The best pickup lines on dating app Hinge are depressing as hell

On the dating app Hinge, users match with mutual Facebook friends in an attempt to “cut the clutter, creeps, and the games,” according to their website. It essentially wants to be a less-weird Tinder.

On these dating apps, users evidently struggle to identify the best way to start a conversation, and enough users went to Hinge with questions about how to complete this basic human task that they felt compelled to release a study today titled, “Hinge Experiment: Starting The Conversation.”

Hinge enlisted their copywriters to compose more than 100 original opening lines, which they shared with 22% of their users, who registered eight million total impressions. That’s a big sample! Reliable enough to produce statistically significant results, which they published right here.

The results of their study are…unconvincing. According to Hinge, the most successful pickup line of the bunch is “Two truths and a lie; ready, set, go!” This adaption of the classic summer camp icebreaker into an entry point to possible casual sex improved the response rates by 31% over the typical “Hey.” That’s some corny shit, and that’s the best they have to offer.

Other standouts include, “Best discovery: Netflix or avocados?,” which sounds suspiciously like something a Patrick Hogan bot might write from a cursory scan of the Reddit front page.

The city-specific pickup lines are particularly confounding:

“Do you think Leo will ever get that Oscar?”

I’m so turned on.

Michael Rosen is a reporter for Fusion based out of Oakland.