I Didnt Realize Dating App Algorithms Were This Simple

Two years ago, I was sitting on my toilet swiping. First match this week. Knew I wasn't a bad-looking guy, but I hadn't been on a date in 1,042 days. Despite me trying dating apps on three different occasions. Fed up, I stormed out of the bathroom without wiping and swore that something would change. I sought to find the blueprint for dating apps. Honestly, too.

Well, I got so many matches that I started scheduling dates every single day and ended up going on 30 dates in 30 days. Actually, more like 50 dates in 60 days, but it doesn't sound as good because some days had two to three dates within the same day. And I figured out how the dating app algorithms actually work, how to construct a perfect profile, and how to solve an issue that I think was plaguing me. The shadow ban, where your profile is in a weird twilight zone. You can swipe on people, but no one sees you. And if you get less than one match a week, this probably is your problem. And it turns out that there's only one way to reverse it, and it's not deleting the app.

[Music] Never look in the kitchen. You don't want to know how the food is made. I worked at McDonald's for two years in college and I thought that this lesson would be tattooed on my forehead. But I looked anyway and what I learned was this. That every major dating app, Tinder, Hinge, OKCid, among many, many, many others are all owned by one company, Matchgroup. This is important because all of the apps owned by Matchgroup use the same algorithm. And at its core, it's basically an ELO rating system. I wish this was an acronym, but it's not. We can say it stands for the endless loneliness optimizer. I mean, if you think about the incentives of dating apps, they don't want you to meet someone, fall in love, and get married because then they can't make any more money from you. Now, luckily, they have enough people with bad profiles who will be stuck on the apps forever if they don't fix the underlying issues.

Now, you don't need to know specifically how the algorithm works because it's extremely complex, but for the nerdy folks, I've included a little math in the description. And for now, I'll give you the high level. If ELO sounds familiar, that's because it is the same system that is used in both chess and ping pong, among many others. Now, this score, the ELO score represents how good you are of a player. And the distribution of players looks like this. So, if we say this is ELO down here, number, and then the number of people, and then this is about 2,000. And the median is about right here at about 600. Now for reference, in ping pong, I am about here at about 1,500, which is okay. I stopped training super hard until I ended up moving to the wonderful nation of Taiwan. And the problem initially is that skill is kind of subjective. Meaning, you know, the times where you beat someone who's much better than you, but then you lose to someone who's much worse. So, it's kind of hard to tell how good you actually are unless you play a large number of matches across a wide variance of people at different skill levels. Then, based on the outcomes of each match, we can start to hone in on where your actual skill level really is.

Now, dating apps do the same thing, but instead of rating for skill, they're actually rating for attractiveness. So, under the hood, a new user is given a score and it's actually temporarily inflated. The newbie boost is a real thing because if you think about it, the app wants you to get initial matches as soon as possible because then this will increase your chances of getting hooked on the app. Now, this is similar to Facebook. When they launched, the product team realized that if you have more than, I think it was like, seven friends, that you're exponentially more likely to continue using the app. It made it sticky. So they launched features like "People You May Know" and let people sync their contacts into their Facebook friend list to give people the best shot to hit that seven friends as fast as possible. So you are assigned that initial score and then your profile is shown to a wide variety of people, both with really high scores and really low scores. And based on how they swipe on you, after thousands or tens of thousands of people testing it, they can get a pretty good estimation of what your perceived attractiveness is. It's actually really smart. Now, this would sound like the only thing that matters in your profile is the pictures. Nice Troy Wilson trying to stretch out this video to be an hour long, but that's not actually the whole case. Now, pictures mattered a lot, but don't forget that these dating apps are a business. Meaning that you can actually increase your score by benefiting the bottom line of the business. And by that, I don't just mean buying premium. I mean that the algorithm cares mostly about keeping people on the app for as long as possible. The longer they stay, the more money they're able to make from each person. It's the same with YouTube.

So, here are three simple things that you can do to boost your ELO score without actually changing your profile at all. Number one is to not be a bot. That is supposed to be Wall-E, maybe the ugliest Wall-E ever in existence. So, if we think about it, it behooves the dating apps to identify bots as fast as possible because they ruin the user experience for everybody. They won't engage with people and they might even actually make people delete the app, which is a worst-case scenario for the business. So we absolutely do not want the app to think for even a second that we could be a bot. So we can generally think, how would a bot swipe? And then we want to do the opposite. Meaning, don't swipe only in the same direction every single time, not all yes and not all no. And a general rule of thumb that I use is to tap through every single picture that the person has and even read their bio. And I know this will take some time, but if we're following the second rule, this will become major because we are going to start messaging every single one of our matches. And for the love of Christ, don't say anything of these variations, no matter how many 'y's you put on it, it's not going to work. Read their profile, and there's usually always something within the profile that you can ask about. And if it's a match that you have no interest in messaging, then you shouldn't have matched with them in the first place. Hence, number one, spend the time to actually cultivate the matches that you're getting. And number three, get them back. Meaning, the absolute best thing that you can do for the app is send a message that gets people to come back to the app. And this is a little controversial, but when you first download the app, I have found it very fruitful to message people exhaustively. Even if you know it's not going to work out, keep the conversation going for as long as possible, just to boost your score, to show your profile's real, and that you are engaging with the people that you're matching with. Yes, this is rude. I don't make the rules.

