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Picture this: a fifteen-second reel that sounds like a whispered secret. “Want the algorithm to reset? Set your age to 84–85 for 48 hours, then switch it back.” The creator leans into the mic as if they are revealing the password to eternal happiness.

Welcome to dating in 2025, where finding love requires mastering the art of algorithmic manipulation.

For a while now, Reddit, social media feeds and IRL conversations with people who are on the dating apps have revealed a big mistrust with these apps. The underlying belief is the same: that the apps are hiding our “best matches,” and unless we trick the system, we’ll never see them.

So now, there are dozens of hacks to game the system. Some swear by rejecting every “standout” Hinge recommends, others by deleting and remaking their profiles every few months. A whole cottage industry of reels, Reddit threads, and dating coaches has turned swiping into something closer to a competitive sport. 

Curious (and slightly masochistic), I decided to test one of these hacks myself. I stretched my age filter all the way to 60+, hoping to confuse the algorithm into sending me something new. And it worked… just not in the way I expected. Within days, my inbox filled up with teenage boys. Not creepy, but wildly inappropriate.

I shut down the experiment feeling genuinely disturbed. Not because of the boys, but because it showed how fragile the system is. One tiny tweak, and I was suddenly in the wrong feed. If I could stumble there by accident, what about someone with darker intentions deliberately hacking their way into the feeds of teenage girls?

That thought stayed with me. Because while these hacks look like harmless little rituals, they open doors into places no one should be.

What starts as a quirky hack video turns into a very real safety loophole.

The irony is that we all know these apps run on algorithms, but no one actually knows how. Hinge says it uses something called the Gale-Shapley algorithm, originally designed to predict stable marriages (yes, an academic formula for happy ever afters). Bumble uses an Elo-style scoring system, like chess rankings, to decide who’s in your “league.” Tinder? A mix of desirability scores and activity patterns. It sounds clinical because it is. 

As one researcher told Gizmodo, “Dating apps use ‘collaborative filtering algorithms.’ It’s the same type of thing that Netflix or Amazon use to recommend shows and products. But people are not products.”

And yet, instead of clarity, this opacity creates superstition. Like praying to temperamental gods, users trade folklore: don’t swipe for a week, change your location, fake your age. If something works once, it becomes gospel.

The exhaustion is real. A 2023 Pew survey found that more than half of dating app users in the U.S. described the experience as overwhelming. Nearly eight in ten said they felt some degree of burnout. 

In India, the dating app market is estimated to reach 1.42 billion USD by 2030. That’s huge.

No surprise that these reels and tips are traveling from TikTok to Instagram to family WhatsApp groups, reinterpreted with every hop. But unlike in the West, here “gaming the algorithm” collides with caste filters, family expectations, and the ever-present aunty network. You’re not just outsmarting code; you’re outsmarting centuries of matchmaking norms.

And it doesn’t stop with filters. AI can now build your entire dating persona—photos, bios, even conversations. A friend recently told me about matching with someone who was clearly outsourcing all their replies to ChatGPT. He deleted the app soon after. How do you look for authenticity when even sincerity can be outsourced?

What bothers me most is this: when you spend hours figuring out how to please the algorithm, you start shaping yourself into someone who performs for machines, not people.

Of course, humans have always schemed for love. Letters were once drafted with strategy. Matchmakers curated alliances with calculation. But there was a difference. Humans were in the loop. Someone was always reading between the lines. Now, the first impression is filtered through code that reduces us to scores, patterns, and probability matches.

No wonder so many people feel like they’re running on a hamster wheel. Swipe, match, fatigue, reset, repeat. And on the sidelines, reels keep multiplying, promising shortcuts that feel more like urban legends than romance.

Every swipe is data. Every hack bends the system a little further. And every AI-generated pickup line makes it that much harder to spot a genuine human voice in the noise.

The advice reels keep multiplying, teaching newer and more elaborate tricks to the next wave of hopeful romantics. But nobody's keeping track of what these tricks are actually doing to us—not just to our dating success, but to our ability to recognise and create the kind of unoptimised, untracked, beautifully surprising connections.

Have you tried any of these hacks? I want to hear about them and how they made you feel. 

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