dexting

In September 2023 Glamour UK (opens in a new window) reported that “the term was coined by Amanda Bradford, dating expert and founder of dating app service The League,” for people who text “after meeting on a dating app” and form “bonds that feel almost like an actual relationship” but “never actually arrange a real date.” Cambridge Dictionary (opens in a new window) entered it that December: “exchanging many text messages with someone you have met on a dating app without ever meeting them in person.”

The ratio had been measured. A 2020 study (opens in a new window) surveyed 269 Tinder users in Norway about their matches and meetings, and as one researcher summarized it (opens in a new window), “for every 57 matches, there was just one meet-up (put another way, less than 2% of matches resulted in an in-person meeting).” The word was coined by the founder of an app, for the condition that study records as the normal case.

Under load, dexting keeps a conversation in the cheapest channel the market offers. Each message costs seconds, and neither party is asked to spend an evening, a fare or a bill on the result. The conversation can run indefinitely at a loss of nothing measurable, and it ends, when it ends, without a date on which it was found not to work. The cost is booked in the one column the apps do not display, which is time.