A woman on TikTok decided to try out a social experiment on Hinge after hearing one of her male friends complaining about not being able to find any love interests on dating apps.
Jo (@ok.jo.anna) joined the dating app Hinge posing as her friend Pete to see if she could find anyone interested in him—and was shocked at the results.
“So one of my guy friends gave me permission to make a Hinge account for him, because I was telling him how easy dating is with dating apps. And he was telling me that it’s incredibly difficult. And I was like, ‘Pete, you must be doing something wrong.’ And he gave me permission to create an account for him and just run the account,” she said in her ‘Day 3 of being a ‘boy’ on a dating app’ video.
‘I’m starting to hate women’
“I’ve been a virtual boy for three days and I’ve never felt this bad about myself. I feel like a freaking loser trying to get these girls to like me. And! I’m starting to hate women. Because I’m like—when I say ‘I’ I mean Pete, because that’s the account I’m using. Pete’s about a six. But I’m so desperate, I’m liking the twos and the threes, and even they won’t like me back—Pete, [who] is a six.”
“So what level of delusion has entered women’s heads? Like, what is going on? It is so difficult dating as a boy. I hate it. I’m on day three of being a boy and I hate women and I’m more depressed than ever,” she ended her video.
@ok.jo.anna What the hell mannnnn #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp #fyp #foryoupage #foryou #fypシ゚viral #hinge #dating #datingapps #relationship ♬ original sound – Jo
The viral video has been viewed over 6.2 million times with folks roasting Jo in the comments for scoring her friend so low.
“When I was on dating apps a few years ago, most of the guys were super surprised that I engaged in actual conversation… apparently most women barely text back… I was like: how else am I supposed to get to know you? 😅,” one woman commented.
A guy in the comments added, “Nah tbh, it’s kinda like a game. You’ll match with a pretty girl and you just go about your day, and if you do message they don’t at all.”
“Apps are rough because I think dating based off of physical appearance as #1 does everyone a disservice. Meeting organically is more genuine because people give the opportunity to get to know you,” @the_lion_queen shared.
Day 9 being a ‘boy’ on a dating app
In an update video, Jo shared some screenshots of the messages she sent the women she matched with, and it became clear that Pete wasn’t necessarily the problem in the situation.
Posting a screenshot of one of the conversations, Jo wrote, “Knock knock” and then after hours of no response, added, “Guess no ones home.”
In another conversation, the TikToker was speaking to a woman who had recently been laid off, and rather than commiserating with her, she replied (as Pete), “Ooh that’s actually perfect. That means you’ll have time for a date. Coffee or tea? Sorry I mean five star michelin restaurant or trip to Europe.”
Jo shared a photo of Pete at the end of her second video, asking anyone interested in him who lives in Houston to reach out to her.
According to an article from NPR, there is a potential that dating apps face an issue of “adverse selection,” where people legitimately looking for relationships are encountering so many “sleazy types” and bad dates that they ruin the experience of dating apps. They add, “maybe sleazeballs push great catches out of dating apps and ultimately ruin the quality of the whole app experience. So people go to a new app with the hopes of finding something better, and the cycle starts again.”
That being said, there are also many success stories with online dating. Perhaps Pete was unlucky before and he just needed to see what not to do, as well as what he should do, to get back out there again and find his own success story.
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