Why I'm Back for Round Four
I deleted Hinge three times in the last nine months. And your boy's back for round four to see if we can get Hinge to actually work this time. So why did I delete Hinge the last three times, and why do I have my profile set up the way I do? I'll show you every single detail of my Hinge profile here, why it's laid out like this, and I will document my journey. This is day one, my first 24 hours back on Hinge, and I already spent $200. Technically I spent $198. I spent $99 on Hinge Premium, or HingeX, for three months, and then I spent $100 to buy 50 roses, because roses work. Hinge's own data says you're twice as likely to get a date with a rose. So it is pay to play. Can we just be honest about that?
I got back on Hinge because I've already paid $7,500 for matchmaking. I did get some dates off Hinge earlier this year, at least one date, and that was cool. And while Hinge probably doesn't work most of the time, my ex is dating somebody that she met online dating. And the woman I got all excited about from yoga, she was online dating too, and got stood up by some guy there as well. So even though online dating might not work a lot of the time, it just opens up some additional possibilities. I've learned from all my previous mistakes on Hinge, I'm making this to keep myself accountable, and I am ready to at least see if there's a chance. There's a chance I can meet my next wife on Hinge, and I might as well leave that opportunity open. So let's go through my exact profile and my exact strategy on Hinge, and I will document exactly how this works.
My Day-One Stats and Strategy
So far, I have had zero results in the last nine hours. I ended up going to bed at like 12:30 last night. I sent 10 roses and probably 20-something likes, maybe 30 likes. I sent a few personalized comments, and I kept everything within a three-mile radius of my house. The stats are not looking great on this right now.
In the past, I got overwhelmed starting out on Hinge, where I would do this big radius and try to search for the perfect woman based on deal breakers and stuff. Hinge stopped calling them deal breakers, and now they call it search criteria, flexible, all that stuff. So what I'm doing is I put a good bit of work into my profile, and I'm starting out looking for women that are closer, and then I'll consistently expand a little bit. I also am only looking for women that are active today. In talking to a lot of women in person, what I notice is women will often be on a dating app one day and then might not check it for weeks. So the last thing you want to do is waste your time putting energy into a woman who's not actually active on the app. I sort by active today because that seems to be a sign that the woman's actually using the app. And here's what happens with a lot of women dating: as soon as they meet somebody, their profile will just be sitting on a dating app, but they're not checking any of the likes. So ideally I want to minimize interacting with women that aren't actually using the app.
That said, the dating apps are a numbers game as well. I recognize that if I send 50 roses and a hundred likes, I might turn that into a date or two. But at the same time, it's not my only strategy. It's a supplement.
The Headline Photo
Let me explain my dating profile. For pictures, I got photos that I actually paid for. Well, actually, no, there's literally only one picture on here that I paid for, and it's this first photo. I paid a photographer for it. A friend of mine, an attractive woman, looked at the profile and said, "This profile looks good. You can see that you have some muscle, your shoulders, you're smiling, the color, you have a watch on, your shirt has your name on it. This is an accurate communication of you."
For this first picture, I gave ChatGPT a bunch of pictures, and it's actually getting pretty good at this. And my dating coach said that this is my best picture and it should be the headline. It shows off my arm muscles, it's a smiling picture, it's got a nice red background, you can see I'm out doing something, and you can see somebody else took the picture. It looks like I put some effort into this picture, and I look good in it.
Polarize, Don't Maximize
Now, my profile is not designed to maximize leads. My profile is designed to filter heavily and get a woman that really looks at me and thinks, wow, and feels something for me. And that's not going to be every woman. A lot of dating guys on YouTube are telling you to basically try and appeal to everyone: don't be specific, be mysterious. I don't want the kind of woman that just wants to look at a couple pictures of a guy, doesn't read anything else about him, and then just wants to go out with him. I want a woman that's like, oh, he's a YouTuber, that's cool. Oh, he's Christian. All right, he wants children, he doesn't drink, he wants to build a marriage. I don't want to waste my time on dating apps with women that want to hook up. Maybe in real life I might consider it, but not on dating apps.
My whole profile is designed to polarize, where either you look at my profile and you can't stand me, which is probably a normal reaction, or occasionally it filters for one woman who is very eager and very interested based on my profile. I don't want to waste my time with lukewarm matches. My profile is designed to be out there and give me a chance to get a very warm lead off of Hinge.
The Voice Memo
The voice memo sets the rest of my profile apart. In my voice memo I say, "Let's get together and start planning the wedding and sending out the baby shower invitations. Wait, hold up. First date stuff. I love going for a walk at sunset at Crescent Lake Park or Upham Beach. So beautiful. I also am consistently at Beach Town Yoga for a power flow and would love to meet you there. And major bonus points if you'd like to meet up and play tennis at St. Pete Tennis Center."
