Hinge Wants to Help LGBTQ+ Daters Ask the Tough Questions

Hinge wants to make dating a little easier with a new feature called Not-so-Frequently Asked Questions. NFAQ seeks to answer the questions that daters, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community want to ask, but don’t exactly know how to do it.

Meeting new people can be hard, just ask anyone in the dating pool, and there’s plenty of topics out there that are important to talk about but remain off the table—like faith, substance abuse, sexual identity, and sexual exploration. Dating app Hinge wants to bring these conversations out in the open with a new feature called Not-so-Frequently Asked Questions, or NFAQ. The feature is more specifically aimed at helping LGBTQ+ daters get answers to the questions that often aren’t being asked—that’s what Hinge’s Chief Marketing Officer Jackie Jantos told Gizmodo in a phone interview.

“[NFAQ] is built to engage LGBTQIA+ daters. They are a really important growing group of individuals using the Hinge app, and continuing to grow and serve their needs is really important to us,” Jantos said. “[NFAQ] is a resource to help LGBTQIA+ daters get answers to some of their most frequently asked questions that aren’t really being discussed in public discourse, or just don’t have easy-to-find answers or conversations around.”

NFAQ will presently sit in the app’s Help Center, serving as a sort of playbook to help daters set up their profiles and navigate conversations about different, more personal topics. Help guides include “I’m demisexual. What’s the best way to set expectations around waiting to get sexual?” and “How do I recover from accidentally misgendering while trying to flirt?,” and users can access this information whenever they need. Jantos wants to be very clear: This is only the first step in the iterative approach Hinge is taking toward NFAQ, with future versions potentially appearing in other parts of the app’s interface.

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“NFAQ is a platform we are growing over time,” Jantos explained. “One of the things that we’ll be learning is how people are interacting with it and where within our broader app might be opportunities for us to share some of the knowledge that is being shared in NFAQs more upfront as people are building their profiles.”

You naturally might be skeptical about a company catering to a marginalized group like the LGBTQ+ community, but it appears that Hinge did their homework in developing this new feature. NFAQ was, of course, developed by Hinge’s in-house team, but the company also brought in external experts. Prominent, queer voices from spaces like TikTok and Instagram, such as therapist Shahem McLaurin, author Mimi Zhu, and journalist Phillip Piccardi, lent their perspectives to the development of NFAQ to ensure it was meeting the needs of actual people. Hinge says that users can also submit questions for potential inclusion in future iterations of NFAQ.

“Hinge is inclusive. So we believe everyone looking for love deserves to find it,” Jantos said. “One of the benefits of [NFAQ] is in elevating these discussions, and elevating this discourse in general, hopefully we also educate and build compassion with all of the people on Hinge.”

I’ll level with you: I’m on Hinge. As someone who is not part of NFAQ’s target demographic, I’m enjoying that there is still plenty of information in NFAQ for me to learn from. How do I discuss sex with someone who identifies as demisexual? How do I set boundaries around substance abuse? How can I approach setting up a date with my ex’s ex? These are all topics in NFAQ that might apply to me as a straight man, with potentially plenty more to come. While Hinge is making a conscious effort to validate and support its LGBTQ+ users, there’s still plenty of information for cisgender, heterosexual daters to chew on and learn from.