Hinge Echo Chamber
Published Nov 2 2024
Published Nov 2 2024
My era of Hinge Psychosis was graciously cut short after I drunkenly gave my phone to a guy who messaged a bunch of people telling them to kill themselves, after which I was promptly banned for life. My time on the app felt like peering into a hall of mirrors, all of which were pointed at each other. Once lined up in a row, each profile confronts you with the unsettling familiarity of everyone’s sameness—distilled to six selected photos, coaxed by a narrow set of prompts to muster a mumble of self-expression.
What’s more, people seem to resign themselves to sameness even more than they have to. There’s a creeping pattern of uniformity that takes hold, whether consciously or not, drawing people into a kind of unspoken alignment.
This hall of mirrors is heightened by the impulse to appear 'normal,' to show just enough of oneself, but only within the confines of what’s socially digestible, what fits the molds of the moment. This drive for conformity may be partly subconscious, but is firmly rooted in our modes of engagement with the world. Parts of our identities and expressions are inevitably conditioned by cultural norms, social cues, and shared language.
Yet, the sameness of Hinge profiles feels partly inadvertent, not solely a result of mimesis. Most users (the straight ones) can’t see their counterparts, competing instead from within their respective black boxes. It raises the question of how we arrive at this sameness, suggesting that our fate may indeed be to become scarcely distinguishable versions of one another, each of us spiralling into a maelstrom of homogeneity, ironically, while the task at hand is to Stand Out.
There is a distinct monotony to the Hinge profile formula:
One or two selfies, a group shot, a hobby photo, a 'personality' pic, maybe a meme at the end.
The first pattern I recognized was a prompt that surfaced with such absurd regularity that it became surreal:
I was struck by how many men seemed to have copy-pasted this line from each other. Were they gathering together, workshopping responses, advising each other to write this? Were they all bots? Were they Googling 'best Hinge prompts'? Or had a TikTok gone viral?
I took it upon myself to investigate, matching with a few who had this line on their profile. One, when questioned on his source, was evasive.
After further research, I found the Reel responsible for this flood of sameness.
And this is merely one example. Prompt after prompt, Hinge users respond in near-unison, voices blending into a chorus of repetition:
Perfect first date: go to couples therapy and see how long it takes the therapist to figure out that we don't actually know each other.
Together we could: Irish exit
Together we could: delete this app
Worst idea I’ve ever had? Downloading Hinge
Looking for: a tennis partner
The best way to ask me out is: Just ask [men]
The best way to ask me out is: by naming a time and place [girls]
I go crazy for: girls on lexapro
Love language is: bullying
The hallmark of a good relationship is: a good flirt to roast ratio
I’m weirdly attracted to: you
These contrast themselves against the stale air that hung in the Hinge atmosphere in, say, 2020:
I want someone who: doesn’t take themselves too seriously
If loving this is wrong, I don’t want to be right: pineapple on pizza
By now, these responses have soaked into the mainstream with such saturation that most know better than to continue repeating them. What’s more, they belong to a bygone era of internet rhetoric, which maintains the pace of a marathon sprint. We don’t want to be the person still saying “demure” after those 3 dark days online. We want to signal that we’re in the know, somewhere in the forefront of the current.
The unfortunate conditions that create this echo chamber are rooted in the separation of straight men’s and women’s profiles: we can’t step outside of our black boxes to ascertain how we measure up within the line-up. There’s no way to gauge just how repetitive one’s profile is, or how deeply submerged we are in the echo chamber. Even if we don’t directly replicate responses from Instagram Reels, we absorb a similar tone, a tacit grammar of culture.
This is the runoff of Twitter-disease. Our modes of expression begin to dissolve into the same soup of popular discourse, as if we’ve each been handed the same template for individuality. Exposed to the same stream of TikToks, Reels, tweets, and memes, we unconsciously cultivate a sense of what will resonate—of what reads as funny, accessible, interesting, or relatable. It’s like our in-group lexicons have burst open and become the lingua franca. We adopt the same affect, intuit the same dispositions, and express ourselves in ways we subliminally assume will be met with approval.
