'Kittenfishing' Is A Horrifying Dating Term — And It's Probably Happened To You
Are you subtly lying on your dating profile? You might be kittenfishing.
Syda Productions | Canva If worrying about being catfished wasn’t enough, now dating app users need to be careful about getting kittenfished! What is kittenfishing? A play on words, kittenfishing is a less offensive act that involves misrepresentation on a dating profile. Thus, kitten — you know, being smaller than a cat.
Anyway, it took me a minute to understand why anyone would care about kittenfishing if it was less dramatic than catfishing in the first place. However, once I learned more about this shady little tactic, it scares me even more. It might not seem like catfishing could be a thing anymore, but statistics from people who dated online in 2022 show that 13% of people admitted to being catfished.
The act of kittenfishing is kind of like telling little white lies while online dating. While someone doesn’t pretend to be a completely different person, they sneak in a few lies that could jeopardize a potential relationship.
For example, I could post photos on my dating profile from a time when I was 15 pounds thinner. I could also say that I was college-educated when I dropped out of community college halfway in.
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Imagine a man saying that he’s 30 years old when he’s 35. These fibs are essentially harmless, but it's still kittenfishing.
But what makes things even worse is that this happens so often that many people don’t even realize they're doing it. According to statistics, 4 out of 5 online daters lie on their profile.
And it’s downright sad that they don’t know that attracting a date to their skinny profile picture is only going to harm them when they meet in person, ten pounds heavier. Come on, you’re setting yourself up for failure. The dating app Hinge has coined this new term and has collected some juicy data on users who have done it before.
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The same study says that 38 percent of men and 24 percent of women say that they have been kittenfished before.
However, 2 percent of men and only 1 percent of women say that they have kittenfished someone else. The numbers aren’t adding up, which means that people are either too embarrassed to admit it or they don’t even know they’re doing it. Yikes.
So, now that you know the answer to what is kittenfishing, while it seems like being kittenfished is kind of difficult to avoid, you can at least do your part to stop it on your end of the online dating spectrum. Ladies, don’t post only photos of your face with a heavy filter on.
And men, if you’re balding, just let that head shine because you don’t want to blind an unsuspecting victim with your bald spot on the first date.
Shannon Ullman is a writer who focuses on travel and adventure, women's health, pop culture, and relationships. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, MSN, and Matador Network.