"Zombied" is the Dating Trend to Watch Out For and It's Worse Than Being "Ghosted"
New Yorker shares what it's like dating in the city and why it's so hard.
If you've ever been ghosted, when someone suddenly stops contacting you without explanation, you know how crushing it can be. But according to one woman, there's something worse to look out for when dating–"zombied." Singer-songwriter Mariel Darling took to TikTok to share with her 256,000 followers that she's being "zombied" and the term has quickly gone viral as the new dating trend.
In the eight second clip that's been viewed over 1.5 million times Darling says, "Girl, you're being ghosted? I'm being zombied," she shared. "It's like ghosting, but he comes back from the dead after a couple of months and hits you up," she explained in the video with 152,100 likes.
In a playful response to the popular clip, the official account for Ghostbusters commented on the TikTok. "Hmm…don't know if our proton packs can handle a" [zombie]. In a follow up video, Darling responded to the comment and said, "have you ever been ghosted, but they come back? That's called being zombied. So who are you gonna call? Not the Ghostbusters."
In an interview with Fox5 New York Darling said, "Being zombied is worse than being ghosted because they leave your life and then they come back from the dead. [Sometimes] it's a couple months later or a year later, and it's just torture."
In the interview with Fox5, the songwriter explained why she thinks dating is hard in general, but especially in New York. "In a city like New York, there are people at your disposal. We have our devices. There's people in person, there's people on our screens. You don't even really get to know a person's real personality and at their core because we have these screens in front of us to divide us. I think with the rise of social media, dating has completely changed."
Darling shared a recent dating experience and said this guy she was seeing recently reappeared after ghosting her. "I was dating a guy in New York City. He moved away and then with his coming back to the city, he's now pursuing me. He came back from the dead."
Darling revealed she was also zombied in high school and that she's "collected a graveyard at this point." She went on to say, "I feel like the streets of New York are a zombie apocalypse mixed with Michael Jackon's Thriller music video because all these guys are tap dancing around commitment."
Darling explained how this issue is so "relatable" and how hard dating can be for other reasons besides social media. "It's been tough to date when you know your worth. You need to know your worth. You need to be confident in yourself and what you deserve."
Darling was inspired to write a song about her dating life when she realized how many people have experienced being zombied. "I took a page out of Taylor Swift's book," she said. 'I am writing about my dating experiences." She added, "I was so excited that I wasn't the only one going through this. What a good songwriter does is she takes the content of her own life and turns it into something beautiful."
