Short answer: Hinge is a pay-to-win app, and for me it has been a bad deal. Over the last year I counted at least $700 on it, and by late August the total was past $1,000, mostly on HingeX memberships, roses and boosts. I got one date I would call decent. I still think a paid rose gets you seen, but my latest view is less settled than my earlier ones. This page answers the question I would want answered before spending a dollar: is Hinge worth the money, and what did I actually learn from it?
Each of the four posts below was written in a different week, so you can watch my thinking change. I started in favor of paying to win, moved toward filtering for depth, got angry at the bill, and ended up asking what I control. Here they are, oldest to newest.
I started with Hinge pay to win with roses is ridiculously effective, written August 1. I had paid $200 in the first 24 hours: HingeX for three months at $99 and 50 roses at $99. That got me a date within a day. My argument was that most women are overwhelmed and sort their likes by who sent a rose, so a rose puts you above the men who only liked her profile. I only sent roses to women who showed as active, and I said boosting was not worth it on Hinge the way it is on Tinder.
Two days later, in Women, Use Voice Memos to Filter Men on Hinge, I argued for depth instead. Thirty-second voice memos, I said, screen out men who will not put in any effort. I pointed to my own start: my ex-wife and I met on Match fifteen and a half years ago and traded long emails before meeting. That post is written for women, but it shows where my head was going, away from volume and toward depth.
By August 7 the money had caught up with the theory. In I spent $350 on Hinge in 7 Days, Then Deleted it for the 4th Time I had paid $99 for HingeX again, $200 for 100 roses and $50 to boost for two days. Two in-person dates were canceled, one because the woman had been banned from Hinge for fraud. A match I knew in real life had photos at least five years and 50 pounds out of date, and I said so to her face. I counted one quality date across roughly 100 hours on the app. My conclusion: if you are not in the top 10 percent on dating apps, delete them.
Then came I Spent Over $1,000 on Hinge. Then I Stopped Blaming the Apps., posted August 25. I had spent over $1,000 with zero conversions in 2026 and only a handful of dates. I could keep complaining that the apps are pay-to-win and that women are shallow, and both complaints have some truth. But I can only control how I use an app, not how it works, and that is the part I am trying to change. I said I would give it a week before going hard on the apps again, and that I needed to prepare my pictures and my mindset first. Read it as an unfinished experiment, not a verdict.
My working answer for a man reading this: paid tools move you up the list, but they do not create depth, and only one of my app dates was decent. Count my own time too. I said I will not work for less than $100 an hour, and I estimated I put about 100 hours into Hinge, so the real cost was higher than the receipts. I also said that unless you have a top-tier profile, it is either pay to win or do not waste your time.
Below this opening you will find a contents list and then all four posts in full, newest first. If you only read one, read the August 1 post for the case for paying and the August 7 post for the cost. For the wider picture, see dating apps: the addiction, the bad deal, and whether to go back and dating profiles, rebuilding mine.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- I Spent Over $1,000 on Hinge. Then I Stopped Blaming the Apps. (August 25, 2026)
- I spent $350 on Hinge in 7 Days, Then Deleted it for the 4th Time (August 7, 2026)
- Women, Use Voice Memos to Filter Men on Hinge (August 3, 2026)
- Hinge Pay to Win with Roses is Ridiculously Effective (August 1, 2026)
I Spent Over $1,000 on Hinge. Then I Stopped Blaming the Apps.
From my video published August 25, 2026.
I'm Jerry Banfield. It's August 25th, 2026, and this is my vlog for today, which may or may not include shouting and getting really hyped up. I'm feeling a little more chill than usual. This has been a big 24 hours. I don't think I have any new dating drama, but I've made some more rapid advances in my business.
The Automation Workflow I Just Built
I started this Repurpose.io automation workflow, and what it's going to do is allow me to film something like six long-form videos a day. Then I'm going to drop those into Claude. Then Claude is going to crank out a couple of shorts from each video. Then I'm going to just drop all the videos into a Google Drive folder, and the Google Drive folder is going to fire those videos out to four different Instagram accounts.
I now have four Instagram accounts. I had no Instagram accounts a couple of days ago. I've got a Jerry Banfield Show, Jerry Banfield Dating, Jerry Banfield ICP, and Jerry Banfield Creators on Instagram. Same accounts on TikTok. And then I've got two accounts on X, four Facebook pages now, and a LinkedIn page.
So what I'm going to do is fire all that content out to all these different accounts every day, because that'll get me the maximum possible reach with almost no additional effort — except all the time it's taken to set up this automation, which really has only been maybe 30 minutes or an hour of planning it. Then creating all the accounts was another couple of hours. And then I'm going to need maybe another hour to set up all the Google Drive folders.
Thinking about people that do content creation without this stuff — man, this is going to allow me to take an hour to a day to film and then post around 50 individual videos. There'll be like six longs and like 10 shorts, so 16 individual videos, and those will then turn into 50 individual video posts across all these accounts.
And I've tested enough. I got a little bit of reach on Instagram and Facebook. TikTok's putting my videos out to thousands of views already, and that's a good sign for a brand new account. And with X, I can just speed up the workflow on things like that. So I'm really excited about this, because I'm ready to just take all the free views in from Instagram, from TikTok, from Facebook. Once I set these automations up, they should be hands off, and they'll fire people over to my website. And I'm just creating the videos anyway.
Plus the YouTube Shorts will get uploaded automatically, which will be huge. Those have been taking so much time. I can just drop a bunch of the ones that I haven't even uploaded yet into these folders, and it'll just fire out two shorts a day on all my channels, and I'll get all those views and subscribers back. And then all the money into jerrybanfield.com.
I Built a Meme Coin Game With AI
One of the coolest things I've done in the last 24 hours is that I created a game on my website. It's called Meme Coin Dynasty. It's a game, and it's pay to play because it has an actual leaderboard, so it's one payment to buy it for life. Then you create your own meme coin and you see what market cap you can get it up to. It's amazing.
