A Black woman said her dating options on Hinge changed almost overnight after she switched her listed race to white. She described the experiment in a TikTok video posted by @wrekkkii, which had reached 28.6K views.
“Suddenly I’m getting Harvard graduates, real estate investors, financial advisors, um, football players, Black men,” she said in the video.
Some commenters questioned what the change actually showed.
The Woman Tested a Tip She Had Seen Online
The woman said she got the idea from another TikTok user who, a couple of months earlier, had told Black women to change their race to white on dating apps to improve their options. She said she decided to try it herself on Hinge the day before she posted her video.
Hinge lets users hide their race from their profiles. She said her race was listed as Black but hidden.
The TikTok Creator’s Feed Before the Change
Before she changed the setting, she said, her feed had not offered the kind of matches she wanted. “Most of the options on my timeline were drug dealers, scammers, and just crazy men I have no interest in dating,” she said.
She said she had no interest in dating the men who appeared.
After she switched her race to white, she said the profiles on her feed looked different. In addition to the Harvard graduates and financial advisors, she listed real estate investors and football players.
She also said she noticed more attractive Black men. “Where were y’all?” she asked in the video.
Her Advice to Other Black Women
The woman encouraged other Black women to try the same change. “If you want better options, change your race to white on these dating apps, because they take us for a f—ing joke,” she said.
In the caption, she wrote, “S— is that deep and that racist”.
Commenters Questioned the Results
Several commenters argued that the new profiles might not signal better odds for her. Per an outlet, some suggested that the men who appeared may have set their Hinge preferences to exclude Black women. In that case, changing her race could make their profiles visible without changing who they wanted to date.
“Why would you want men who are seeking white women?” one commenter asked. Another replied, “Those are men that don’t want you. Disregard them and move on.”
One commenter wrote, “That’s because those men have clearly removed black women as their preference, and it’s time for black women to wake up and see it.”
One commenter raised a different worry. “My concern is that if those men have their settings set to intentionally filter out black women, will changing those settings make your profile visible to some men who could be a threat to your safety?” the person wrote.
