As If Ghosting Wasn’t Bad Enough, Now You Have To Worry About Mooning

Thought ghosting was the ultimate diss? Guess again, because now there’s such a thing as mooning. Here’s how it works: guys use the “do not disturb” feature on their iPhones to silence your messages. They can then use the excuse that they never actually received them since technically, they didn’t. Lovely. If it wasn’t obvious, here’s why mooning is so crappy:

  1. Mooning is even worse than ghosting. As bad as a guy going AWOL on you out of the blue feels, at least you know where you stand when you get ghosted. The guy is showing you with his actions – pretty clearly – that he’s not into you. But with mooning, you’re being avoided without knowing it.
  2. It increases your doubt and anxiety. You have enough to worry about when dating, you really don’t need to be worrying over something that you can’t know is happening. And yet, you’ll be stressing that the cute guy from the club is mooning you when he doesn’t reply to your texts for half a day. So frustrating!
  3. He can sneakily read and reject your messages. Mooning can be used for WhatsApp because it enables people to read your messages without you knowing they’ve read them (thanks to those blue tick “read receipts” not showing up). It’s BS that he gets to hide in the dark and screen your messages before he decides to reply or not.
  4. Mooning is the equivalent of a guy chatting to other women at the bar and dissing you all night. Cold, hard truth: he’s keeping notifications on for people he likes. What’s worse than the thought that a guy you really like is mooning you? The thought that he’s chatting up a storm with other women.
  5. It makes you feel like you’re boring. Being mooned can make you doubt yourself even more than being ghosted. At least with the latter, you can chalk a man’s disappearance to him being a commitment-phobe or total jerk. But for a guy to mute your texts, it makes you wonder why he’d resort to doing something so intense. It makes you fear that your attempts at conversation are boring or weird for him to dislike chatting to you so much. Screw the guys who make you feel this because you really don’t deserve it. Only losers moon. Period.
  6. It makes it easier for him to break up with you. What do ghosting, benching and mooning have in common? They’re the cowardly way out of dating. A guy can easily silence your texts so he doesn’t have to feel guilty when he sees your name pop up on his phone. It makes it so much easier for him to slip out the back door without having to give you an explanation for why he’s not interested. So messed up.
  7. Mooning can be used as a sinister form of benchingGetting benched is when you get ghosted only to have the guy return weeks or months later, eager to date you again. It’s messed up, but mooning can make benching even worse because it gives the guy a better chance to keep you on the sidelines after ghosting you. He can silence your texts during the ghosting period, then flip on his notifications when he sees that you’re losing interest.
  8. It boosts snooping. You don’t have proof that your BF is mooning you, unless you check out his iPhone settings, that is. If you’ve been stressing out about how he doesn’t return your texts in a timely manner, you might feel that the only way to gain some peace is to check his phone. Better yet, stop all contact if you can’t trust him and GTFO of the relationship, then the joke’s on him.
  9. It’s the ultimate phub. Snubbing someone with your phone, known as phubbing, is annoying AF. It’s when someone is ignoring you by spending time on their phone instead of taking an interest in your company. Mooning is sort of like phubbing, just behind your back, which is even more humiliating. You’re getting ignored by the guy who’d rather be doing other things than talk to you, like chat up other hot women. What crap.
  10. It saves him drama but increases yours. When a guy moons you, he can sidestep the drama of having to deal with someone he’s not that into. He neatly avoids confrontation, and not just via text. Mooning enables users to block all alerts and calls when their phones are locked. So while he’s having a break from stress, you’re the one who’s feeling it way more. It’s not fair.
  11. It brings the “busy” crap back. Know when a guy doesn’t reply to your messages then sweetly states he was just so busy? Yeah, well that loser now can moon you and claim he was just too busy to text you back, then pop his notifications back on when he wants to chat to you so you buy his BS. Don’t you hate how technology is making it easier for the losers to get their way? FFS.
Giulia Simolo is a writer from Johannesburg, South Africa with a degree in English Language and Literature. She has been working as a journalist for more than a decade, writing for sites including AskMen, Native Interiors, and Live Eco. You can find out more about her on Facebook and LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter @GiuliaSimolo.
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