What is this silent understanding, this mysterious synchronization, but the natural result of a system that trains us to desire recognition and affirmation above all else? In our pursuit to self-express, we adopt a voice that is acceptable and comprehensible—one that speaks in the collective hum of sameness. And so, as we participate in this diluted discourse, we lose something essential, resigning our unique expressions to what is merely relatable. After talking to my friends about the topic of this essay, they started sending me Reels where men and women pose as each other, “the most unoriginal girl/guy on Hinge.”
When I asked my male friends for examples of homogeneity in women’s profiles, they described how girls adopt a tone that verges on narcissism, likely cultivated through popular online feminist culture. This is a thinly veiled charade of reverse psychology: to project that we are queens or princesses, hoping that this convinces men into believing it as well. We project our value in order to create an expectation of how we want to be treated. At this point, the act has become transparent. It used to bring an air of shock or surprise when hot girls self-recognized their hotness, but later trickled down to reach the mainstream, where everyone has learned to trick others into thinking they’re desirable, simply by telling them that they are.
Conversely, there are many parallel exhibitions of self-effacing rhetoric:
One thing you should know about me: I’m literally just some guy/I’m just a girl
This would suggest that falling into the Hinge echo chamber isn’t completely unwanted. I want to communicate that I am totally normal and sane and agreeable. However, I carry the slightest air of difference. A harmony to the chorus—still in-tune, but a pitch above the rest. A complementarity that is not disarming, but subtly distinguishable. I can speak the language, but in my own accent. I know the tacit rules of this game, and I play within them.
And so, what is our hope for Hinge? It is clear that we all hate it, as another common thread that weaves through the flood of profiles is a fervent disdain we all feel for having to subject ourselves to this humiliation ritual. To post oneself online and reveal our desperation, to be “looking for love” in such a public manner. To be forced through the process of pitching ourselves, to curate an exhibition of self in the public line-up of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, hoping to be picked. To make ourselves palatable not only to our romantic prospects, but to the algorithm. To be resigned to the fact that this shit is garbage but we participate in it anyway; partly out of curiosity, partly out of hope that we will be one of the lucky few for whom it Works. To maintain an air of jadedness, to project our low expectations, but still hold on to the tiny piece of faith that someone out there will recognize us for our difference. That they will see me as special, a cut above the rest, as I wait in line among the countless other suitors who look and speak like me.
What’s more, people seem to resign themselves to sameness even more than they have to. There’s a creeping pattern of uniformity that takes hold, whether consciously or not, drawing people into a kind of unspoken alignment.
This hall of mirrors is heightened by the impulse to appear 'normal,' to show just enough of oneself, but only within the confines of what’s socially digestible, what fits the molds of the moment. This drive for conformity may be partly subconscious, but is firmly rooted in our modes of engagement with the world. Parts of our identities and expressions are inevitably conditioned by cultural norms, social cues, and shared language.
Yet, the sameness of Hinge profiles feels partly inadvertent, not solely a result of mimesis. Most users (the straight ones) can’t see their counterparts, competing instead from within their respective black boxes. It raises the question of how we arrive at this sameness, suggesting that our fate may indeed be to become scarcely distinguishable versions of one another, each of us spiralling into a maelstrom of homogeneity, ironically, while the task at hand is to Stand Out.
There is a distinct monotony to the Hinge profile formula:
One or two selfies, a group shot, a hobby photo, a 'personality' pic, maybe a meme at the end.
The first pattern I recognized was a prompt that surfaced with such absurd regularity that it became surreal:
I was struck by how many men seemed to have copy-pasted this line from each other. Were they gathering together, workshopping responses, advising each other to write this? Were they all bots? Were they Googling 'best Hinge prompts'? Or had a TikTok gone viral?
I took it upon myself to investigate, matching with a few who had this line on their profile. One, when questioned on his source, was evasive.
After further research, I found the Reel responsible for this flood of sameness.
And this is merely one example. Prompt after prompt, Hinge users respond in near-unison, voices blending into a chorus of repetition:
Perfect first date: go to couples therapy and see how long it takes the therapist to figure out that we don't actually know each other.