So my voice memo is immediately playful, which contrasts with all the serious stuff on my profile. A lot of women I've talked to in person complain that all the guys on dating apps are just looking to hook up. So my profile is serious, even though, I swear, what they say they want versus what they choose often seems to be the opposite. They see a serious profile and then don't want to go out with me, but see some guy that is not serious at all and go out with him. That's on them, because I'm filtering for a woman that actually does want a real relationship. And at the same time, my voice memo makes it a little lighthearted and playful, which contrasts sharply with the rest of my profile.
I probably did 20 takes on that voice memo. I have a custom GPT trained on hundreds of hours of my videos, so it knows me very well, and I combined that with the AI power to get this voice memo down. It's funny, it's real, and it gives a woman an idea of exactly what I want to do on the first date. I don't want to have coffee. I don't want to go to dinner. I want to go for a walk, I want to play tennis, I want to go to the beach, I want to go to Beach Town Yoga. If you don't want to do that stuff, then I'm not interested in hanging out.
The Life Goal Prompt
Then ChatGPT came up with this life goal of mine: "Building a peaceful, playful marriage where we raise a loving family, stay active, put our phones down, and still flirt in the kitchen." This contrasts with me being a YouTuber, and this is my vision. This is what I'm looking for on here. The right woman will see this and feel the vision and feel something, and be like, oh, this is the kind of guy that I want to go out with. And the wrong woman will immediately move on and be like, ew, it's too serious, not interested. But GPT wrote this, and it's actually really good.
Honest About My Age, My Faith, and My Job
Then I've got my age, honestly. I'm not lying on a dating profile to try and get more dates. I could put 39 or 38, and I could pass for that, but that's stupid. Come on. If you gotta lie on a dating profile, you're a loser. Okay? Just don't be a loser. Be honest. I don't believe in setting something up based on dishonesty. For relationship type, my profile is so serious that maybe we don't even need it, but I put life partner. I put my hometown, Michigan. I also put Christian on there, because I'm reading the Bible every day and it does speak to me more than any other religion. And I want monogamy. I don't want non-monogamy. I put my school, USF, and for my job title, YouTuber.
Yes, if I put something else and was mysterious, maybe it gets more women. But ultimately I don't want to deal with a woman on the first date who's then looking up my YouTube videos and getting all pissed off, which has happened before. Even the woman I dated from yoga, even though she's a content creator, some of my YouTube videos put her off. Ideally a woman should look me up on YouTube first. And even if I don't get a match, I'd rather just not deal with the woman who looks at my YouTube and says, "I don't want to deal with that." I want a woman who will film videos with me, who'll do a dating video with me and talk about how we met, where we could give advice to everybody else based on our story. I want a teammate who's on board, who loves that I'm a YouTuber.
So again, this profile is not designed to maximize leads. It is designed to get a wife, and I'd rather not have all the distractions. Because I meet women in person, and I can meet women in person and be mysterious, as long as I don't wear a shirt with my name on it.
One Job: Bring Me a Wife
In person, I don't need a dating profile. My dating profile has one job, and that's to bring me a wife. And to not waste my time is the second thing. That's what it's for, so make yourself very clear.
My dating coach said I should put six feet for my height. I'm like, I'm not lying on my dating profile about one inch in height, because what kind of person does that? A loser. I mean, I understand maybe some women filter for six feet, but I don't need to date a woman who's doing six-feet deal breakers. You're not my type if you're that superficial. I don't need to meet you. I've got where I live, I put that I have kids, that I want kids, that I don't drink, don't smoke, et cetera. Again, those are polarizing, but the right woman will see all this and be like, wow, I finally found my husband.
The Shirtless Photo and My Filters
Next page. The idea of this profile is to give an accurate presentation of me, so that when she meets me in person, what she sees matches the dating profile. Now, I've put the shirtless picture as my second picture. This signals that I appreciate when I can see a woman has a body that is attractive to me. Maybe that's a bathing suit picture, or maybe it's something else, but for me, I don't trust profiles where she hasn't made it clear that she's active or that she's fit. And just don't say fat. I want to see that you have a body I would be happy with, that aligns with my body. Okay? And if that's not clear from your profile, then we don't need to date. This is my filter, my type.
This photo shows that I'm strong, and I'm at yoga. It has the name of the yoga studio, which is recognizable, and it matches how I say I lost 80 pounds and kept it off. You can see I'm strong, lean, and in shape, but I also still have some fat, some skin hanging from when I was fat. So to me, this is substance.
The Washington, D.C. Photo
Then I've got a picture from the Washington Monument, which is lifestyle stuff: I'm in shape, I'm healthy, I travel. It's a picture from the National Mall in Washington, D.C. And my shirt does say The Jerry Banfield Show on this one, which also sets women up so they can Google The Jerry Banfield Show and just look me up. And then if they don't like it, I don't have to deal with them before we match, which is ideal.
