Cold Profile › answers
Two sentences: one specific thing from their profile, one thing about you. That is it. 'Hey' fails because it asks them to do all the work of starting a conversation with a stranger.
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The specific reference proves you looked. The detail about yourself gives them something to grab, so they are not being interviewed. Length beyond that works against you - a paragraph to someone you have never spoken to reads as intensity, not effort.
For example: 'Your bio says you are training for a half marathon - I am still at the stage where the warm-up is the hard part. What got you into running?' Or, from a photo: 'That looks like the ferry out to the islands - I took it last summer and got badly sunburned. Was it a good trip?'
If their profile gives you almost nothing, use the clearest photo and keep it light, or offer something about yourself and ask a simple question that needs no context. A nearly empty profile may also mean the person is not very active, so a slow or missing reply is not necessarily about your message.
Keep offering as well as asking. A message that is only a question puts the work back on them every time, and two or three of those in a row is where threads die.
Follow what they seemed interested in rather than working through your own list. If they light up talking about the race they are training for, do not jump to asking about their job. Ask how the training is going, and add something of your own, like the route you walk on weekends.
Compliments about their appearance - extremely common, indistinguishable from everyone else's, and often unwelcome. Anything sexual in the first exchange. Negging. Copy-paste openers, which are obvious because the reference never quite fits.
If you are unsure whether a message crosses a line, leave it out. Nothing is lost by keeping the first few exchanges friendly and ordinary.
Suggest something small once there is real back-and-forth, usually day two or three. Tinder threads cool fast, and the most common reason a good one produces nothing is that nobody ever asked.
Keep the ask simple and specific: 'This has been fun - want to grab a drink on Thursday? There is a quiet bar near the park.' A clear plan with a day attached is much easier to say yes to than an open 'we should meet sometime'.
Not every opener gets an answer, even a good one. People get busy, stop using the app, or simply have more matches than they can keep up with. If there is no reply after a couple of days, one short, friendly follow-up is fine.
After that, let it go and put the effort into someone who is responding. Judge your openers over a couple of weeks of conversations, not one silent match.