Together we could: Irish exit
Together we could: delete this app
Worst idea I’ve ever had? Downloading Hinge
Looking for: a tennis partner
The best way to ask me out is: Just ask [men]
The best way to ask me out is: by naming a time and place [girls]
I go crazy for: girls on lexapro
Love language is: bullying
The hallmark of a good relationship is: a good flirt to roast ratio
I’m weirdly attracted to: you
These contrast themselves against the stale air that hung in the Hinge atmosphere in, say, 2020:
I want someone who: doesn’t take themselves too seriously
If loving this is wrong, I don’t want to be right: pineapple on pizza
By now, these responses have soaked into the mainstream with such saturation that most know better than to continue repeating them. What’s more, they belong to a bygone era of internet rhetoric, which maintains the pace of a marathon sprint. We don’t want to be the person still saying “demure” after those 3 dark days online. We want to signal that we’re in the know, somewhere in the forefront of the current.
The unfortunate conditions that create this echo chamber are rooted in the separation of straight men’s and women’s profiles: we can’t step outside of our black boxes to ascertain how we measure up within the line-up. There’s no way to gauge just how repetitive one’s profile is, or how deeply submerged we are in the echo chamber. Even if we don’t directly replicate responses from Instagram Reels, we absorb a similar tone, a tacit grammar of culture.
This is the runoff of Twitter-disease. Our modes of expression begin to dissolve into the same soup of popular discourse, as if we’ve each been handed the same template for individuality. Exposed to the same stream of TikToks, Reels, tweets, and memes, we unconsciously cultivate a sense of what will resonate—of what reads as funny, accessible, interesting, or relatable. It’s like our in-group lexicons have burst open and become the lingua franca. We adopt the same affect, intuit the same dispositions, and express ourselves in ways we subliminally assume will be met with approval.
What is this silent understanding, this mysterious synchronization, but the natural result of a system that trains us to desire recognition and affirmation above all else? In our pursuit to self-express, we adopt a voice that is acceptable and comprehensible—one that speaks in the collective hum of sameness. And so, as we participate in this diluted discourse, we lose something essential, resigning our unique expressions to what is merely relatable. After talking to my friends about the topic of this essay, they started sending me Reels where men and women pose as each other, “the most unoriginal girl/guy on Hinge.”
When I asked my male friends for examples of homogeneity in women’s profiles, they described how girls adopt a tone that verges on narcissism, likely cultivated through popular online feminist culture. This is a thinly veiled charade of reverse psychology: to project that we are queens or princesses, hoping that this convinces men into believing it as well. We project our value in order to create an expectation of how we want to be treated. At this point, the act has become transparent. It used to bring an air of shock or surprise when hot girls self-recognized their hotness, but later trickled down to reach the mainstream, where everyone has learned to trick others into thinking they’re desirable, simply by telling them that they are.
Conversely, there are many parallel exhibitions of self-effacing rhetoric:
One thing you should know about me: I’m literally just some guy/I’m just a girl
This would suggest that falling into the Hinge echo chamber isn’t completely unwanted. I want to communicate that I am totally normal and sane and agreeable. However, I carry the slightest air of difference. A harmony to the chorus—still in-tune, but a pitch above the rest. A complementarity that is not disarming, but subtly distinguishable. I can speak the language, but in my own accent. I know the tacit rules of this game, and I play within them.
And so, what is our hope for Hinge? It is clear that we all hate it, as another common thread that weaves through the flood of profiles is a fervent disdain we all feel for having to subject ourselves to this humiliation ritual. To post oneself online and reveal our desperation, to be “looking for love” in such a public manner. To be forced through the process of pitching ourselves, to curate an exhibition of self in the public line-up of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, hoping to be picked. To make ourselves palatable not only to our romantic prospects, but to the algorithm. To be resigned to the fact that this shit is garbage but we participate in it anyway; partly out of curiosity, partly out of hope that we will be one of the lucky few for whom it Works. To maintain an air of jadedness, to project our low expectations, but still hold on to the tiny piece of faith that someone out there will recognize us for our difference. That they will see me as special, a cut above the rest, as I wait in line among the countless other suitors who look and speak like me.