I’m black and Filipino. I’m conventionally attractive and have never had an issue on any dating site. I don’t expect to be every single man’s cup of tea but I’d never experienced only getting like 5 likes in an entire day! They were also showing me guys I had nothing in common with in terms of education and goals. My friend jokingly said it’s bc “Hinge isn’t for POC”. I decided to test out her theory. I changed my race to just Asian but never showed either as visible on my profile. I closed the app and went to the gym. I had 42 likes and 17 messages in the 2 hours I was at the gym. This was more than my other 5 days on the site combined 🙃

I feel like Hinges algorithm sucks for a lot of POC for this reason. It’s not that there aren’t a ton of people out there it’s that Hinge doesn’t show them your profile. They knock you out of the game before you even get a chance. Has anyone else seen this with Hinge?

13 comments
  1. Most men get 5 likes a month so 5 likes in a day is orders of magnitude better than most men, it’s all relative…you are considered rich by some and you might feel poor compared to others. It sounds like you are getting some hits so just make the most out of those. I’m a brown dude so I can understand but me complaining that it’s harder for me relative to say a white person isn’t going to improve my chances in the dating market I have to deal with it and adapt.

  2. The fact you got 42 likes and 17 messages means Hinge can clearly work for WOCs. It just so happens that you’re specifically black, and there’s a bias against black women in online dating. It’s even further exacerbated because people can block out the races that show up on their feed on Hinge. So if a guy adjusts his race filters to see everyone except black women, he’ll never see you.

  3. I’m a black guy and Hinge has worked great for me. Although, it’s not that great at picking people that it thinks I will be a good fit for. Almost every time I get a notification saying “we think you two should meet” it’s someone that I have nothing in common with.

    That said though, I think changing your race to Asian specifically, had a lot to do with your sudden surge of matches. Asian women are unfortunately fetishized by a lot of guys. So there are probably guys that set their preferences to Asian only.

  4. I think I get one match every couple months, that just ghost as soon as I ask them out. You are lucky to get 5 a day holy!

  5. Black women and Indian/Asian men are generally biased against in online dating. It’s rough, but that’s just how it seems to be.

    I don’t know for sure, but I suspect Hinge’s algorithm tries to match people’s preferences to whom they see on the app. Maybe if you swipe on only white women, it’ll tend to show you more white women.

    This is what happens as a result of being able to put your ethnicity. There’s a reason why people are starting to think white dudes date on easy difficulty.

  6. I’ve had a different experience. I’m a black woman in my mid 20s and just made a Hinge profile and got like 40 likes overnight.. so maybe it’s your location??

  7. Slightly OT, but what baffles me about Hinge is that while other preferences (e.g. children, family plans, drugs, politics, etc.) are locked unless you pay, it’s free for people to set up preferences based on race and ethnicity. You’d think it would be the reverse, since those I mentioned are arguably at least just as important as race/ethnicity.

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