Does it all Hinge on this?
I have to pray not
Ahhh, dating apps. Does anyone actually enjoy using them? It can sometimes feel like a necessary evil, but in describing it that way, it suggests that I am resigned to using them or else will live out my days sitting alone at a cat cafe, crying into my lukewarm cup of tea. On the whole (and I mean probably 97% of my time) I’m very happy being single, living the life I’ve designed for myself, not having to put up with another person’s mess or their annoying habits (luckily for my future partner, I have no such habits of my own). But occasionally, I do think “it would be nice to have someone to share a bottle of wine with on a Tuesday night / go to a gig with / explore a new city with / help me pay my mortgage.” The first three things I can, and do, do with friends. The latter is a mild joke but the Single Tax is a thing, folks - life is just more expensive when you don’t have someone to share the cost of living with!
So, after a little hiatus, I buoyed myself up to rejoin a dating app this year, and coincidentally, Elizabeth Day launched a new podcast called How to Date. Cringe title, but it fits with her “How to” brand (for those not in the know). I was fully prepared to hate this series (hosted by Elizabeth, and Mel Schilling from MAFS, so I’m told - I’ve never watched it), expecting to be annoyed by the smug narration of two women happily married who haven’t needed to use dating apps for many years. However, as with much of what Elizabeth puts out into the world, I really enjoyed it for the most part and actually felt a renewed sense of energy for the possibility of meeting someone. They made it sound so easy.
And so I downloaded Hinge again. Elizabeth met her husband on Hinge years ago: but he was the only person she matched and spoke with, and so of course, she has perhaps forgotten that hers is quite a unique experience – she hit the jackpot without ever having to go back and sift through a pile of profiles that lay waiting. And so while the podcast brings up some excellent points and offers some fun insight, the one thing it doesn’t address is the fact that a lot of profiles you see nowadays seem to be the equivalent of the yellow-stickered reduced section in the supermarket, that, even when reduced to 15p, nobody wants to buy.
I gave my profile a quick spruce up, changing a photo here and there (look, I travel! I go to nice restaurants! I have friends!) and tried to make myself sound more approachable (last year, I asked my friend to look over my profile and give me feedback. It was largely positive but she did suggest I kind of gave a “fuck off vibe”.) So there I was, mid-March, putting my best foot forward and anticipating meeting some really interesting people, because that’s what How to Date had reminded me it’s all about.
And yet. Nowadays you can only “like” a limited number of profiles each day (I think it’s only around 5 profiles a day), so you have to be super selective about who you send one to. You have to make it count. The app’s tagline is “designed to be deleted” but that’s very out of date, in my mind. Their model is no longer to help foster meaningful connections, but rather to squeeze money out of you every which way possible if you want to have any chance of meeting someone. Want to send more likes? Sure! You can pay for it. Want those likes to be seen quicker? Sure! You can get a bit of a queue jump, if you pay for it. Want your profile to be seen by more people? You got it - you just need to pay for it.
After a fairly bland first week of being on Hinge (a couple of boring conversations, one was a little more interesting until he admitted that he actually lived in Leeds, not Clapham as his profile stated) I started to question my life choices. What was I doing here? In the 8 months since I last used it, the app seemed to have plummeted even further downhill.
I realised that when limited to only being able to “like” 5 profiles a day, I seemed to be adopting a bit of a scarcity mindset. This usually mediocre profile now shines bright amongst a pile of dusty bric-a-brac. Liking a profile doesn’t mean they’ll like you back, so you may not even match with this person. My friend suggested a hack of reducing your desired age range and distance to such a narrow window that the app is forced to show you better profiles after running out of the “less desirable.” I followed her advice, but it didn’t seem to do much. It seemed my algorithm was stuck in the sad space of the dating sphere. Photos of people that looked like microwaved potatoes or overpumped gym bros, and some who seem to have opted for a hairstyle popular with 15th century monks. It wasn’t just the photos. Back in the day, Hinge was one of the “better apps” as it gave you prompts to answer to try and get a bit more of your personality across. However, so many guys answer these prompts with “ask me” or simply “...”. One prompt you can choose for your profile is “this year I really want to…” and should be an opportunity to share your hopes and dreams or a funny quip with a potential match, but instead one person had simply put “this year I really want to: get a girlfriend.” Bless. I know there’s a lot of discourse on the internet at the moment around women finding men’s vulnerability an “ick” (untrue) – but, seriously? You sound like a weird teenage boy that’s never spoken to a female before. And there are still far too many people that think the “pineapple on pizza” debate is an interesting topic - it might be, if I hadn’t already seen it on 67 other profiles that morning!
