Dating Slang Decoded: A Gen Xer’s Field Guide to Delulu, Zombieing, and Goblinmacy
Modern dating is not for the meager hearted, let’s just say. The whole online, bachelor, love-at-first-sight happenings in, let’s just call it the digital space, are a lot to digest if you’re of another generation.
I mean, I could get with a traditional dating show like The Bachelor. But as the seasons go on, even the cast of characters starts to seem more and more fake, staged, done up, plastic and scripted. The idea of one man dating 30 women at once and choosing has led to many a cat fight, and the same goes for the flip side of things and the dog fights that have resulted. Then there are the apps, the Tinders of the world, not to mention the Tinder Swindlers of the world.
Where do we go from here? Well, like any real trend or era, it has to have a name of its own. And today we’re left to ponder not just the strangeness of 30 men lining up for one woman, waiting to be eliminated one at a time, showboating bursts of testosterone all too eagerly rather than concealing too much testy vibes (which I’d prefer). So let me fill you in, my fellow Gen Xers: this younger generation, the Gen Zers, have come up with a whole language to name, blame, and shame dating in the modern era.
So let’s decode dating slang, one unknown verb at a time. While it’s strange to say the least, I find it amusing to ponder, and curiously I’ve set out to define a few of the most viral ones for us all.
I’ll boldly admit: some of these aren’t absolutely foreign to me.
Delulu (Is the Solulu)
If you told me delusion is the solution, I’d know exactly what you meant before you finished the sentence. “Delulu is the solulu” is Gen Z’s tongue-in-cheek way of saying that wildly optimistic, borderline unhinged confidence (believing the guy who hasn’t texted back in four days is definitely still into you) might actually be the move. Manifestation’s younger, messier cousin.
Zombieing
And if you told me you’re being “zombied,” I’ll embarrassingly confess I know what that one means too. It’s when someone disappears without a word, presumed romantically dead, and then rises from the grave weeks later like nothing happened. A “hey stranger ?” text after three weeks of radio silence, expecting you to just pick up where you left off.
Green-Flagging
Now here’s one that actually resonates for me. I’ll decode this one in a nanosecond. Green-flagging is the positive flip side of the red flag conversation: noticing someone’s good qualities, their consistency, their respect, and actually naming it instead of only cataloguing what’s wrong with a person. A little bit of relief in a dating vocabulary that otherwise runs almost entirely on warning labels.
Goblinmacy
And then there’s the whole goblinmacy thing, which is weird to say the least. It means bonding with someone over your oddest, most specific quirks, the stuff you’d normally hide, and finding that the shared weirdness creates intimacy faster than any polished first date ever could. I can’t say I love the name. But I can’t say I don’t understand the appeal of being fully, strangely yourself with someone and having it land.
Situationship
And then there’s the situationship, which might be the term that best sums up dating in this era: something that looks like a relationship, feels like a relationship most of the time, but that neither person will actually name. No title, no defined exclusivity, no real conversation about where it’s going, just two people showing up for each other until one of them doesn’t. It’s the ambiguity that gets me. My generation had “seeing each other” as our vague middle ground. This one seems to have made an entire relationship category out of avoiding the conversation altogether.
Rizz
I’d be remiss not to mention rizz, since it’s the one term out of all of these that’s actually made it into the dictionary. It means charisma, specifically the kind that gets you the number, the date, the second date. Short for charisma, somehow cooler for having been shortened. I’ll admit there’s something almost old-fashioned about it once you strip the slang away, it’s just describing charm, which dating has always run on, dressed up in a new word for a new generation to claim as theirs.
Crashing Out
And finally, crashing out, which is what happens when someone in this whole ecosystem, delulu, zombied, green-flagged, situationshipped, finally hits their limit and loses it, publicly and spectacularly. A meltdown with an audience. Given everything else on this list, I have to say, it tracks that this generation would eventually need a word for the moment it all becomes too much.
Watching It Play Out
I left the dating world a long time ago, and I have meandering thoughts that seldom last about jumping back in one day. But I’ve seen all of this play out by proxy, through a particular friend with a penchant for younger dates, and by way of my friends’ kids, who are of the generation and all up in the mix.
And then, of course, there are all those online eHarmonys of the world, promising the perfect harmonious union, not to mention the dating agencies charging $50k to find you your ideal match, no money-back guarantee anywhere in the fine print. And it’s not just Tinder anymore, it’s the Tinder Swindler. He got his one Netflix documentary, but I’ve got a hunch he’s not the only swindler on Tinder. Not sure how women give up their cash so easily, and to a man they don’t even know. My God, ladies, where have the days of integrity and dignity gone?
The Lucky Part
My married and coupled friends are constantly expressing jealousy at my singlehood. And to be frank, I feel pretty darn lucky. I missed out on having kids, but not entirely. I get to borrow my nephews and niece and then give them back when I remember I’m actually single and want to feel lucky again with that awareness. I’ll just hold on to how lucky I am, I suppose.
No concerns about ever being zombied again.
Seven terms in, and here’s what I keep coming back to: every generation has needed a language for the mess of dating. Mine just called it “playing games” and left it at that. This one wrote a whole dictionary. I can’t decide if that’s progress or just better branding, but I’ll keep decoding it as it comes.
*[Optional: link back to Sue’s Medium piece on being lucky as a single person]*