The game that I've been able to create with AI — I played this game called Mafia at, I think it was mafia.org, over 20 years ago. It was just a text-based point-and-click game, but it was so fun. So that inspired me to make a crypto version of that. And it's incredible what the AI was able to do. I talked for like 20 or 30 minutes about what the game should be. Then I dropped all that into ChatGPT, which cleaned my prompt up. Then I took that and dumped it into Claude, and Claude cranked out an initial version of the game. And then I said, now play test that. And it went through and play tested it and found exploits and added additional features. Dude, this AI stuff is awesome, what it can do.
I watched Bobby O's video talking about the future and AI, and how humans may have no purpose in 20 years as AI kind of drives everything. And I'm like, oh no, somebody will always give the humans a purpose. Don't worry about that. What's important is that I choose my purpose for my life, because if I don't choose it, somebody else is going to choose it.
The Dating Videos Are Crushing
I'm really grateful to see the dating videos I've been putting up have been crushing. The vlog I did today about the woman who canceled, and then five other women said no — that was a one out of 10. And the last dating videos I've done have both been one out of tens.
I'm really happy to see how all my accounts are growing, and I'm excited. Whenever the first dating coaching client, or content creator coaching client, or ICP coaching client comes in at my website, I can just feel all the abundance.
And I've been thinking a lot about dating apps again, but I'm not going to jump back in right away, because I clearly wasn't playing the game very good on dating apps. What's silly in life is when you complain about the game instead of doing your best to win. And I see that if I want to win on dating apps, I've got to have certain kinds of pictures that communicate a certain kind of energy. I can't just lay out things like — I can't mention anything about wanting kids or marriage. Basically I need to be sweet and mysterious so that women get curious and want to know more. That is kind of annoying to me, but you can either complain about life and be annoyed, or just figure out how the game works and play to win.
Playing the Content Game to Win
To me, this is how the content creation game works too. You play to win. You figure out how to get your ideas out as fast as possible and then use automation and AI to just dump it all out on all the different platforms. And I'm grateful this is so easy now. I used to want to automate like this, but you couldn't automate like this a year or two ago. This level of automation wasn't possible, where I can just throw files in a Google Drive folder and shoot them out to all these different accounts. And I'm really excited to see what happens.
I watched a Mr. Beast video about a week in his life, and I'm like, you know what? I want the amount of views that I'm capable of getting. I want as many views as these platforms will give me. And I'm going to do whatever I can within sharing my message. I'm not out here trying to make sensational videos like giving money away and stuff. I'm here to teach people, to wake people up, and to support human connection and empowerment and have a purposeful life. That's what I'm here to do. And I'm here to get those videos out to as many people as possible.
Almost no content creators are at this level that I'm at, where you can work so fast and then shoot it out to so many platforms. I am grateful today that I can think on this level. And I'm here to help other people too. The main thing content creators collectively need to do is learn this stuff, because most content creators are working extremely inefficiently — that's exactly what I work on with people in my coaching for creators.
I actually thought about hiring this guy on YouTube as a dating coach today for a minute too. But he has this stupid free call, and I know you're going to get sold something for thousands of dollars. And it's like, nah, I'll just put the pictures up myself. I'll take the pictures I need to take for my dating profiles, if I do them.
Where Things Stand With Dating
I have this one woman I met from matchmaking, and she's on a trip. We haven't communicated in days because she's out in the woods and her phone's not charged. I did send her a message yesterday and haven't heard back yet, which is fine. And I'm like, you know what, maybe I'll give things a week before I go hard on dating apps again, because I need to get this content creation workflow set up so that I can just bring views in from all the platforms.
And getting all this set up takes time — it's taken hours and hours. It took hours to make that game yesterday. Nobody's bought it yet, but it's sitting there and people can buy it indefinitely, which is cool.
I also enjoyed going to a yoga class today and got a nice workout. There was a beautiful woman next to me that I had a nice little conversation with. I just walked up and started talking to her about her yoga mat. And I see that there's so many possibilities. I feel extremely wealthy. It's like I can just feel the money and the women on the way. I want what's coming to me. I can just feel what's coming.
Putting My Order In
To me, that's the key to manifestation. Ironically, begging for it and praying for it indicates that you don't believe in it. I've put my order in. I want the best experiences I've ever had with women, and I've had some pretty good ones. I think I can do better. I want those. I'm ready for those. And I'll do the work for those — even if that means I need to learn how to win on dating apps. I'm ready for those, and I'll do the work for those. I will do that.
And I want the most views I've ever gotten. I've gotten over a billion impressions on all the things I've created, and I want my next billion. I'm ready to do the work I need to. At this rate, even if I got a thousand views a day on each piece of content on average, that'd be 50,000 views a day from this new automation system. And I'm already getting — YouTube's supposed to be changing the algorithm to show impressions as views, and I'm already basically getting that much on YouTube just with my vlogs. So I'm looking to double that overnight with all these new platforms. And I realize it could take time to get started.
These little Instagram accounts might be nice for dating too. Rack up thousands of followers on one with my content. Like, here, follow my Jerry Banfield Dating Instagram. You think that'll work? I'm excited to see what works. There's so many possibilities. There's so many things that could happen, and I'm excited to see which ones do happen. At the same time, I'm comfortable with the uncertainty. I'm comfortable that I don't see a lot of the awesome things that are going to come my way.
A Hundred Three Pointers in 50 Minutes
I enjoyed my time with the kids. We went to basketball last night. I only had time to make like 20 or 30 three pointers because some of the courts were busy. I told the school safety officer at my son's school, I said I made a hundred three pointers in 50 minutes. He didn't even believe me. I'm like, that's one three pointer every 30 seconds, which — a shot should take 10 seconds or less to set up and shoot. So my three pointer percentage is at all-time highs.
And it's amazing. It's like, who would have thought? If you'd have told me when I was really into basketball, like 25 years ago or so, that in 25 years you're going to be the best three point shooter you've ever been before, I'd have probably wondered, okay, well, why is it going to take that long?
