How to Answer Hinge Prompts

Hinge is a dating app well-known for being built around “Prompts”, which are questions/complete the sentence exercises that provide information about yourself on your Hinge profile for others to read and get to know you. There are of course pictures on Hinge as well as voice and poll prompts, but I think that text prompts are the most interesting subject for study.

From my time on the app I noticed that a lot of patterns of prompt answers that I thought were sub-optimal, assuming that the goal was to drive conversation and get high-quality matches. I think that there are a few reasons why this is the case:

1. People don’t want to appear too earnest/like they’re trying too hard on the app
2. Hinge requires you to create your profile before you are able to use the app and start swiping, so some people probably create their profile in one sitting and never change it
3. People don’t think too deeply about prompt answers, either because they aren’t consulting other people or because they get enough matches/success without an optimized profile

Everything in this article is just my own opinion, but I try to explain my reasoning for everything.

Why optimize? How?

You should be tweaking your profile frequently.

• If something isn’t working then you shouldn’t try to stick with doing the same thing
• You might get bored of seeing similar messages responding to the same prompts all the time and want to switch it up.

Each person’s goals are different for using Hinge and the ideal Hinge profile does not exist, so there are certainly different trade-offs being made when each person is building out their profile. Here are just some potential goals of building a Hinge profile:

1. Showcase your personality/provide information about yourself
   • This is the most straightforward objective but you should try to answer in a way that positions you in a unique way, people see a lot of profiles and similar prompts, so you want to have a fresh answer
2. Drive quality engagement that leads to getting to know each other (and maybe meeting up)
   • Create a narrative “open loop”
     • People like complete narratives so if you provide an incomplete story people may want to follow up and start a conversation
   • Make lists of things
     • It could be attributes about yourself or things that you like/want to do with your partner
     • People who have things in common feel closer to each other, which makes them more likely to engage.
3. Demonstrate why/how you might be a good partner
   • Many people are swiping with the long-term in mind, so it would make sense for you to show your potential as a good partner.
4. Stand out among others
   • Basic profiles incentivize quick swiping and contribute to the monotony of swiping.
   • If you have interests that you really want to share, do that, but otherwise that’s not always the most unique thing about you so it will just fade into the noise as well.

Creating Conversational Entrypoints

Not all prompts need to generate conversation, but at least one of them does. If you don’t have something to anchor conversation after a like has turned into a match, the match will likely not go anywhere. This happens because someone might have simply swiped on you because they found you attractive or has forgotten why they swiped on you in the first place.

Hinge prompt answers are done in the understanding that people will attempt to respond to them and spark conversation off of them.

I believe that if you don’t create entrypoints then the other person is severely limited in their conversational options. This means that they will only be able to comment on other things that they’ve seen on your profile, like pictures, or just completely make something up. Since Hinge has lots of users the person is likely disincentivized to be very creative and invest time in trying to start a conversation. The nature of swiping on the app seemingly actively discourages deep contemplation.

Certain prompts or prompt answers shape the kind of responses too heavily and only allow certain things to be said over and over again

• For example, food opinions probably do well to drive engagement, but also surely yield unoriginal responses.
  • Ex: “My controversial opinion… Pineapple belongs on pizza”

Asking for your favorite something (“One thing I’d like to know about you is…”) or your latest read/watch is probably a good idea because it is something that genuinely differs from person to person.

Common Pitfalls

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone genuinely misunderstand what a prompt is asking, but I think some responses demonstrate other misunderstandings.

• Prompts aren’t literal
  • Ex: “My love language is…” “My most irrational fear…” are in my opinion not good prompts, but at the very least they should be more in-depth answers that actually tell something about your personality other than “Physical touch” or “Spiders”.
• Prompts aren’t sentences
  • You shouldn’t complete a prompt like its a single sentence. When reading through a profile that does this it can flow weird and feel rather curt.
  • There are grammatical ways to answer Hinge prompts and it should feel jarring when you read the prompt and answer together and it doesn’t flow

Answering prompts in a vague way

• don’t say we’ll get along if we have the same music taste that reveals no new information instead just say a couple of artists — use in group signifiers with niche references rather than genres like heavy metal or rap like name some artists
• best way to win me over to is name a time and place (this sends a signal but conveys no useful information about the person, doesn’t tip on why you should go out with this person) it doesn’t help alignment so you could get random replies

Misusing humor or irony

• Meta-talk about Hinge or dating/talking to men as a straight woman—irony doesn’t save you!
  • If you like it then keep it, but I don’t think it adds any value to the profile. You are not too good or above Hinge, you’re here after all. Worse, it’s a backhanded insult to other people who are earnestly on here, commit or go home.
  • Ex: “My worst idea… Downloading this app”
  • Ex: “My biggest fear… Dating men”
• joke profiles are okay if the bit is good
  • is having a joke profile a way to not get vulnerable?
• Don’t use a joke that you didn’t come up with/saw online
  • I’ve seen “beg for death penalty at traffic court” as a prompt answer multiple times and it is funny, but only the first time you see it, then you can be seen as unoriginal if the person has seen it done already

These prompts probably work, but I think that they could work in the same way if not better if tweaked slightly.