Viral Hinge hack to escape 'Rose Jail' isn't worth it

Unfortunately, just like everything else, our love lives are at the mercy of algorithms. That's given rise to a cottage industry of dating coaches, forums, and self-proclaimed pickup artists all claiming to know the secret to "hacking dating app algorithms" and finding your soulmate — or at least clearing the goblins and trolls out of your queue.

Hacks for Hinge (and other dating apps) have exploded in popularity as people look for ways to game the app's algorithm to get better matches, and maybe even find a real connection. But some of the so-called tricks circulating right now are… well, kind of dumb.

Case in point: the viral "Hinge hack" for women recently covered by The Cut that promises to free hot men from "Rose Jail." (More on what that is below.) The method — credited to LA influencer and lawyer Eve Tilley-Coulson — is supposed to push attractive matches from Hinge's Standouts section into your Discover feed, where you'll see them more often.

What is the viral Hinge hack?

For the uninitiated, Standouts is a feature that Hinge introduced in 2020, curating a small selection of your "best potential matches" and refreshing every 24 hours. To like someone there, you need to use a Rose (Hinge's version of a Super Like). You get one free Rose every Sunday, or you can buy extras for $3.99 each. Users call it "Rose Jail" because you only have one chance per week to like one of the best options for you (according to Hinge's algorithm), or else you have to fork up cash.

However, the profiles in Standouts are grabbed from the same pool as the usual Discover feed, so users curated for the former on Monday may appear in the latter on Tuesday after the refresh.

Now, the hack itself is… complicated, to say the least. According to Tilley-Coulson, in a three-part series on TikTok, you have to delete your account and remake it exactly at noon on Sunday. Once you've rebuilt your profile with photos and prompts, you buy a $29.99 Superboost, which keeps your profile highly visible for 24 hours. Then, this is key: you don't touch the app during that time. For the next week, you reject everyone in both your Standouts and regular feed (it's unclear whether this also means people who've already liked you). Supposedly, this shows the app that you're active but picky, forcing it to serve you better matches.

And just like that — if the TikTok theory is to be believed — you'll be swimming in hot men.

"Hinge is a business. It thus uses all the data you give it about your 'type,' 'patterns' etc. to hide those individuals behind a paywall," Tilley-Coulson told Mashable over email. "Thus, the less information you give Hinge, the more control you have over the individuals you see and are able to match with."

"Hinge limits the people you see and can like without paying...so there is no success without paying something," Tilley-Coulson stated.

A Hinge spokesperson told Mashable that the app prioritizes quality over quantity, saying Hinge aims "for users to experience fewer, but more meaningful, potential matches that lead to real dates."

"With Hinge's algorithm, we leverage deep learning to understand daters on a deeper level and deliver more thoughtful recommendations," the spokesperson continued. "We show you who you are most likely to match with based on predicting mutual interest in each other." Recommendations are based on factors such as who meets your preferences, who meets your "dealbreakers" (preferences that are non-negotiable), and profiles that you like, skip, or match.

Don't waste $30 on this 'hack'

Wanting to game the algorithm to make an already miserable experience slightly better is completely understandable. In recent years, dating apps have become notorious for annoying users into buying in-app purchases. And if the goal here is simply to get a better batch of potential matches, you're better off just paying for one of Hinge's premium tiers — Hinge+ at $19.99 or HingeX at $24.99 for a week. At least then you get unlimited likes and access to all the filters (height, politics, education level, the works). If your goal is to rack up likes, you don't need to spend $30 on a Superboost and waste a week pretending to be ultra-selective.

Having written about dating app "hacks" before — and, embarrassingly, having been on and off these apps for the last decade (I can even be found on Tinder.com's homepage) — I can confidently say you don't need to waste your money trying gimmicks like this. At least when straight guys were "gaymaxxing" the algorithm (pretending to be gay) to get more likes, they didn't have to pay to look like tools.

Even buying a boost and not swiping, so the app can't gauge your preferences, is based on old Tinder hacks from years past.

Hinge's algorithm (and Tinder's and Bumble's, for that matter) isn't some impenetrable black box. A mix of factors determines how you're ranked in other people's queues.

It's well-known that new accounts with fresh numbers on new devices perform better, thanks to the "new user boost" (formerly known as the "noob boost") that these apps provide to hook you early. Thus, part of the hack involves creating a new account to receive the "bump" — and doing so on Sunday at noon, as data shows that activity peaks late in the weekend.

But that effect fades quickly — especially if you reuse an old number or device tied to a deleted account. The apps also use facial recognition to detect repeat users and are heavily influenced by location. From personal experience, I've found that creating an account in a new city nets far more likes than recreating one in a place I've lived before (and yes, I delete and remake my accounts often).

The origin of this hack stems from a common misunderstanding about how Hinge ranks user "attractiveness." The theory borrows from Tinder's old chess-style rating system — the idea that the more likes you get, the higher your internal score climbs, and the more the algorithm pairs you with other high scorers. That's why this hack focuses so heavily on maximizing likes: the logic goes that if the app sees you as more "desirable," it'll start freeing the hot guys from Rose Jail and dropping them into your regular queue.

That rating system has long been "old news," however, according to Tinder. Hinge's algorithm is based on a system of finding optimal pairs that money can't buy (like organ donations), its director of relationship science, Logan Ury, revealed in 2020. An example is, if you have 10 men and 10 women, and you ask one group to rank their top choices, try to match with their first choice. If they get rejected, move to their second choice, and so on, until no one wants to match anymore.

None of the hack's elements is revolutionary, and it also shouldn't cost you money. Could you argue that these dating apps are deliberately blocking your blessings, hiding their so-called "high-value" users to tank your self-esteem and push you toward paid boosts and subscriptions? Yeah, probably. Many people do so online. Are these hacks, for both men and women, just the end result of a situationship culture that's created a paradox of choice? Also, yeah, probably.

But everyone's experience on a dating app is different. Attractiveness is subjective, and what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. And as The Cut rightly points out, even for the women this hack supposedly "worked" for, getting to (and beyond) the first date is the real challenge. One that no $30 Super Boost is ever going to solve.

This article reflects the opinion of the writer.

UPDATE: Oct. 15, 2025, 4:44 p.m. EDT This article has been updated with comments from Tilley-Coulson.