But really it only took a mindset shift. It only took me shifting my mindset to instantly double my physical performance in three pointers. And I see that my mindset has already gotten me millions of impressions on my YouTube videos, plus my work. It's mindset plus work. So the mindset is like the filter that the work goes through.
Zero Conversions and What I'm Changing
So I put in the work with dating, but zero conversions this year. So I'm adjusting my mindset, and I will play the game. I'm flexible and I will show up how I need to on dating apps. I'll send the messages I need to send on it. And some people think that sounds transactional. I think you're delusional if you just go around and think that you can do whatever you want and get what you want out of that. I mean, yes, that works sometimes, but lots of times you need to modify your behavior and your interactions. If what you're doing is not getting the results you want, then generally I need to change.
Like if I'm on dating apps and I've spent over a thousand dollars on Hinge with zero sales, and only even a handful of dates, and only one date was even decent — then I could go around complaining about how bad the apps are, which has validity. I could go around complaining about women, which has some validity. But at the same time, I could also just change how I'm using the dating apps. I've got great raw material, I think. And if I change how I'm using them, I bet I'm going to get drastically different results.
It's a fantastic life lesson, that thing about complaining about what you don't control. I don't control women and I don't control how the dating apps work, but I control how I use them. I don't control how all the content creation platforms work, but I control which ones I use and how I use them. So I'm big into figuring out what exactly I control and then adjusting my behavior, adjusting my thinking, adjusting my beliefs to set myself up for success. And that feels really good.
Taking Action Without Rushing It
At the same time though, I take such massive action that I actually need to slow down a little bit taking action. Like I was ready to set up a dating profile yesterday, and I'm like, you know what, think about this a little bit and prepare the mindset. Think about the pictures you need before you even start up with it.
I have notes, and maybe I'll put it in a dating video. I have notes on like, you need a picture like this. I watched some guy and he talked about it and I can see his pictures, and I'm like, I see why that works. I see the energy there, and I can copy that in my own unique way. If you want to follow along with where all of this goes, it's all going into my Dating playlist.
And I see the results of people grinding out videos like this, and I'm like, I can do that and I will do that. And I want the views I'm going to get. I want the women I'm going to get, and I'm ready for it.
Go to my website and try that meme coin game out.
I can feel it coming in the air tonight. Oh Lord.
I spent $350 on Hinge in 7 Days, Then Deleted it for the 4th Time
From my video published August 7, 2026.
$350 in Seven Days, and Two Canceled Dates
I installed Hinge again less than a week ago. I spent $99 for the fourth time on the HingeX membership for three months — they've got to learn my lesson now. I spent $200 buying 100 roses and sent them to 100 women. And I also paid $50 to boost my profile for two days. After all that, I had two dates in person that got canceled. One, because Hinge sent me an email saying that she'd been banned from the platform for fraudulent activity. And the other one just canceled last minute and was like, "Oh, my meeting ran late. Don't mean to flake, but can we do another time?" Then she didn't follow up after that — and that was via text message from her phone number.
So I dumped $350 into Hinge this time using it. I also tested roses and boosts and the premium last time, so I spent at least $250, if not $350, before on it. Then I bought the premium membership the last time. All in, I've spent at least $700, if not $800 or $900, on Hinge in the last year since I got separated. And how many quality dates did I get out of Hinge? One. I got one quality date. And I probably put 100 hours in.
Now, I refuse to work for less than $100 an hour unless I'm doing my own content — and then I'll just do videos like this all day for free. If you join the Jerry Banfield Family and you want to not just be a number on the screen to me, I'll work my ass off for you. But I'm not taking a paycheck for less than $100 an hour. So if you'd have charged for my time that I put into these dating apps, I effectively blew over $10,000 worth of time I could have theoretically worked for. I've got some valuable skills, and I just blew that. I wasted so much on Hinge. And I tried other dating apps and blew more money on Bumble and Tinder as well.
Why? Because I met my first wife — my ex-wife — online. I'd like to have a second wife, but I'm going to take my time to make sure it really works and not jump into anything. And I got one decent date, and I didn't even need a rose or a boost on my profile for it. I did have the HingeX membership. I sent a like, she liked me back, and we met the same day. That just looks like some nice luck now. She seemed like she wanted me to kiss her at the end of the date, and I didn't. And then she watched my YouTube videos, got mad, and didn't want to go out with me again. Out of a thousand or so dollars on Hinge and a hundred hours or so on Hinge, I got one date that was decent.
Getting Catfished by Someone I Knew in Real Life
I also got catfished. There was a girl I knew in real life. She had beautiful profile pictures, and I didn't recognize her from real life. She says, "Oh yeah, here's where I know you from." I'm like, "Really? I don't recognize you." Then I met her in person, and I'm like, oh my God, I do know you — you put on like 50 pounds since the pictures you took. I told her to her face: this is dishonest. She's like, "Well, my friends did it." I'm like, I don't care who did it — it's dishonest. She's like, "Well, it wasn't that much." I'm like, it was that much. It was. I think the pictures are at least five years younger and at least 50 pounds lighter. This is dishonest. And she wasn't too happy after that.
I deleted my Hinge profile and made a new one, and she's still tricking on Hinge to this day — even though I called it out to her face, which seemed a bit painful, she's still tricking on Hinge with the same profile. She also told me that a dating app offered to pay her to have a profile and to match with dudes and go out with them. So maybe that's what she was doing on this app. I don't know.
Who Dating Apps Actually Work For
What I can tell you from my experience is that Hinge is a disgusting environment — an absolutely disgusting environment for most men. Now, I know somebody with an impressive job title and a car that costs $60,000 or $70,000, and he can show that stuff off. Actually, I know multiple people that fit this description. One of them pays like $1,000 a month to obsessively boost his profile. He sends this huge message, filters constantly, and is getting dates with women 30 years younger than him. Now, would I go out with them? Some of them are like train wrecks — alcoholics, drug addicts. I don't know if I'd go out with them. But he's going out with women 30 years younger than him. So yes, if you're the kind of guy that can show off all this stuff on your phone, on your profile, then it can work. But what kind of women are going for that? Not the kind of woman I want to be my queen, my second wife. She would not go for that. She would not be interested in that.
