A new wave of dating apps has turned the MBTI type filter into a one-tap feature, and it's spreading fast. On Korean apps like Sky People, users can already exclude entire personality groups from their feed before a single profile loads — and English-language apps Belike and Cuper are now selling the same filter to Western users. The catch: the types getting mass-blocked are overwhelmingly Thinking types, while INFJ and ENFP get waved through as the "safe" picks. It sounds like a smarter way to date. It's actually a faster way to run out of matches.
The Filter That's Already Standard in Korea
One Tap, Half the Pool Gone
According to MBTI USA's 2026 field guide, Myers-Briggs type now appears on more than 80% of dating profiles across several major Korean apps. Sky People takes that a step further by letting users filter their feed down to only INFJ, INFP, ENFJ, and ENFP — or exclude every Thinking type in a single action. There's no nuance to the toggle: it's an all-or-nothing block on four letters of a sixteen-type system.
Belike and Cuper Bring It West
That filter isn't staying in Korea. Belike and Cuper are now marketing MBTI-based blocking as a selling point to English-speaking users, importing a swipe habit that took years to become the norm on Korean apps and packaging it as a new convenience feature for everyone else.
Why Blocking a Type Doesn't Work the Way People Think
Type Is a Partial Signal, Not a Compatibility Score
The trend piece breaking this down argues that MBTI is, at best, a partial signal — it sketches how someone recharges and makes decisions, but it says nothing about agreeableness, emotional stability, shared values, or how someone handles conflict. Two people with the identical four letters can disagree on the things that actually make or break a relationship, while two people on opposite ends of the chart can be a perfect fit.
The Type on the Profile Might Not Even Be Real
There's a second problem hiding underneath the first: plenty of users retest repeatedly or simply list the type they'd like to be rather than the one they actually tested as. A filter built to screen for compatibility is, in a meaningful number of cases, screening against a label that isn't accurate in the first place.
The Timing Makes It Worse, Not Better
Apps Are Already Struggling to Keep Matches Meaningful
This filter is arriving at a rough moment for the industry. Global dating app downloads have fallen for six straight years, and in the most recent quarter Tinder's monthly active users dropped 7% while Bumble's paying users fell 16.4%. Arizona State University's Liesel Sharabi has pointed to the real problem as "quantity over quality" — user pools are already too shallow, and narrowing them further is the opposite of what the category needs. Boston University's Kathryn Coduto has separately noted that swipe-driven design tends to produce "dead ends" more than real connections.
The One App Bucking the Trend Is Doing the Opposite
Notably, Hinge — the one major app posting growth, with direct revenue up 22% and paying users up 17% — has been moving toward curated matching rather than blunt exclusion filters. That's the direction the data seems to favor: helping people find better matches within a wide pool, not letting them wall off a quarter of it before they've even scrolled.
What To Do Instead
- Show your own MBTI type on your profile if you want to use it as a conversation starter — Zloppy's reporting suggests curiosity-driven engagement beats a hard filter.
- Treat a shared type as an icebreaker, not a guarantee, and treat a different type as a starting point, not a disqualifier.
- If an app pushes a "block this type" toggle, remember it's shrinking your pool in an already-shrinking market.
MBTI filters promise a shortcut to better matches, but the data says the opposite: they're one more way to make an already-thin pool of matches thinner, without actually screening for the traits that determine whether two people get along. As more Western apps import this feature from Korea, expect the backlash to catch up with the trend just as fast.
-EditorZ
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