And finally, I know I said three, but four just doesn't sound punchy. We want to get premium. Now, if you're only looking for hookups, then maybe it's a waste of money. But if you are looking for someone to date or your life partner, hear me out. It is completely worth it. One of the most famous studies of all time is the Harvard Study of Adult Development. It started off with two core groups of men. One who were Harvard sophomores and then the second who were of the same age but in very poor neighborhoods in Boston. And the main goal was to see how much of an effect income disparity had on people's happiness later in their life. They collected as much data as they could about these men from medical records, interviews, family histories, and even brain scans. And soon, this initial core group expanded to also include their partners and their kids. And now today, it's still running over almost 90 years later and has 1,300 people having their data collected. And what they found, the highest predictor of both health and happiness, was not wealth, wasn't money, fame, admiration. Instead, it was simple. The quality of your relationships. Good relationships literally help you live longer. Whereas loneliness and bad relationships break you down and can be almost as harmful as alcoholism or smoking. And the person that you spend the most time with besides yourself is your future partner. But you're telling me that you wouldn't spend $20 to have a higher likelihood of finding this person? And it hasn't been officially said, but I'm almost positive that when you get premium, there's a little bit of an ELO boost.

Also, now all this matters because even if you are a supermodel, actually maybe not a supermodel, but even if you're very attractive, if your actions are not in accordance with the algorithm and they think you're a bot, it will tank your score. And below a certain score, this line that I have right here, you will be shadowbanned, where your profile is no longer shown to anybody, but you can still swipe to your heart's content, and they don't tell you that you're shadowbanned. And I'm almost positive that this is what happened on my first few attempts of using dating apps. Either that, or I'm ugly. Dealer's choice. And sadly, there's only one way to get rid of a shadowban, but we'll get into that later because you won't have to worry about it if the app doesn't think you're ugly or a bot.

And the most important part, and this isn't like an 80/20 fix, this is like a 99/1 fix because you can tweak your bio to be absolutely perfect. And you can have the funniest prompts of all time, but if your pictures suck, it doesn't matter. So, what is bad? There's really four main obvious ones. First being selfies. At most, you are allowed one. That is only if the lighting is perfect, you have a cool background, it's funny, or it doesn't look like a selfie. Otherwise, get rid of them entirely. And if your entire profile is selfies, I can almost guarantee that you are shadowbanned currently. And I know you don't have any pictures of yourself, but we'll get to that in a moment. Except is pictures that don't actually have you in them. I have reviewed a lot of profiles when I was doing my deep dive and so many dudes specifically have profiles where many of the pictures don't have them in it at all. For instance, if we pick on my guy Noah, two of those pictures don't have him in it at all. And again, this screams that we think we're ugly, insecure, even if it's just because we don't actually have pictures of ourselves. So, no pictures that don't have us. Next up is... That is not a penis, I swear. Next up is pictures that don't show our face. And this is super, super common. It's hard to tell what you look like if you're always wearing sunglasses and a hat. It makes it look like you're hiding something. And it's not as cool as you think it is. So, generally, it's fine to have one picture, maybe two, with sunglasses and a hat, but try to keep it to a minimum and make sure that you're wearing different hats or sunglasses. Now, I always used this picture because those sunglasses are objectively cool. The only downside being a lot of people asked me who the other guy was. And speaking of not being as cool as you think, nothing gets me going like a fat watch or a thick car. Hearing a V12 accelerate has made my entire week on many occasions. But generally, women don't care about watches or cars, meaning that pictures like this won't make them swoon. But big butt. If you are a car or a watch guy, there is a way to show it tactically. The next example of a bad shot is a group shot. And I get that we need to show that we have friends, but these types of pictures are no good. I know that I have a default reaction to this whenever I see someone's profile where I have to search too hard to see which one they are, cuz there are multiple group shots. I'll just say no immediately. Photos with people are fine, but make sure that it's not too many people and they have to play "Where's Waldo?". Finally, a profile where the pictures don't have any variety. Maybe it's you at different angles, but you're not doing anything. There's no motion, and people aren't learning anything about you from it. We need to think of our profile like a story. We're painting an image that is selling us and trying to get people to come into our world. Meaning, if all the pictures look the same, why would anyone swipe on that?