So if you want to be a guy that does anything heartfelt — that's not just superficially signaling — which is probably 90% of guys, because 90% of guys are regular motherfuckers, then in my experience you're going to just waste your time. I have a friend. This guy is good looking. This guy has slept with a lot of women. He's got a girlfriend now that I think is very attractive, and he's met a lot of attractive women — I know at least one of them personally, and I've seen several of the women he's been with. They're all very hot. Not that he hasn't chased one that wasn't as hot. But this guy said he couldn't do anything on dating apps. He spent more time and more money than I did, and he got two dates: one with a girl he said there was something really weird about, and the other one was a catfish. This guy put more time and more money than I did into the dating apps. He's crushing it in person, and yet the dating apps are miserable for him. What I've come to believe is that if you're not the top 10% on dating apps, you need to delete them.
Dating Apps Don't Reward Depth
Now, I realize they work for some people. Maybe if you're the kind of guy that can check a dating app just once a week and go through and see if anybody likes you, it's different. And dating apps are overwhelming for women too. Like, I paid to boost my profile, and I experienced decision fatigue myself — I got about 20 likes at once. I got a better profile. I got professional photos taken. It still didn't matter, because I wasn't out there with a Lamborghini or something in my profile, signaling money out on a yacht. I wasn't doing what the top 5–10% of guys are doing on these dating apps, so women are just scrolling by me. And I showed some depth. Dating apps do not reward depth. Depth, to me, is what is special. Depth is special. And yet I try to send voice memos, and women can't stand it when a text is more than a sentence or two at a time. I can't stand that. How am I going to get to know you in one or two sentences?
When I matched with my ex on Match 15 and a half years ago, my opening message to her was like three paragraphs. Back then, we didn't have all this texting stuff — well, it was there, but you had to T9-type it on your phone, and it took a while. I sent a three-paragraph message. She sent a three-paragraph email back. I sent a longer one. She sent a longer one. We only exchanged three messages each before we met up, and the depth was there immediately. The Match profile made so much more depth possible — there was so much more on it. These dating apps today suck by comparison, and if you're in the 90% of guys, in my opinion you have no business being on there. You're going to waste your time. You're going to waste your money.
The dating apps are very much pay-to-win. Maybe it would be different if I had my profile set up to do some superficial signaling, which I just can't stand to do, because it feels dishonest. I feel that if I meet a woman with dishonesty, I'm going to set up the relationship for dishonesty, and I'm a guy that's about living an authentic life. And the one date that I had that I enjoyed on Hinge instantly blew up, because while in person a woman might not take the time, on a dating app you've got a picture of me — you can put that in a Google image search. Which this woman did. She did not know my last name. I said I was a YouTuber on my profile, so she screenshots my face, puts it into Google, finds my YouTube videos, doesn't like them, and then gets angry and doesn't want to see me because of that. So I can't date on dating apps without any woman being able to instantly go look at my YouTube videos. Maybe there's some woman on earth who would just get really excited and be kicking down my door after seeing these videos — one that I'd actually let in — but that's not likely to happen on a dating app. And I've tried.
Dating Apps Felt Like Drinking Again
I swear, I'm sober 12 years in AA. That doesn't mean I'm a dead person that just goes out with no emotions. That means I'm a fully alive human being, and I can handle and face life sober. And to me, these dating apps have felt like drinking. Before I got sober, I'd be out at the bar after two weeks sober, and I'd be like, you know what, this time I'm just going to have three and then drive home, and it'll probably be all right. And then I'm walking home and left my car, and getting in fights with people, and kicked out of bars, and passing out all over the place, and face-planting — just all kinds of stupid stuff. And then I wake up and I'm like, well, let me try this again and see if it works. No. In my experience, dating apps for most men not only do not work — they make you feel like a loser.
And that's the thing to me: if you are a winner, you are generally not spending time on dating apps. If you've actually got all those cars and you've got the house, can't you be meeting women in person? You should be able to just drive down the street with your fancy car, slide the door up, and — okay, maybe that'd be creepy, asking a random person — but you should be able to be meeting people out of your car, or after the workout class, or wherever you're at. Like, "Oh look, this is my car." You should be able to be meeting women in person. Dating apps are a shit environment for most men. They leave you feeling like shit. Because I'm sitting there thinking: how did I just send a hundred roses?
A Hundred Roses and Feeling Rejected by Women I Know
How did I send a hundred roses to women on Hinge? One woman matched me who I knew in person already. I'm like, hey, we'd love to reconnect — I lost your phone number, because I deleted it when she had a boyfriend, and I didn't see the point of keeping the number. So she's on Hinge, I send a rose to her, and she's like, "Oh, you know, we can be great friends, for sure." No. I'm deleting that match right now. I'm not on Hinge to find friends. I've got friends. I just talked to one of my boys for like thirty minutes before recording this. I'm going to go play tennis with friends in a couple of hours. I was hanging out at yoga earlier. I've got kids. I've got family. I do not need a friend on Hinge. I'm not on Hinge to try and find a friend.
Then I texted another woman. I'd seen her profile on Hinge, and I've known her for like six months. She had been trying to tell me before that she wasn't dating — and then I see her profile on Hinge. So I send her a rose on Hinge. No response. Then she texts me the next day, like maybe she didn't see it. So I text her and ask her on a date. No response. That was Monday. It's Friday. I've had so many women that I've known in real life — I've sent them a rose, and I feel rejected. There was this beautiful woman I saw at an AA meeting. This is a woman I have respect for from seeing her in person — she's been sober a while, she's beautiful, she seems like she's got her life together. Then she's on Hinge in a bathing suit, looking desperate, and then not responding to my desperate rose. And I'm just like — where did I go wrong? I went wrong installing this app. Not the first time, because I wanted to try it — they didn't have Hinge, they didn't have Tinder back when I was dating 15 years ago, and I wanted to install it and try it. But these apps suck if you're not the top 10% with signaling and superficial nonsense — a six-five guy, or you've got your pictures set up like these dudes are showing you on YouTube: "Yeah, I have my crossbow, I got my top photo with my crossbow pointing at the ground, and I'm kind of looking away like this."