The age/distance “hack” didn’t seem to work for me so I unticked the “deal breaker” box, thinking it would expand the ranges very slightly. The next day I had received 27 likes - jackpot! Until I looked at them. The standout must have been Kenny, 67, who listed ALL the pronouns on his profile (really, Kenny? I sense you’re taking the piss). FML. The filter abruptly went back on.
And thus, a week into my Hinge experience, I reinstated my age limits and resigned myself to paying for a month to try and up my chances of meeting somebody I might enjoy a conversation with. I’ve never paid for a dating app before – not because I’m embarrassed to, but because whenever I did consider it, the prices were eye-watering. And it seemed new year, new price hike, but I was semi-committed to it by that point. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it I did, making sure that it wouldn’t renew for a second month (after all, it’s designed to be deleted, right?)
The benefits of paying for it mean you can see more people that are “your type” and you can set other preferences (such as non-smokers, dating intentions etc). But despite the fact I am now a paying customer, it seems that with the supposed “benefits” also comes restrictions on how many people you can talk to at once. I have to keep the conversation going in order to keep the benefit of unlimited likes… which feels like a lot of emotional labour, to be honest, when some of the conversations are as dull as dishwater but it feels too rude to delete people to make space for a new person.
However, I quickly noticed that the freedom to send unlimited likes really takes the pressure off – no need to overthink it, let’s just see what happens! For the first day, I felt that excitement come back as I was finally seeing people that I would look twice at in real life. It lasted all of 24 hours until I found myself back in the depths of the supermarket dumpsters. One guy sporting a black eye, another touting a gun, and one who used the voice prompt option as an opportunity to meow. Kill me now.
At this point I did need to take a look at myself and question whether I was pitching myself too highly, or was being too fussy. I do recognise that my expectations of people can be too high (some might say unrealistic but I beg to differ) and this can be hard for people to meet. And, look – I certainly would never class myself as beautiful, or even above average in the looks department, but these profiles were becoming offensive. I know I’m not the only person out there that has questioned the daily Hinge “most compatible” suggestion. It was only on sharing a few of the most depressing screenshots with a friend that she conceded that I really was being shown the worst people out there, and suggested going to delete my profile, because at this point, Hinge will offer to reset the algorithm, desperate to keep you on the app. And I’m pleased yet frustrated to report that this did work - within minutes, I was seeing people that mostly fell within the “normal” category of society again. Since then, I’ve been on one date and have been chatting to a few guys. Not every conversation is interesting, and not every one will lead to a meet up in real life, but it’s something. I definitely won’t be paying for a second month, and it angers me how expensive it is to be able to use the app in a way that offers what should be basic functionality.
For more bleak reading on the reality of these dating apps, the Guardian recently published a report that shows that the safety features of many dating apps (Hinge included) are woefully under-resourced and sometimes blithely ignored, even when they know a profile belongs to a sexual predator or even a convicted rapist. What a time to be alive!
Anyway… I’m not going to turn my hand to becoming a dating columnist so I won’t sign off with a “stay tuned for the next instalment!” because I hope there won’t be one. But sometimes it’s just good to have a rant, isn’t it?
This one gueninely made me laugh out loud twice... and honestly can men please ditch the pineapple on pizza debate (and while we are on it pictures of them holding fish)