The dictionary of online relationships: 'ghosting', 'curving' or 'instagrandstanding'
The arrival of the technology to couple relationships, with smartphones, messaging and dating applications and social networks, has motivated that the usual behaviors adapt to the digital environment and new terms arise to refer to them.
According to the 'I Study on technology and emotions' of the manufacturer of 'smartphones' Wiko, almost half of Spaniards (48.58%) admit to having been 'stalked' in networks by someone else, while one in four admits having suffered 'birdboxing' from someone (25.37%) or even 'orbiting' (25.07%).
These terms, although they are frequently used by the youngest when using technological tools, may not be familiar to many users, even if they have ever made, received or even suffered.
You start it
One of the concepts referring to the initial moments of a relationship is that of 'instagrandstanding', the digital version of the hints.
This concept consists of get someone's attention by consciously posting content in social networks (especially in Instagram) that are particularly interesting to the other person, although without direct references, looking for this person to start the conversation.
Another of the terms at the beginning of a relationship is the 'birdboxing', a way to identify situations of extreme infatuation in people are unable to recognize the defects of the other person and consider that everything around him is perfect.
As a curiosity, its name comes from the movie 'Bird Box' (2018), in which the characters wear a blindfold to survive. For everyone to understand, it can be translated as 'being in a cloud'.
When it twists
In cases where the relationship is not on the right track, a frequently used term is 'orbiting'. This concept refers to when someone seems to have no real interest in another person, does not answer their messages or answer their calls, but gives 'like' to their publications, reacts to their 'stories' or comments on a photo. Gen Xers would call it something like 'neither with you nor without you'.
Another word for when things don't go well is 'curving'. When faced with a chat with a person with whom you want to cut a conversation, there are people who, instead of communicating this disinterest openly, choose another way of transmitting it.
Examples of this behavior are a greater delay in answering messages, progressive decrease in the length of responses or constant excuses not to see each other in person. Older generations might call it 'dizzy'.
End badly
Ending a relationship, even in its early stages, causes some people to suffer what has always been known as a 'sit-in'. At the digital level this is known as 'ghosting', when after days or weeks of constant and fluid chat conversation, one of the people 'disappears' suddenly and without explanation.
Another bad practice is the 'stalking', which consists of snooping into someone else's posts and interactions in social networks, in order to be informed of their day to day. This phenomenon is common in couple relationships after breakups that have not been well matched.