What Kind of Guys Are You Actually Picking?
And then women complain that all they find are guys that just want to sleep with them, and superficial guys that are already married, looking for ethical non-monogamy on the apps and lying to them. I'm like, what kind of dudes do you think you're picking on dating apps, when there's a bunch of decent men sitting right there? Are those the guys that are really attracting your attention, or is it the assholes that are the flashiest, biggest liars?
I know a guy in person, too, who is struggling to connect with women that are attractive and that like him in person. He's signaling all that money stuff, and he's just going out with girl after girl from these dating apps. But he pushed away a woman where they seemed to really like each other — so he could go out with all these women on dating apps. And I knew a guy that was in a pickup community, and his body count was over 500. He's not with us anymore. If he'd had a great relationship with a woman, I believe he'd still be here. And that's sad.
I Literally Wrote the Book on This — and Went Back Anyway
Please, do not ever let me install one of these again. Because I literally wrote a book called It's Not You, It's the Dating Apps before I was back on YouTube. And then my dumb ass — or my optimistic ass, which is a nicer way of putting it — my optimistic ass, a week ago, thought I'd come back and try. I was telling a friend: this feels just like the bar, man. I feel like I'm sitting down at the bar and I'm trying to take a drink, and I'm like, this time it's going to be different. This time, when I install Hinge with professional photos, and this time, when I use the new version of ChatGPT to optimize everything on my profile, it's going to be different. But no. Because when I meet a woman in person, she's not as likely to filter me out for being a divorced single dad. She sees that I look good in person, that I've got a confidence about me, that my voice is deep. She sees that there's more to me — that I'm wise, that even though I come off intense, I'm calm. I can help a woman who's nervous calm down on a date, relax, and feel safe with me. But that doesn't get communicated over a dating app.
It's Better to Be Hopeless in the Right Environment
So I hope my experience with Hinge will help some other guy out there to uninstall this thing. Because hope is great when there's real possibility — but it's actually better to be hopeless in the right environment. Like, I'm hopeless about drinking alcohol. I'm absolutely hopeless. There's no way I'm going to drink alcohol and have it work out without a sad ending. And I'm hopeless about dating apps. For me, these apps are so broken that they are not going to work — I can't use them without feeling addicted. I can't keep fiddling around on my phone, looking at Hinge, going: why do I only have one match? Why isn't this woman messaging me back? This doctor matched with me, we sent a few messages, there was a little energy, and then the messages just stopped. Why? Because she probably has 20 other guys that she's messaging, and one of them said something funnier than I did, so now she's paying attention to him and she's forgotten about me. Forget that.
I go to yoga, and it's the opposite. I go to yoga and the women are like, damn, who's this attractive man that's strong? I want to talk to him. I wish he'd talk to me. I have women at yoga starting conversations with me. And the last woman I dated seemed really happy to be picked up at yoga. So forget these dating apps. Never — never ever — am I using one of these shithole dating apps again.
If you want to be more than a number to me, get in the Jerry Banfield Family. I want to know your name. I want to know your story. Share your name and your story with me, and tell me what these videos have meant for you. There are other people from all over my YouTube channels in there. I just started it, so it's the best time to belong.
And if you want to follow the whole saga of me and these dating apps — every install, every deletion, and everything I'm learning about meeting women in person instead — it's all in my Dating playlist.
Women, Use Voice Memos to Filter Men on Hinge
From my video published August 3, 2026.
Filter Men for Depth With Hinge Voice Memos
Women, if you're dating online, especially on Hinge, one of the best things you can do is use voice memos to filter men for depth. I've talked to so many women in person who've dated online — both women I've gone out with and women who are just friends — and my question all the time is: how did you go out with this loser? This guy who was already married, or this guy who just wanted to get laid — how did that happen when you had so many options? It can be frustrating as a man sometimes, talking to my women friends. You have so many options on dating apps. Why are you not filtering out the guys who are losers from the winners? To me, the main thing you need to do is filter for depth, and Hinge voice memos make it pretty easy. What you can do is send a man a voice memo of thirty seconds or more asking a specific question, and see if he responds in kind.
It's tricky for women, because a lot of times you have this idea that a man is worthwhile — that you're getting a good deal on him — if he's kind of avoidant, not that interested, not overly enthusiastic, not desperate. The problem with that is you then tend to go out with a lot of guys who are jerks, who generally are not going to care about you, are not going to actually pay attention to you, and are not going to treat you very well. At the same time, when you get guys who are really excited to give you attention, you interpret that as them being losers — as in, they must not be very high value if they're giving me all this depth. I'll do a separate video for guys, because often men will either be kind of avoidant and shallow or give way too much depth immediately. If I were a woman using dating apps, I would try to draw guys into depth: see which men are actually going to put a little time into me, and which men are going to provide answers that go beyond the surface.
Voice memos help someone hear your voice. I love getting voice memos from women who ask me things about my life, who want to have a conversation with me. It's an easy way to start feeling what a conversation would be like with somebody else. What you don't want to do is trade a few flirty, superficial messages with a man, then meet up in real life expecting to say, hey, I want to have a conversation with you — and instead he's trying to kiss you or trying to get laid immediately. There are so many guys on dating apps who are quality men, but a lot of times, as a woman, it can be hard to find them. You need to be able to sort through guys quickly and easily, and one of the easiest ways to do it is to send a man a voice memo, because the guys who are truly not going to be worth going out with won't put the time into responding to it.
