishing is the act of unrealistic self-presentation.
Dating app Hinge – which coined the phrase – says that an increasing number of users are reporting out-of-date or heavily-edited photos, exaggerations of personal achievement or just straight-up lies. Now, we’ve all been guilty of a little embellishment on our CVs, but kittenfishing takes the white lies to the next level.
The lesson? As with most aspects of dating, be yourself. Just don’t be surprised if your new Tinder squeeze isn’t.
