What Is Did This Bother You on Hinge?

Did This Bother You? is a check-in Hinge may show you when it detects potentially inappropriate language in a message you receive. Tap Yes and Hinge offers a way to learn more about reporting. Tap No or close the prompt and it disappears, and your match will not know whether you got the prompt or how you answered it.

The prompt only appears when Hinge picks up something in a message sent to you that may be inappropriate. You then get a simple choice.

Tapping Yes opens a way to learn more about reporting the message. Tapping No, or just closing the prompt, makes it go away, and you carry on with the conversation as you were.

Yes on its own is not a report. It points you toward the reporting options, and whether you use them is still your decision.

No. Hinge says your match will not know whether you received the prompt or how you answered it.

That means you can wave it away without any awkwardness if the line did not bother you. It also means you can look into reporting without tipping anyone off.

If you tap No or close the prompt a couple of times in a row, Hinge pauses these check-ins for a few months. It is reading your answers as a sign that the language it keeps catching does not bother you.

That is reasonable if you and the women you talk to trade rough jokes and you do not want the interruption. Just know what the pause means. While it is on, you will not get the prompt, so a message that really does cross a line will arrive without that quick route to reporting.

Men get unpleasant messages too. A match who turns nasty because you took a day to reply. Someone who opens with something crude. A person who keeps pushing after you have said you are not interested.

You do not have to put up with any of it, and there is no prize for having the last word. If a message bothers you, tap Yes, read the reporting options, and use them. Then unmatch, and spend your evening on someone who is pleasant to talk to.

Some messages are worth reporting even if they did not rattle you much. Threats, slurs, pressure to send photos and requests for money all belong in that group. You may have shrugged it off, but the same account is probably sending the same thing to other people.

The same check runs on the messages you send, from the other side. Hinge built this check-in because some people open with lines that are crude, sexual or insulting, and the person on the receiving end deserves an easy way to say so. You never want to be the reason a woman sees it.

a dating coach's advice on first messages points the other way. Make it about her, make it engaging, and give her something to react to. A playful guess about her personality, drawn from something she chose to share, does all of that without asking for anything she has not offered.

Picture a woman whose photo shows her halfway up a climbing wall. One opener comments on her body. Another says, "Be honest. Did you make it to the top, or is this the photo from just before you gave up?" The first invites the prompt on her screen. The second invites an answer.

Keep the tone a notch below hers, not above. When she turns up the flirting, you can follow. When she is polite and brief, a spicier line will not rescue the conversation, though a better question might.

Before you send anything with an edge, picture saying it to her face on a first date, across a small table, with the waiter standing right there. If you would say it and she would laugh, send it. If you would not say it out loud, do not type it.

A line that passes that test is very unlikely to be the kind Hinge flags. And the women worth meeting tend to respond far better to wit than to shock. The man who makes her laugh gets the second message. The man who makes her uncomfortable gets the prompt.