The Guys Women Are Drawn To Often Cancel
I dated a woman for a little while — absolutely beautiful. It didn't work out with her, but she had some guy cancel on her last minute after she'd blocked a time off. I'd love to see that guy's profile, but I guarantee you she could have screened him better. She spent weeks messaging him, and then he canceled on her at the last minute. I know that's disappointing, but that guy probably had several other dates lined up, or he already had a girlfriend or something. Unfortunately, those are often the men women are instinctively attracted to. The way to compensate for that is to make those men — the men who do have a lot of options — go deeper. Test them. If they won't go deeper, if they won't send you some voice memos back, if they don't respond in kind, if they get impatient, if they're being overly sexual or anything like that, they're not worth your time.
It's tricky, because when you find a man who's paying you a lot of attention, it'll often turn you off. Ironically, I've come to believe those are some of the best men you could actually build a relationship with. You want to figure out which man is really going to love you, appreciate you, and show up, versus which guy is just trying to increase his body count. For example, if you look at a man's profile and you want to know something about him, you can send a voice memo sharing a little bit about yourself and asking a question about his profile. If he sends back some short little reply or gets impatient, then you know this is not a guy who's going to be worth going out with. Ideally, if you're going to have decent chemistry going out with somebody, you should be able to exchange a number of voice memos with each other, build the energy, flirt, and make the guy put in the work. There are so many guys on these dating apps, and the ones who don't put in work, who aren't willing to talk with you and get to know you a little bit — in my opinion, they're losers. Even if they're going out with a bunch of women, they're not going to be worth going out with.
An Hour of Voice Memos Beats a Wasted Drive
If I really like a woman, I'll be happy to exchange voice memos back and forth. There was one woman where we must have sent each other almost an hour's worth of audio each in voice memos. I was so glad I didn't meet up with her, because over the course of that hour of voice memos she had gotten really toxic and started criticizing my life, so I unmatched her. That was so much more efficient than driving an hour to go meet her, figuring that out in person, and trying to perform.
I think voice memos are a great way to get beyond the surface with somebody, because texting is super easy. I struggle with texting a bit because I think in very deep and complex ways, and I like to share at that level — I'm going to do a video for men on this, because it especially applies to me. I'm ready to go deep and get complex, and to me, that's the kind of guy you want: a guy who's willing to get deep emotionally and conversationally with you, because that's what makes a relationship that's going to last. If there's a guy who just can't stand to send voice memos or have any depth, then you're not going to have good chemistry in person either. It doesn't matter if there's physical chemistry when there's no conversation.
I'm so glad I've learned to use voice memos. I'm surprised that women will take all this time to arrange a date instead. I messaged a woman earlier today, and there's been all this back and forth about when we're going to go out — we were supposed to play tennis, but it rained, so now we're trying to reschedule. It's like she doesn't even know whether I'm really worth talking to or not. At this point, she doesn't know whether I'm worth all this time. If I were a woman, as soon as I matched with a guy, I'd be sending a voice memo. As a woman, you have options on dating apps — the odds are in your favor — and you want to immediately escalate things beyond the surface.
You Can't Tell Who Is Really Behind the Texts
I have a hard time even doing text. I literally just talk to ChatGPT and it tells me what to say. When you're talking with a guy via text message on an app, you don't know whether he's just talking to AI, feeding it your messages and having the AI say whatever you want to hear — anything to get you to meet up in person. He could be texting twenty other women and putting the minimal effort into every single one, and you can't tell whether you're different from all those other women. Then you're very vulnerable to being canceled on, because unfortunately, a lot of women will all be texting the same few guys on dating apps.
I've been getting a lot of matches lately now that I've got my profile set up really well, and I don't want to waste my time going back and forth with women either. The odds are with the women — the women have all the choices, with so many more men than women on dating apps. It's not in my best interest to escalate things too quickly, because of how women work: it often turns a woman off if I escalate with too much depth too fast. So I try to escalate things gently too. If a woman sends me a nice message, I'll send a thirty-second voice memo and see how she responds to that.
Hear the Emotion in His Voice
Voice memos also communicate a lot more emotion, which matters especially for women. These are generalizations — this can apply gay or straight, some guys operate this way, and some women operate more like men. Speaking in generalizations makes this easier to explain, but I also realize the complexity. With women, you really need to start hearing some emotion. If you do voice memos back and forth with a man, you'll start to hear his voice — whether his voice is a turn-on or not — and you'll start to hear a lot more emotion, or lack of emotion, in him. That will help you much better distinguish whether this guy is a winner or a loser, at least as far as being compatible with you.
For me, I'd prefer to disqualify someone off of voice memos so that we don't waste our time, rather than meet up in person and find out, oh man, I wasted my time. I've driven an hour to meet women before, and I guarantee you that if we'd exchanged a few voice memos first, I wouldn't have met up with her — or she might not have met up with me. On top of that, voice memos can help build some depth, because what you don't want to do is meet up with somebody you hardly know and then have awkward conversation. To me, voice memos escalate perfectly into having a phone call, the phone call escalates to FaceTime, and FaceTime escalates to meeting in person. I've had some dates with women where we'd barely talked at all, because my philosophy had been to get off the dating apps as quickly as possible. The problem with that is you meet up in person and there's no romantic spark. Sometimes people are ready to move quick off a dating app, but I'm not ready to just kiss some woman when we barely even know each other yet, and people can get their feelings hurt that way.
Depth Is How I Met My Ex
To me, depth is the ideal. When my ex and I met fifteen and a half years ago on Match, we exchanged really deep emails. There wasn't so much texting back then, but we sent each other emails that were probably 1,000 to 2,000 words each — just three long emails apiece. I matched with her and sent her a wink, she sent back a wink, and so I sent a long, deep email as my first message. Just off of three long emails each, we met up in person. I'd encourage women: don't be afraid of a guy who offers some depth. I just matched with two women who liked me first, and I sent them — maybe it was too much — three-to-four-minute voice memos.
