soft launch

To soft launch a relationship is to hint at it online without showing who the person is. Think of a hand holding a drink, two plates at a restaurant, or the back of someone’s head in a story.

What it means

A soft launch lets people know there’s someone without making a big announcement. Followers who notice start asking questions; everyone else scrolls past. It buys time: if things fizzle, there’s nothing to delete except a photo of a hand.

The term is borrowed from business, where a soft launch is a limited release before the full public one. Merriam-Webster notes that plenty of people find the relationship use a little annoying, which hasn’t slowed it down.

Classic soft launch moves

• A photo of two drinks, or two pairs of shoes
• An arm or a hand in the corner of a picture
• Someone blurry in the background, or turned away from the camera
• A caption like “🤍” with no explanation

Examples

• “She posted a second wine glass in her story. Soft launch?”
• “I’m not ready to post his face yet. We’re in the soft launch era.”
• “That hand in the photo is not her brother’s. It’s a soft launch.”

Where it came from

Know Your Meme’s earliest example of the relationship sense is a tweet from December 2016. It spread in 2020, when actor and comedian Rachel Sennott tweeted about it and TikTok explainers followed. Kourtney Kardashian’s Instagram post in February 2021 is the example most articles point to.

Soft launch vs. hard launch

A soft launch hints. A hard launch shows the person clearly and makes it official. Many couples do one, then the other.

Related terms

• hard launch: going fully public with a relationship
• pocketing: keeping a partner hidden altogether
• sneaky link: a secret hookup partner
• talking stage: the early phase of dating

See more terms like this in our dating slang dictionary.