Dating app Hinge tested 100-plus opening lines. These got the most replies.

Dating apps like Tinder have solved one of the core problems of dating: wanting to tell someone you like them, but only wanting to tell them if they also like you. Matching people who swiped right on each other deals with that marvelously.

But Tinder and its competitors haven't gotten around the fact that after matching, you still need to write an opening line. You still have to craft a brief question or greeting that somehow taps into what's unique and special about your match despite knowing approximately nothing about the other person. It is an absolutely mortifying genre of writing.

Luckily, Hinge — Tinder's classier, borderline elitist cousin — ran an experiment designed to help first message writers. Hinge wrote more than 100 opening lines, varied by length, structure, content, etc., and then selected 22 percent of users at random to take part in the experiment. "For one month, when those users matched with someone new, they received an in-app prompt to send one of our conversation starters (the conversation starters were randomized)," Hinge spokesperson Jean-Marie McGrath writes in an email. The company then compared response rates for the various lines, and how often they were used after prompting. In total, the experiment produced 8 million user impressions, which is a pretty impressive reach for this kind of thing.

Hinge found that older and younger users responded to different types of openers. Here are the top two questions by age group:

Hinge.co

Hinge tries to group these according to theme, which feels a bit methodologically suspect, but all the same, it's interesting that "Katy Perry or Taylor Swift?" was the most replied-to question among 35-and-up users.

Hinge also found a great deal of geographic variation; it similarly tries to theme the results, which I'd take with several grains of salt:

Hinge.co

In general, lazy greetings like "hey, what's up" didn't do well, while standard freshman year icebreaker games like "two truths and a lie" performed nicely:

Hinge.co

The experiment also confirmed that men are the worst at responding to messages. If they don't get a note immediately after matching, the odds of a reply fall 25 percent:

Hinge.co

For more, check out the full report at Hinge's website.

We're here to shed some clarity

One of our core beliefs here at Vox is that everyone needs and deserves access to the information that helps them understand the world, regardless of whether they can pay for a subscription. With the 2024 election on the horizon, more people are turning to us for clear and balanced explanations of the issues and policies at stake. We’re so grateful that we’re on track to hit 85,000 contributions to the Vox Contributions program before the end of the year, which in turn helps us keep this work free. We need to add 2,500 contributions this month to hit that goal. Will you make a contribution today to help us hit this goal and support our policy coverage? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via