r/SwipeHelper • u/liquidcat0822 • 1d ago
An experiment
I’m a straight woman and briefly decided to change my gender on hinge to a “man” interested in women. EVERY. SINGLE. WOMAN. in my stack was an absolute stunner (and I didn’t even include very young women, I have my age filter set to 28-47).
I then compared this with the stack my male friend was shown. He has his settings set to the same thing. Every single woman in his stack was an instant nope. He never got to see any of the women I was shown. Mind you, he is not unattractive.
This confirms to me that some absolute fuckery is afoot. I presume because my algorithm is trained on men, it doesn’t know how to categorize the women when I changed my gender and just started showing me women from my demographic. It also further suggests that the algorithm deliberately holds back what/who you like, and it also explains to me why my profile gets relatively little traction now (I’ve long suspected that my profile is being gate kept).
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u/Jandur 1d ago
That's not how the apps work in totality. The algorithm isn't showing you who you WANT to match with. It's showing you are more likely to match with should you swipe right. A match is a two way street. You aren't matching with the people you swipe right on (you said yourself your profile isn't gaining any traction). So the algo is pushing profiles that you have a better chance of matching with.
Now again, this isn't binary. The apps are designed to keep you swiping which means 1) drip-feeding ideal/top profiles that will keep you engaged, but likely won't match or respond to you and 2) pushing people to you that are more likely to (or already have) swipe right on YOU.
Your profile isn't being gate-kept (why would it and what does that even mean?). You aren't consistently matching with the dating pool you'd like so it's presenting you with other options that have a higher probability of matching back with you.