My Hinge match invited me to dinner and blocked me as I waited for our table

It was a Thursday night and I had a date. Or, so I thought. 

Instead, I had an experience of something so strange that I’ve decided it needs a name: “cloaking.” 

I grabbed my backpack, donned my headphones, and blasted my pre-date anthem (Ariana Grande’s “Dangerous Woman,” fyi) as I fired off a hurried WhatsApp to the man I was having dinner with. “Hey! So I’m leaving the office now. Will probs get there in like 20 mins,” I typed and hit send. 

Matthew (not his real name) had asked me to dinner earlier that week after we’d matched on Hinge. We bonded over our shared love of pasta and hatched a plan to go to Padella in Borough Market, London. Read more…

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