Okay, so then what is good and how are we going to get those pictures? Now, you only really need a handful. And there's a formula to it. The first one is that simple headshot, nips and up, with a nice blurry background. And this is crucial because people need to see your whole face nice and close up. Examples being like these. Next is one with a smile. If all your pictures look like this, it doesn't look hard. You look like a serial killer. Men need to drop their fear of smiling. It's not a bad thing. At least one crack, a little bit of smile. You don't even need to show teeth. Next, my favorite is a hobby or activity shot. That is a man playing tennis, if you couldn't tell. And this one really, what do you do for fun? What do you nerd out on? Don't overthink it. Find a way to photograph it. Doesn't matter how nerdy it is. It differentiates your profile. Next up, and this is an interesting one, the black and white photo. And bonus points if you are wearing a suit that kind of looks like Slenderman. But alas, the reason being that I believe it was Bumble released a data point that black and white photos have a significantly higher swipe rate. It's over 100% more than photos that have color. Bonus points if you are dressed up, wearing a tux or a suit, cuz then that ticks two boxes with one picture. Next up is everyone's favorite, an animal photo. Now, some people roll their eyes. It's cliche, but [ __ ] does it work really well. And it doesn't even have to be a dog. And if you have a pet, what are you doing? Grab it by the ears, snuggle up with it, or play with it, and have someone take a photo while you're doing it. And if you don't have an animal, get creative. One of your friends probably has one. Go to a dog park. Volunteer at an animal shelter. There is absolutely a way that you can get yourself with an animal that you like. One of my favorite pictures of all time of myself is this one. I like turtles. I happen to be at a turtle race and I couldn't resist. And the final picture, this one actually doesn't work for me, is wearing red. Now, this actually has a similar swipe rate to the black and white photo, but since I have red hair and my face is perpetually red, it makes me look like a tomato, so it doesn't work for me. But if you're not a redhead, give it a try.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So, we know what we need. How do we go about getting our photo taken? Now, you could go the route of having a dating app photographer take pictures of you. If you have the cash, go for it, but it will likely be a lot more expensive than you think. I've got quotes from around 10 different service providers, and the average was more than $1,000. But honestly, you can just do it for free. The easiest way is to just call a friend. It's safe to assume that they probably need pictures of themselves also because it seems like an epidemic where guys take pictures of things or selfies, but never have someone else take our picture. And that's actually why fishing pictures are so popular because it's one of the only times when people actually have their photo taken. So call a friend, tell them that you're trying to make your dating profile better and you could use their help. And actually, if you have any female friends, ask them first cuz by default, they will probably take better pictures cuz they do it more often and they'll tell you what is shed or not. Now, you don't even need a camera. Phone cameras are so good nowadays. Use portrait mode and just make sure that you're not right up against a wall to take advantage of that beautiful blurry background that comes with portrait mode. And before you go on a photo shoot, I would highly recommend getting sample references of what photos you want to take. I love Pinterest for this. Go on it and scroll through hundreds or thousands of dating app photos and save the ones that you like because we're going to copy those exactly. Now, if you don't do this, it's similar to walking into a barber shop and verbally telling them what you want. I'm slightly sheepish to say this, but it was only this year that I learned that you should take a photo to a barber. It took me 26 years to figure out that it wasn't the barbers who sucked. It was me who was dumb and I wasn't giving them good guidance. Only recently did I show a barber a picture and he nailed it. Surprise. Literally was the first haircut I've ever gotten that I didn't put on a hat immediately afterwards. So, give your photographer some guidance so that they can tell you how to mimic that photo better. And when you're actually having your photo taken, try to add in as much movement as possible. Go on YouTube and search up a model having their photo taken and take some inspiration from them. You'll notice that every single time the shutter goes, they're doing something different instead of staying rigid and trying to nail one pose. So, what I like to do is have a conversation with the person taking photos of me and then they can just be snapping photos the entire time when you laugh, smile, or whatever. It's genuine. And just have them take hundreds or thousands of photos and then you'll pick out the best ones. You can do the same thing when you're walking, playing sports, whatever. Just add in some movement. Makes it look more natural. Along with that, if you don't know what to do with your hands, like me, add in some props. It can be a pen. It can be a book. Whatever it is, give your hands something to do. An umbrella, a shirt, whatever. Makes you feel less awkward. And finally, take way too many pictures. Similar to applying to jobs, 10 isn't going to cut it. 100 probably won't either. Take a thousand. You really can't have too many. Also, you can Google when golden hour is. Go to this website and then go outside and take pictures with the sun facing you and it will by default look way better.