Depth Is Not Desperation
Sometimes women just get overwhelmed and feel pressured by depth, and interpret depth as meaning a guy is desperate, he's a loser, he's not a high-value man, or he wouldn't have this much time for me otherwise. Women, what you really need to look for is depth, because what you tell me in person is that you're frustrated with shallow guys. If you don't want shallow guys, you need to look for depth. Voice memos are the easiest, most immediate way to fish for depth, and having a conversation on the phone is another great way.
Ask the Direct Questions Before You Meet
If I were a woman, I'd ask guys very direct questions, especially once you get them on the phone or FaceTime — things like, "I'm just checking, but you're not married or in a relationship, are you?" You'd be amazed how many women I've talked to who go out with a guy and then find out after nine dates that he's married. Unfortunately, on dating apps you can't assume that somebody isn't married, or that he doesn't already have a girlfriend and is on the dating app looking for a side piece. Even if his profile says monogamy, this is why you want to get at depth. Women are often good at being subtle — you can go at these things sideways and probe around — but get to know somebody before you meet up with them in person, because a lot of things can happen when you meet someone face to face. Especially as a woman, you want to filter out as many guys as possible before you commit your time and energy to meeting a guy in person.
Don't be afraid of depth. Depth is a sign that there might be something there beyond the shallow. If a guy offers some depth, maybe that's a good sign — not that he's a desperate loser, but that he's a decent man who isn't texting fifty other women, and who doesn't have a wife and a girlfriend while he's also out on dating apps.
Join the Family
If you'd like to keep this conversation going with me, join the family. Instead of me just talking at you, you can pop in and have a two-way relationship with me — come in, ask me your questions, and drop in on the community. I hope to see you in the Jerry Banfield Family soon.
I think about this a lot because I'm in the middle of dating right now. I've had a successful fifteen-year relationship and kids, so I know how to turn an online date into a long-term, mostly happy relationship — and now I'm back in the middle of the dating game myself.
If you want a one-on-one call to talk with me, I'm here for you — you can schedule a call, and I'm happy to talk much more about your dating strategy.
I'm just trying to help everybody have an easier time with dating apps and with getting together with somebody. For more of what I'm learning along the way, you can watch my Dating playlist.
Hinge Pay to Win with Roses is Ridiculously Effective
From my video published August 1, 2026.
I Signed Up for Hinge Ready to Pay to Win
I personally just signed up for Hinge again knowing that dating apps are straight up pay to win, and I might as well not even use them unless I'm going to pay to win and watch how effective they are. I spent $200 in the first 24 hours of signing up for Hinge. I bought Hinge X for three months for $99. Then I bought 50 roses for another $99. And I literally got a date within 24 hours with a beautiful woman who is going to meet me, supposedly, for tennis on Monday morning. Thus, I can tell you, I guarantee you, if I had just liked her profile, or even just been using Hinge X, she doesn't notice me. What you're going to learn here is the dynamics of how dating apps really work on the other side, plus what I've heard from talking to men who've got a lot of money and have gotten tons of dates from online dating apps — they're conscious that it is pay to win.
How Women Actually Use Dating Apps
First, here's what you don't understand about how pay to win it is. If you're a guy, you imagine women are using these dating apps the same way you are. But I've talked to a lot of women in person, because I am out there actually talking to real people, not just sitting in here making videos. And what I notice is that women don't generally put the effort into these apps that men do. You might imagine that if you were a woman and you had a thousand likes, you might actually go through all of them and try to match with as many of them as possible. Now, there certainly are women who take that approach. But from me talking to real women, it seems most women are so overwhelmed by these apps that they're very inconsistent about using them. They often don't even understand exactly how the app works. You literally have to do anything to get their attention, because often they're not using filters correctly — they're seeing dudes who live like an hour away and then wasting time messaging them. They're messaging some of the guys who are just the top, top tier guys with looks and superficial show-off profiles, and then those guys aren't paying attention to them. But many of the women are open to going out with more of a regular guy — they're just not seeing him.
Why Roses Blast You to the Top
So on Hinge, all you have to do is send a rose and you're going to blast toward the very top of a woman's inbox. And sure, some women might be toxic about roses. But Hinge itself tells you roses are twice as likely to lead to a date. What they're not telling you is that roses are probably much more likely than that to actually get you a match. Because what I've noticed is that most women I've talked to in real life are overwhelmed by dating apps. They get on the app, they're very inconsistent about even using it in the first place, and when they do get on, they'll maybe look at five or ten different guys' profiles. Those will be the guys who sent them roses or premium likes, or they'll just go through the feed. You've got to get around that by using pay-to-win mechanics.
If you're not willing to spend money on dating apps, most of the time you're better off not using them — unless you can make some top five or ten percent profile. For example, I have a family member whose job title sounds really impressive, and he puts his $70,000 car in his photos. He struggles on dating apps too, just to get noticed. But then when he does get noticed, it makes things a little easier for him. I know another guy who uses dating apps like crazy and gets dates with women 30 years younger than him all the time. He's the one who turned me on to this. He told me he spends $20 or $30 a day boosting his profile. Now, he does that on Tinder, and I don't recommend boosting on Hinge. I've tried boosting on Hinge, and all I've gotten are likes from women I don't find attractive at all so far. I think roses on Hinge are a much better use of your money, because roses trigger this big pop-up and notification. Some of the most attractive women may get several roses a day, and those might be the only messages they even look at.
Only Send Roses to Women Who Are Active
Another thing that's important with Hinge: I only send roses to women who are active. I go through, I sort, and I pick "active today." Hinge wants you to waste time on other profiles, because they constantly turn that setting off automatically. And while technically you may get a higher match rate by just liking tons of profiles, what I want is matches from the women I'm very interested in. If I'm not interested in a woman to the point where I'll effectively pay $2 to have a very high chance she notices me, then I don't need to be looking at her profile at all.
