Orbiting

Orbiting is what happens when someone stops replying to your messages or cuts off direct contact, but continues to engage with your social media — watching your stories, liking posts, occasionally reacting to content. They are gone from the conversation but not from your peripheral vision, which is precisely the point. The orbiters maintain a presence that prevents you from fully closing the chapter, without taking any responsibility for the relationship or its ending.

The term captures something that became common with the architecture of modern social platforms, but the behaviour is deeply connected to dating-app culture. On apps like Tinder and Bumble, ending a connection costs nothing — you can simply stop replying. When the same person has a social media account linked to their app presence, the exit becomes partial: they leave the conversation but stay in your awareness. Swipe culture's low investment in individual connections makes this easy to rationalise; it takes no effort and provides the faint option of re-engagement without the discomfort of either a proper ending or a genuine return.

Lamp's intent-first model reduces the ambiguity that orbiting exploits. When introductions are based on genuine compatibility and both parties have been matched for real fit — not pulled from a mass queue — the relational weight of a connection is higher. Ending it properly costs more, socially and psychologically, than ghosting and orbiting a stranger from a swipe stack. The alternative to orbiting is investment, and Lamp creates the conditions for investment from the first introduction.