"Whelming" is the new online dating habit that makes me want to throw away my phone

  Is "overwhelm" the new "deny"?

 What is online dating without the cacophony of terms used to describe the experience?  There's banking, which is when someone likes you enough to keep you in their rotation of potential options, but not enough to commit.  Then there's the ghost effect, which occurs when your date disappears at some point during your interaction without explanation;  paper cut, which is when the person who made you a ghost shows up a few months later to chat with you again;  and even zombie, which sounds a lot like a paper cutout, as a ghost returns to haunt the living (that is, you).

  There's also denial, a toxic practice that dates back to a simpler time before all these nuanced dating terms came about.  For the uninitiated, denial is a strange pick-up tactic from the early days when someone approaches you and instead of just being friendly (or speaking to you like a human), they give you an ambiguous compliment.  The idea is to lower your confidence a bit, which is somehow intended to make you more interested in the person doing the denial.

  If this all sounds like a terrible way to get wooed, hold on to your smartphones folks.  There's some shitty new dating behavior I've noticed in my online dating travails - something I call overwhelming.  Whelming is what happens when my partners spontaneously lament how overwhelmed they are by their other partners instead of, you know, flirting with me.  At best, it is mildly irritating.  I've specifically noticed this on Bumble, which was "originally designed to disrupt traditional gender roles in heteronormative dating," meaning women have 24 hours to initiate conversations with partners, who then have 24 hours to respond.  (For same-sex matches, either person can start the conversation.)

  The first time this happened, I asked follow-up questions: How often do you swipe your finger?  Did you know that you can control the flow of matches by sliding less to the right?  Not used to so much attention from interested people?  His responses were a mixture of complaints ("It's too much") and weird misogynistic ramblings ("Why do all the girls here love brunch and tacos?").  Unmatched, thinking this was an isolated case.

  The second time it happened,

I was offended and thought: He realizes that I have paired with him too, right?  In my third experience with overwhelming, I was done trying to figure it out.  I could not match with the person without answering, I am no longer interested in explaining swipe apps to people who already use them.  He was, for lack of a better term, disappointed.

  Still, I wasn't sure whether or not there were other boo victims, so I put polls into my various group chats.  "Who hasn't experienced this?  People are clearly telling their partners about their strong love lives, whether it's asking for dating advice or speaking up directly about feeling overwhelmed.

I have come across quite a few men who have felt the need to tell me that they have so many parties and that they are overwhelmed, Quinyetta B., 27, tells SELF.

  In one situation, Quinyetta paired with someone who lived in a different city.  They stayed in touch because she had made plans to travel to her city for work in the next few weeks.  Given your distance (and the nature of online dating), your partner didn't respond a bit in the lead up to your date.  When she finally asked her why, she blamed her indifference on her other parties.  "I date a lot of women and ... it's really hard to be sure that I'm talking to everyone who wants to talk to me. You wouldn't understand," Quinyetta recalls being told.

  But when Quinyetta texted her partner to cancel their date, she discovered that she was apparently an essential component on his date list.  "She replied, 'I really like you and I think you're a dumb person. I could really see myself being with you in the long run if it worked," she says, adding that she did not respond to her message.

  These interactions make me a little sad. 

 As online dating becomes more common, it would be nice if the conversations reflected the basic dignity we expect in real life (denial aside).  You wouldn't walk up to someone in a bar and say, "Wow, 37 other people in this bar have expressed interest in me. I'm so overwhelmed."  So why would it be okay to do something so incredibly awkward in the liminal space of online dating?

  It is true that I cannot say with certainty that all these overwhelmed people have nefarious intentions.  Sure, overwhelming may be a cousin to neglect, meant to make women feel like they have to compete for attention and approval.  "I think it's an ego thing," says Quinyetta.  "Men want us to know that they have options."

  But it's also possible that online daters are really stressed out by all of their potential options.  A quick trip to Reddit reveals posters identifying themselves as men wondering why they get so few matches online.  So in an app like Bumble, where women have to make the first move, finding out that your direct messages are suddenly full of interested people (and that you only have a certain amount of time to respond) can be a bit of a shock.

  The thing is, as a very experienced online dating person, I can totally relate to being overwhelmed.  I have been inundated by the endless games, mediocre direct messages, and relentless parade of drinks throughout the week that leave an introvert like me feeling overworked and underwhelmed at the same time.  There have been times when I stopped sliding because all my matches seemed indistinct.  But, this is where Whelmers and I differ, I didn't talk to my new parties about it.  Naturally, I complained to my friends.

  Sharing these concerns with me, 

a literal stranger, and a potential partner, doesn't make me feel like a powerful date.  Being told that I am one of many (believe me, I know) does not do much to generate warmth for the person I just paired with.  If anything, it makes me painfully aware of how deeply impersonal online dating can be.  No one who grabs their phone on the couch after dinner with spaghetti sauce on their face (or slides their finger around during bath time) needs additional reminders that online dating is rare.