Welcome to WhatsApp Jail, Where Old Flings and Ghosters Go to Serve Time

“The pits of hell” has to be one of the most common phrases I hear when gossiping about the modern dating scene. When you’re trying to keep three talking stages alive, wondering why two successful dates ended up ghosting, and constantly swiping left on any mention of having the “gift of the gab,” it’s hard to keep morale high. It’s probably why I, like many other single women, have taken to creating a nice little “WhatsApp Jail” for this type of online barrage.For those unfamiliar with WhatsApp’s archive feature, it allows you to hide chats without deleting them forever. Maybe you went to a yoga group once, and it wasn’t quite your vibe but you’re not ready to say goodbye to the chance of another yoga session quite yet—archive that thing! The messages will still exist, but you’ll have to go to the separate archived chat feed to see them. If someone messages you, but you’ve archived their chat, you won’t receive a notification as you would with a normal message. Instead, a small (1) will appear at the top of your feed, where the archived chats live.So how is this relevant to us singletons? Well, the archived feed (known on TikTok as WhatsApp Jail) is where talking stages are sent to serve a life sentence. We know it can be rare for a conversation to make it out of a dating app and onto WhatsApp in the first place, but it’s rarer still for that WhatsApp chat to manifest into an *actual* date. During this weird limbo where you’re trying to secure an evening of drinks, having a bunch of unsaved numbers crowding your usual chat feed can be 1) annoying and 2) just a constant reminder of lazy men never following through. Archiving the chats is a way to keep all these potential love interests in one place. It also means you don’t have to keep looking at the last message you sent and second-guessing how many ‘x’s’ you added.What’s more, there’s no thrill quite like seeing the little (1) at the top of your WhatsApp feed. Since there’s no notification associated with archived chats, it’s the only way to know if a jailmate has messaged you. It’s this surprise factor that’s the most exciting: Which prisoner has messaged? And what kind of message lies beyond the (1)?! The lucky dip options could consist of anything from, ‘Hey stranger, remember me?’ to the nasty surprise of an unsolicited nude (excuse me but why is this still happening?! Have none of you followed cyberflashing laws?). At the very least, it’s a great excuse for a Paddy McGuinness impression: “Single man, reveal yourself!”And it’s not just a small phenomenon. TikTok is awash with people discussing the trend, and I even spoke to some of the other single ladies at Cosmo who utilize this feature. One of them, after having gone on a couple of dates, said: “When they asked to see me again, and I sent the rejection message, I immediately archived because I couldn’t bear to see their replies pop up on my phone.” This just highlights another brilliant benefit of the no-notification feature: it takes away the anxiety of waiting for a reply after sending a risky text.The main use for this handy little feature, though, is to save yourself the embarrassment of remembering that someone’s ghosted you—or, worse still, you’ve been hit with the, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve been on a date with someone else, and I think I’m going to try and make it work with them’. No one wants that message staring right back at them when all they went on WhatsApp for in the first place was to message their mum to see if they can eat chicken one day past its use-by date. Archiving is the answer. Drunk texts and ghosted messages don’t exist if you can’t see them. We don’t make the rules!There’s a positive, too: what could be a truer sign of a successful date or talking stage than a release from jail? Forget becoming exclusive, the newest marker of a blossoming relationship is WhatsApp parole. Will a second date become a third if you unarchive them? Will the messages be consistent? The banter flowing? There’s only one way to find out. And hey, maybe in a few more dates’ time, you might actually save their number.