The Prompts ChatGPT Helped Me Write
Then I ran my prompts through ChatGPT, which really helped with this because it has so much data on me. It went through, found all this, and put it in there. What I want to communicate is warmth, emotion, and my story. These are things I could stay up all night talking about. I love talking about why people fall in love. Is it transactional? Is it magical? I love hearing people's stories of where they met. I love talking about what keeps attraction alive in marriage, because that's the thing I struggled with in a 15-year relationship, and these are things I'd love to talk about with a woman. Why people fall in love, what keeps attraction alive. This separates me from so many guys that are just shallow and are not going to be able to have a conversation. A woman can tell when she looks at this that this guy is going to be able to have some serious conversations.
Then: how I lost 80 pounds and kept it off, 12 years sober through AA. This is a man who's been through some stuff before and is living a recovered, healthy, plant-based life.
Dating in 2026 Is What You Make It
Then there's my prompt about why dating in 2026 is awesome. I've X'd out some women I thought were attractive but who were so toxic about dating. Dating in 2026 is what you make it, and I want to make it awesome. I had a lot of fun dating the last woman. Even the suffering was kind of hilarious and a great learning opportunity. I don't think dating sucks in 2026. I think if dating sucks for you in 2026, you need to change your mindset. There's a way to make dating fun, and I know because dating was sucking for me in 2026, and now it doesn't. Now I'm having fun, and I'm so excited to see the next women I'm going to go out with.
And then for the conspiracy theory prompt: ancient aliens and why we're here. That's a huge one. When you look at this, the idea of my profile is that you can very clearly see what kind of man I am, and then to polarize, as I said. These are things that will put off plenty of women, but there's a certain kind of woman that will listen to this voice memo, that will read this, that will look at all this and say, oh my God, look at this stuff, and be like, damn, this is an amazing guy.
The Rest of the Photo Lineup
Then I have a picture with my friend. ChatGPT said I had too many pictures with my name on them. Literally, like five of the pictures had my name on them before, and it said that's a bit too much, and that you need one picture with somebody else to show you have friends. So this is one of my best friends from college, one of the best friend pictures I had, and it's got a shirt promoting Internet Computer on it. Again, it shows I'm very geeky, techie. If you don't want a man that's geeky and techie and into all this stuff, this is another filter. And my friend and I are both in it, and it's a good picture of both of us.
Then, because some of the women I'm most compatible with are Christian, and they're filtering hard on whether this guy has a faith in Jesus, I put this for my last prompt. I'm actually doing it, too: I read the Bible every day and attend church most Sundays. But ChatGPT said I should take the edge off and not make it sound like I'm too over the top, so it says, "I'm still learning, but faith has become a meaningful part of how I live." This is being honest about exactly where I'm at. It's very honest. It seems like some of the women who were Christian before, who aligned with a lot of the rest of the stuff in my previous profiles, were not seeing what they needed to see. This is a very clear signal for those women that I'm someone they could go out with, someone they could go to church with, talk Bible stuff, and be on the same page.
Then there's a lifestyle picture with the Hogwarts castle at Universal in the background. Maybe not the best picture of me, but again, it shows lifestyle, it shows that I travel, it shows that I do fun stuff. Then I've got a picture of me playing tennis. You can see I'm lean, you can see I'm in shape, it's at sunset, and it's a nice picture of me.
What This Profile Is Designed to Do
This profile is extremely what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and I imagine it will be very effective. A lot of women are not going to be interested in this. They're not going to want to be a part of The Jerry Banfield Show. They're going to be put off that I'm a YouTuber. They're going to wonder if their life is going to be public. They're going to think, God, this guy's way too serious, especially if they don't listen to the voice memo. But this is designed to get one woman who will make an extremely compatible match with me, to then match with me and be ready to go out on a date. If a woman reads all this stuff and matches with me, then I should be able to just ask her immediately on a date, because you know all this about me. You don't need to sit there and ask me a bunch of questions. My view is, as soon as I get a woman that likes all this stuff, let's meet in person and see if the chemistry is there.
So this is my first day on Hinge, this exact profile I'm using, and why I use it. I'll keep you updated on how dating goes for me on Hinge over on my Dating playlist.
I hope the only way I delete Hinge from now on is by getting into a successful relationship. I hope that after all the times I've deleted it and found it unsustainable, I've finally got a formula, a mindset, and a profile that works for me to be able to date.
If you want to talk to me about your dating profile — and you have the courage to post it up in my community — join the Jerry Banfield Family and I'll give you personalized feedback on your profile. I would love to just chat, connect, and hear any of your feedback in there too.
My hope is that I can just let this profile sit there, bring me some dates occasionally, and maybe it'll have a chance to bring me a wife. Or at least it'll make it easier for me to not obsess about one particular woman in person.