I almost want to advise people who use hinge to make a common practice to periodically go through the settings and uncheck the top 2 ethnic groups they see in their feed. Take time once a week maybe to explore the groups of people the algorithm is hiding from them.

Maybe the algorithm is right after all and you are more likely to match with certain groups, but maybe it’s not perfect and it’s artificially limiting people’s opportunities.

This advice is especially for straight men, as anecdotally the match rates are low across all demographics.

>you shouldn’t sell yourself short

The way I describe it is: if you ask men to describe their “type” (hinge) they will almost never describe someone who physically looks like me. But if you show a man my photo and ask “smash or pass” point blank (bumble), I usually do okay.

You can probably understand this as an Asian man but words cannot express how much its mainly White and East Asian women who get numbers like this. Brown women of all types get match rates more like men’s, no matter how attractive they are. Countless studies document this. If privacy wasn’t a concern and the OPs from these graphs shared their profile screenshots, we would quickly realize there are a couple more requirements than “girl,” and ethnicity is number one.

Hinge’s algorithm makes this worse by trying to figure out your “type.” Even if a dude doesn’t have a racial preference, Hinge will create one for them. If most of the people in their area are White and East Asian women, they’re mostly liking profiles of White and East Asian women, Hinge thinks they mainly like White and East Asian women, and the app is less likely to show them anyone else.

Anecdotally, I’m a decently attractive black woman and hinge is an utter ghost town, no likes, no matches, because I’m less likely to be “put in the same room” as the guys who will like my profile as I would on say, Bumble, where I get better (but not great) results, because everyone is mixed in with everyone and it’s more organic. Last time I downloaded my Bumble data my match rate was about 8%.

I'm not saying all this to "woe is me." I work with what I got. Just as data nerds we like to paint a full picture with the numbers, and the common "All you have to do is be a woman" story is woefully misleading.

Edited to add links.

Yeah the KISS song commercial will stick in my brain forever.

He has better port de bras arms than me lol

As someone who has studied and worked overseas, I feel like true passport power is how many countries you can live in visa free.

The Europeans I know really tend to take for granted that they can just move from one country to another (ANY other country) and just get a job without having to get visa sponsorship.

You already ruined it by fooling around with someone you know had feelings for you in the past. That was your first mistake. You have to end it and if she accuses you of sending mixed signals it’s fair for her to feel that way.

PSA to all, not just OP: The moment you find out someone likes you, that context and history STAYS with everything you do from that point. So if you let them continue to flirt with you, you are at least somewhat complicit in leading them on, and “but I didn’t actively flirt back” doesn’t absolve you. You do need to actually communicate with them that you’re not interested. If you know exactly what they are pursuing and make a conscious choice to let them continue pursuing it, that’s enough to signal “there’s opportunity here.”