Flaky Attention and Invisible Profiles
What I've noticed in talking to women in real life about dating is that they're often very flaky about using the dating apps at all. For example, I started dating a woman recently. She was on the dating apps, and then when she started dating me, as far as I know, she just stopped using them. That seems to be very normal behavior with women. Even with me — I've got two dates lined up right now and I'm still sending a bunch of roses out on Hinge, so maybe I'm going harder than usual. But often what happens is a woman will be very interested in paying attention to dating apps, and then her attention goes elsewhere, whether it's friends, family, or guys she's already talking to and meeting up with. So you'll have all these profiles of women who are essentially not paying any attention to any of their likes. They're not going through the feed or doing anything. They're sitting there inactive, where you liking their profile makes no difference. You have maybe a one percent chance of ever even being seen. Even with Hinge X, there are lots of guys who have Hinge X, and their priority likes are going above yours. And how many women are actually taking the time to go through 20, 30, 40, 50, 100-plus likes? Not a lot.
What I've noticed talking to women in person is that women are often making very bad decisions on the guys they're picking from dating apps. To me, that indicates they're struggling and frustrated with using the apps. Unless she's a woman who's as tech-savvy as I am and figures out how to use all the apps and everything, she's generally not thinking about how the app works technically. She's just looking at photos — and I'm not meaning to put anyone down with this. I'm saying this is kind of a normal dating app experience. Whereas men, we think women are using the apps like us. They're not. They're going on the apps annoyed that they're even on there. They're not enjoying it. They're trying to get off there as soon as possible. Some will message a few guys at a time. Others, as soon as they find one guy to message, will stop messaging anyone else. I've talked to a woman who went out with nine different guys from dating apps — and all these guys were losers, according to her at least. My thought was: how did you pick all these guys out of everyone on the dating apps? Well, most of the time, unless a woman uses a very strict set of filters that somehow filters you out, a lot of women aren't even going through the feed at all. They're just going through their likes. Others are going through the feed without even knowing how to use it. You've got to break out of that invisibility.
The Algorithm Buries Ordinary Guys
There are so many guys on dating apps, and honestly, the algorithm on Hinge is terrible. All Hinge is trying to do is show women profiles they're likely to match with. So Hinge tends to show women all these profiles of chads — superficial, tall guys, the guys with the highest match rates. That's who women see when they look through their feed. They're not seeing ordinary guys at all. But that doesn't mean they're not willing to go out with an ordinary guy, especially if you put some substance in your profile, like I've shared before with my own profile. I literally look at it like this: when I'm on Hinge, if I want a woman to see me, realistically I need to just pay a couple of dollars. And even that doesn't guarantee she'll see me. Sending a woman a rose doesn't mean she'll definitely even look at my profile. But it does mean that if she goes to look at her likes, I'll be above all those other guys who haven't sent roses. That gives me an exponentially higher chance of being seen. And in order to be matched with, I must be seen.
The problem on most dating apps is that there are so many men that women are simply never going to see your profile in the first place — which means you've got to pay to win, which is a pretty exploitative and awful business model. It's the reason so many people are frustrated with dating. But as a guy, it's important to be honest as a consequence. From my view, unless you're making one of these top one percent dating profiles that hits absolutely everything — professional pictures, all your text perfectly lined up, which is not going to be most of you — then it's either pay to win or don't waste your time. Just having the unpaid version of the app is, most of the time, wasting your time. Are there exceptions? Yes, absolutely there are exceptions. But what I can tell you is that as soon as I warmed up to the idea that this is pay to win and I'm going to spend the money, I very easily and consistently got dates by sending roses.
And all these other dudes — I'm taking up space. My rose means women are seeing me instead of another guy. If a woman actually matches with me and starts talking to me, then almost every other guy ends up invisible, unless she's going through and talking to a whole bunch of guys. Most of the women I know don't have a whole lot of bandwidth to sit there and talk to 10, 20, 30 different guys on dating apps. Absolutely, some do. And honestly, I'd struggle to do that myself — if I had 50 women who all liked me and matched with me, I'd have a hard time talking to all of them too. You've got to realize how scarce a woman's attention is on a dating app. You have to break through all the noise, which is very easy to do with a rose on Hinge. Or you can try boosting your profile as well — if you'd like it to be super easy, boosting your profile kind of puts it on easy mode. What you do not want to do is waste your time on these apps.
Your Time Is Worth More Than Free Swiping
Your time is valuable, and most of you can make more money. For me, I'd much rather just spend $20 a day or whatever to boost my profile all day than sit there and go through woman after woman after woman — like her profile, feel something, get excited, and then get rejected. Not it, not it. No interest, no attention. So I think it's important that men, at this point, just realize dating apps are pay to win.
I'm not saying that if you spend $200, you'll get an instant date. I'm saying that I spent $200 and I also spent about three hours looking through profiles with search criteria — putting in a narrow radius around my house, up to nine miles — and then finding a specific comment. I saw this woman who played tennis and said so on her profile. So I sent her a rose and said, "Let's play tennis." And then she matched me back. I guarantee you, if I hadn't spent this $200, I would not have a date with this woman right now. And as annoying as that is, lots of things in life are as simple as spending money and you will get ahead.
Come In and Talk to Me
If you'd like this to be a two-way relationship where I know you and you know me — and that's how I operate now, since probably 90-plus percent of the videos I watch are from people I know, people I've met, and people in my community — then I've got you covered. I have what I believe is the best dating coaching program anywhere in the world. When you join the Jerry Banfield Family, you can ask me all the questions you want. You can post your dating profile. You can post your exact situation. The hardest thing to do is start a new community, and this one is growing. Come in and talk to me. If your dating matters to you, it's worth it.
And if you don't think it's worth it to spend some money to get a date, then sure as hell don't use a dating app. Be out there in person approaching women — you can do that for free in a natural environment. I hope this post has helped you see that you should either prepare to spend the money on a dating app, or not use them, or somehow try to beat the odds. But don't just waste your time on dating apps acting like a regular guy. For more of what I've learned out here actually dating, check out my Dating playlist.