So, if you nail your pictures and don't swipe like a bot to get shadowbanned, the rest of your profile really doesn't matter that much. But here are some rapid-fire tips that helped me when actually crafting the profile. The first is on the section where you can set your preferences. Try to add as few of them as possible. This sounds counterintuitive, but on my profile, I never had my religion, if I smoked, drank, political affiliations, or anything else. The only things I really filled out were my height, education, and hometown. Why? Simple. When we're swiping on a dating app, we are looking for any tiny reason to say no to someone. Humans have a negativity bias and any extra piece of information that we add is giving someone extra ammunition to say no to you. And you could say, "Oh, but I wouldn't swipe on someone if their politics were this way or that way." Which sounds true in theory, but almost all of those preferences have been shown over and over again to actually not lead to quality long-term relationships. They don't matter, but we think they do. And people use these as a criteria to weed out people because we're grasping at any little straw we can, which is a problem because the qualities that actually predict long-term relationship success can't be shown on a dating app. Things like emotional responsiveness, trust, mutual respect, and effort. All of those things can only be deciphered when we meet someone actually in person. And we won't have the chance to do that if we're being filtered too harshly by people.

Next is prompts. And these don't matter as much as people think. Your pictures do most of the talking. I swear that people forget this, that the whole point of a prompt is to open up a loop inside someone's head that they need to close by sending us a message. And basically, they're meant to make it as easy as possible for people to message us. But 99% of the answers to prompts that you see are dog [ __ ]. Now, Hinge released their top 25 prompts. Here's the list. And my favorites of all time are all ones where I can give you hyperspecific glimpses into my life that will make people say, "What?" or "Me too." For instance, "Simple pleasures" is a great one. You can say things like, "the smell of dog ears" or "seeing turtles on rocks." Basically, anything that allows us to show our weirdness, show our humor. And if we notice that our prompts aren't getting any responses, then maybe we need to change them. Actually, I should have said this earlier, but the fastest way to improve your profile, period, is to show it to people you know. And if you don't want to show it to people, you feel some resistance, that's a telltale sign that your profile is bad. And actually, that it's even more imperative that you show people. It's not as embarrassing as you think. They won't even remember. Don't forget about the spotlight effect. If you really don't want to show it to people, you can post it to subreddits like these or post it to these websites where you can have people actually review your pictures. And you would be surprised that all the photos of yourself that you thought were good are actually not that great. And that's where getting feedback from other people is extremely helpful.

So, we could do all of these things that we've done before, but it still might not matter if we're shadowbanned. Now, it's actually worse than we think because we could go through all the effort of changing our profile, but then when we post it, we're shadowbanned still because remember how I said that Match Group owns all of the major dating apps? They actually share your ELO across all of them as well. Meaning, if you were say a diehard Tinder user and then you decide to download Hinge, after the initial newbie boost, your ELO score will go back to whatever it was on Tinder. I got to take off my jacket. Oh, now I blend into the background. And it gets even worse because even if we don't use the same data, this ELO inheritance can happen from using our old email, using our old phone number, using the same Wi-Fi network, or even using the same pictures because all of them have metadata within them that will tie back to our original profile. And that's what would keep happening to me. I was using the same phone number, the same email, meaning no matter how many improvements I made, it was always being tied back to those original profiles.

So, how do we beat it? Now, Match Group has said that if you delete the apps after, I believe, 3 to 6 months, it will reset your score. But I've tested that on a number of occasions, and I don't think that that's true. So, the only real way to remove a shadowban, and you're not going to like this, is you need new everything. And me and my close friend have tested this theory. We were clearly shadowbanned on our previous accounts, and then we took new photos, used a new Wi-Fi network, reset our routers to create the profile, created new emails, and then most importantly, got a new phone. Now, that's not that easy because you can't use like a Google phone number because the dating app profiles are smarter than that and they recognize them. So, what I did was I got a burner phone. And I think this is one of the biggest hacks out there for two reasons. First is that it feels pretty cool having a second phone. And you can get them for super cheap. I got mine for 20 bucks through Track Phone and then it was another like $9.99 a month to actually get service on it and have a number. The main benefit of having a second phone is that it separates church and state, meaning that dating apps are built to be addictive. They are slot machines. Every swipe is pulling the lever over and over again. And if it's on our main phone, it's extremely hard not to check. Did I get any new matches? Did that person message me back? The pull is way too strong. And the more that you spend on the dating apps, the less datable you actually become. If you're just obsessing over getting someone, the more time you'll spend inside tweaking every little lever and then really, you're just optimizing your loneliness. So yeah, get the burner phone, beat the algorithm, do all the tactical [ __ ], but then put your phone in the drawer. Go out, try something stupid, create some stories, learn something new, cuz the real dating hack is to live a life worth swiping right on. Thanks for watching.