I set my Hinge to match with only econ guys and it was an experience

I hope I never have to listen to anyone talk about crypto again

3 years ago

I want to begin by saying that I have nothing against people who do econ. The world needs more traders and analysts, because if it wasn’t for them, who would provide the customer base for the 80,000 lines of coke taken in London every day?

Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh. All the people I know who do econ aren’t like that at all. But you get the gist. Most people definitely group these guys together as one clear stereotype. So, the goal of this experiment became to find out if the “econ guy stereotype” really exists.

Spoiler: It does.

A few of the classic traits of this species for those who are unfamiliar. If you listen carefully, you’ll overhear him loudly bragging about his summer internship with JP Morgan. His favourite movie is The Wolf of Wall Street. His idol is Jordan Belfort. He leaves you on delivered for 12 hours and his main goal on a night out is definitely to pull. He thinks that “everyone gets too offended at everything these days” and his favourite show is South Park because “its satire”.

The question became, how do I set my Hinge profile up to attract this type of guy without them clocking on that it is very clearly fake and I do not care about their degree at all?

Crafting the profile

I don’t think my current answers on Hinge really attract the finance types. My prompts are based on my love for books, moscato and Mamma Mia, which are basically the three things least relatable to economics I could have picked.

As far as my personal knowledge of econ goes, it’s limited to A Level standard. Good enough to know what GDP is, but definitely not good enough to answer any real questions on the topic. I thought about what would really get their attention, and settled on this answer first.

In all honesty, I do use Trading 212, so this wasn’t exactly a lie. Do I love it enough to make it my personality for hundreds to see and judge? No. But this answer would show just enough to prove that I know my trading platforms, but not advanced enough to give away that I’m taking the piss. Safe bet.

Next one, I thought to test the waters a bit more and appeal to their baseline instincts.

Covers all bases, casts a wide net but definitely pushing the boundary. Even has an innocent smiley thrown in for good measure.

With this answer, I thought for sure they’d catch me out. I mean, if I came across a prompt that said someone will fall for me if I do history and politics, I’d definitely think they were joking. Doubts started forming at this point, mostly about not getting enough material for the experiment.

Turns out I didn’t have to worry about that at all. Some time passed, so I checked back on the app and saw:

50 likes.

In an hour.

Going through them, I could see almost all guys liked my Econ related answers, mostly about doing econ/finance/business. My worry about not having enough material turned into having … too much?

Let’s get one thing straight, this is not a brag. This is the opposite. I’m actually pretty offended, as I kept my pictures the exact same. It then meant the ONLY reason these guys were reaching out was my interest in their degree. Sigh.

The Responses

Giving these keen bachelors the benefit of the doubt, I decided to ask the most obviously stupid questions so they would have a chance to realise it wasn’t genuine.

Started off with the classic: “Why can’t we just print more money?”

So, this guy is definitely a comedian on the side. He’s actually so funny he laughs at his own jokes. Then he tried to get me to agree to drinks so he could explain more. Thanks but no thanks.

The best explanation I had so far. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone spell Jordans like that. Like it somehow is the same as the spelling of color/colour. But I appreciate the efforts.

At this point my patience was wearing thin, having sifted through 10 or more terrible explanations of one of the easiest concepts in economics. I was just surprised that none of them seemed to think I was joking.

Is this experiment actually just showing that I pass off as dumb enough to not know what inflation is as a second year student? Should I change the headline to “How dumb do people think humanities students are?”

Getting bored of the previous opener, I switched to another: “Do you know what Bitcoin is?”

I was sure that I would get caught out on this one. Who in the world doesn’t know what Bitcoin is? Would they really think that first, I don’t know what Bitcoin is and second, went to random guys on Hinge for the answer?

Okay this guy walked right into it. Of course he knows what Bitcoin is. It’s the most valuable cryptocurrency out there. He loves it even more than Trading 212. Is that possible?

I won’t bore you with the rest, but its basically this guy going on about his love for crypto for a very long time. I respect the dedication. He was actually really nice about it. Wholesome economics guy, but fell into the trap nevertheless.

Final honourable mention. Most girls say doing econ is a red flag, he says, which is true but almost wants me to feel sorry for him. But at least he gets why I’m doing this article, and proves some sort of self awareness? This realisation seems to make him quite sad, and shows at least that Econ guys do have feelings. Maybe.

Things I learnt during this absolutely pointless but entertaining week:

It really doesn’t matter what you look like, you will still be treated as incredibly stupid by econ guys.
Every single one of them will have a picture up of them in a suit/shirt on a rooftop bar.
They can’t spell.

Thoughts overall

There was a lot of stuff I didn’t want to include in this, mainly because its just a repeat of the same answers over and over. It was also quite tiring to keep up multiple conversations at a time with guys who are talking about literally the most boring topics imaginable.

There were a few well meaning ones who were actually nice. But I think I’m gonna stick to my basic prompts of liking books and moscato. I’ve had enough of economics for a while.