Some tips for success as a 5'3" Asian male

Let me preface this with the fact that I used to be relatively active on this sub. I did delete Hinge a bit ago, but I just browsed through this sub again for old time's sake. I used to do many in-depth profile reviews for men to help them on their Hinge journey. People I followed up with said it helped immensely with likes, matches, and dates. It makes me happy to see this sub still working out and providing a lot of great advice that wasn't as prevalent a few years ago. I noticed a recent post lamenting about being short and Asian, and how it's hard to navigate OLD. I don't particularly feel like doing a bunch of reviews anymore, so I've created two separate "profiles" using my own photos to show the difference between what worked for me on Hinge versus what did not. I am going to review my own "bad" profile. Hopefully you can apply it to your own profile with some success.

Not a good profile

So the way I've told people to think about their profiles is "if this was the only photo/prompt you got to show potential matches, would it draw them in to a conversation?" So you have 9 chances to show some different side of you, use them all. All of my photos/prompts received at least some sort of mention during initial matching or conversation. You are not a 2-dimensional person. Your profile should not be 2-dimensional either. Think of it like crafting a brief story about your life.

Photos

1st photo - Your first photo should be a close/midrange shot of you. Torso and up. Not too much going on in the background. Good lighting. I think portrait mode and natural outdoor lighting is the best. This is online dating, and at the end of the day, first impressions are based entirely off of physical looks. So show your best self off with this first photo. This selfie with a cat ain't it. Also do not use other peoples' pets as props for your own photo. It gives off the impression that the pet is yours. If it is your pet, by all means use it. Just probably not as your first photo.

2nd photo - So the rest of your photos after your first photo should have something going on it that tells the other person something about you. So no photos of you just standing and smiling. Yes, still show off your best looks, but show other things in conjunction with that. Please do not use a big group photo where you are just standing there and cannot be located within 1 second. And definitely do not put it as your second photo. Group photo (2 max) towards the end. This is your profile. Why are you advertising your other friends in it?

3rd photo - Okay, a photo of you. What is going on here? What new information can the other person get from this photo? It's just a photo of your face from a different angle and a nondescript background. This is a wasted portion of your profile.

4th photo - Similar comment as the one for your 3rd photo. Except this one is worse. A very bland background with nothing going on. A cap that covers your face. It just looks kind of awkward tbh. And no new information for the other person.

5th photo - More of the same. Maybe this seems like a different type of photo to you. I'm with a friend. I'm at a party. I'm being silly. Great, except we still can't see your face. It really doesn't say much about your personality other than the fact that you celebrate New Years with friend(s).

6th photo - Awesome, you're all dressed up. Except everyone who has ever gone to a wedding has the same photos. Once again, there is nothing going on here. You're standing and smiling at the camera with nothing else going on. These types of shots should be avoided at all costs. Also, if you are short, there is of course no actual problem with that. But once again, these are very brief and superficial snapshots that other people get of you, and it is hard to ignore our own prejudices sometimes. So pick a photo where the people in it are at least somewhat close in height to you.

So my ideal photo lineup - headshot, activity, activity, activity, activity, group activity. You need a group shot! At least one. For group shots, there should be no question as to who you are or where you are in the photo. Other activities could include cooking, music, pets, hiking (those are four I used), but there's no limit to what you can put in your profile. I understand that it's harder to take "group activity shots," but I think it's worth the effort if you can find some: at a concert, before/after a 5k, after an escape room, at a sporting event. Something that gives the other person something to talk about. If you don't have any, then yes, I would still make sure to include at least one nice group photo, even if it's just standing and smiling. And yes, I did stage several of my solo photos, self timer and all. They're "fake", but they are still an accurate representation of who I am, so milk it.

I'm going to suggest a complete overhaul of your profile. There's nothing that is particularly engaging about it. Work on taking/finding photos that show off who you are as a person. What do you enjoy? What are your passions? I don't know a single thing about you after scrolling through your profile. It is hard for people to connect with you and want to match with you when you don't show anything off about yourself.

Prompts

Prompts are a bit trickier. Good thing is, I don't think they are as important as photos, but still, why not improve where you can?

1st prompt - I avoid prompts that have any sort of negative within the prompt itself. Humor can be very hard to parse through text when you're talking with a stranger.

2nd prompt - Imagine how this conversation would go.

• "Oh awesome, I love tacos! Where do you go?"
• "Oh it's called Taco XYZ. Have you been?"
• "Nope." - End conversation. More likely this prompt would never even get any sort of interaction.

3rd prompt - (should say "milking", not "milling") See comments for both prompt 1 and 2.

At the end of the day, I think prompts should be a bit more open ended, even if they're statements. They should invite conversation and create dialogue. So see if there's a way to incorporate a bit more of who you are as an actual person seeking a relationship into your prompts. There is a fine balance here in terms that ranges from "too silly/shallow to holy crap this guy wants to marry me already." But personally, I think it is a great way to weed out people who might work out with me on a first or second date, but wouldn't connect on a deeper level much further down the line. Sillier prompts are fine if they are in line with your personality, but I still think that you should show some degree of seriousness in one of your prompts. A lot of this also assumes you want a serious relationship.

I know a lot of this is kind of vague, but I hope you kind of understand what I'm getting at. But at the end of the day, I'm not creating your profile for you. You know yourself better than I do. A good exercise I've found is if any photo or prompt is not getting any likes or attention, swap it out for something else after a couple weeks.

Also, a quick word about the photo prompts. Feel free to use them, but don't feel required to use them. Definitely don't fall into the trap of trying to curate photos for a specific prompt. The prompts should bolster a photo, not the other way around. I did not use them at all.

Here is what my real profile looked like more or less. I did just fine with it.

A couple of final notes about using the app itself. Yes, there is going to be an inherent disadvantage from being short and/or being Asian. So some things that I did that (I think) helped.

1. Sucks but buying preferred is probably going to help you out.
2. Preferred allows you to set multiple parameters. The most important ones are the ones that are important to you, so you can wade through people you don't want to see. I set dealbreakers for: age, religion, politics, kids, and radius I believe.
3. I tended to set pretty narrow parameters to essentially "run out" of people to see. What I think (honestly not sure if this worked) this did was when I checked my app maybe once or twice a day, any new people that showed up in my stack were relatively new to the app, thus more likely to respond. I cannot confirm this though. Anyways, it helped with my mental state as well. Once I ran out of people, I just put the app away. Or, I just increased the radius by one mile. It made it less overwhelming, thinking that there are thousands and thousands of people I needed to swipe through.
4. Off the app, I'm sure you've seen/heard it enough. Work on yourself. And don't do it for the app. Really, do it for yourself. This truly is something you have to figure out on your own, and my typing it here for you to see again probably won't do much to change your mind. In my group of 13 good male friends, I am the shortest. It is never brought up. And we rag on each other hard for just about everything.

This post is not meant as a fix-all. You will not start matching with every amazingly attractive person on the app. But you will start matching with more people who you are genuinely interested in and be able to create more meaningful conversations that don't fizzle out. I hope this helps.