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One fairly popular approach is to respond with a “hey” of your own

There, now the conversation is permanent, and the ball is kicked right back into the original persons court. It may happen that you wont get a response, but if you arent sure what to say or youre offended by the initial contact this may be for the best.

Another approach is to ignore the message and let the match expire. This doesnt really help you in the quest to make meaningful matches and meet people, but it might help other people down the line. If someone sends out a lot of “hey” openers and gets unmatched as a result, they may reconsider their low-effort strategy and put a little more thought into their opening lines.

One thing to remember is that the other person might not be trying to be passive-aggressive (or just passive) they might just be having a hard time coming up with something to say. In that case, you might want to go to the effort of reviewing their profile again, finding things that are compatible, or at least interesting to you, and taking the lead. On Bumble, it must be said, there are some women who want the man to take the lead and so they send “hey” as a signal for that. Its up to you to tease that information out of them later.

As some additional advice, try putting yourself in the Hey senders shoes. They swiped right on your for one of two reasons: they swipe on every profile or something about your profile genuinely attracted them to you. Unfortunately, you wont know which one is which until you begin talking.

To figure out why they swiped on you quicker and snuff out any serial daters (which is completely fine if thats what youre looking for) simply say “Hey back! I swiped on your profile because I liked (your pictures, we have the same hobbies, etc.), what did you like about mine?” It may come across as brash, but a lot of people might actually enjoy your straightforward and unapologetic manner.

Some Good Responses

If you decide that you do want to message back, and not just with “hey,” you have a lot of choices.

This defeats the purpose of the Bumble rule but youre probably more Kink dating service interested in making good connections than you are in helping Bumble to change the dating world. And anyway, they started it.

You could try to warm up the conversation slowly, by saying “Hey, how are you?” or “Hey, thanks for matching! Whats up?” or something along those lines. This is a low-key escalation of the conversation from its extremely dry beginning and might be ideal if the person youre messaging is just shy. This is one area where a close read of their profile is essential. If they have a half-dozen pictures of them partying wild at Mardi Gras, they probably arent that shy, and that “hey” was an invitation for you to take over. If they have one picture of themselves hiding behind a book and their profile bio reads “Shy”, then the slow ramp-up might be just the thing to stay in their comfort zone.

One thing you can try is to pretend they didnt say “hey” at all, and just send them the opener you would have sent if you were on Tinder or some other dating app without the conversational rules of Bumble

Another approach is to address the “hey” itself directly. This can be viewed as sarcastic or confrontational, but that might be your personal style. Something like “Whoa, whoa, calm down maam, Im not that kind of boy!” or “OMG I feel the same way! We must be soul mates!” can break the ice with the right kind of person. Or itll break the match. Oh well, you arent paying by the match anyway.