Climate change, environment and vegetarian. These are the buzzwords Ruby pays attention to when she searches for potential matches on dating sites. The 35-year-old Californian has been looking for love online for more than 10 years and found these terms to be a good indicator of someone’s concern about global warming.
“To me, that signals that they’re aware, they’re interested and they’re also taking concrete steps to address these issues,” she said.
Ruby is not the only one who places this importance. Tinder, OkCupid, and Bumble have all noticed that users are mentioning climate issues more often on their profiles and have added features to help them find each other.
Environment badges, passions, and questionnaires
On Bumble, a global platform that only allows women to make the first contact, users can add badges to their bios as as a way of aligning with different causes. In Germany and the UK, “environmentalism” was the most popular among them in 2021.
People can swipe on Tinder to choose the environment or Fridays For Future from a list. The company Says that “climate protection” was one of the most mentioned phrases on German Gen Z members’ bios last year. Vegetarianism and veganism were prominently featured on the young generation’s bios. Brazilians’ profiles.
Climate protection was the most talked about topic among Gen Z Tinder users last year in Germany
OkCupid, another leading dating platform, targets daters from more than 100 countries. They use questionnaires to determine compatibility. The company Says that when asked “which cause is most important to you?When asked “What cause is most important to you this year?” the majority of users answered the environment, beating even world peace. OKCupid announced earlier this month that it had seen a 368% increase of references to climate change/the environment on its members’ profiles compared with five years ago.
In keeping with that trend, the company has temporarily reinstated its climate change advocate badge, which was first rolled out in 2021 and is only available for April, Earth Month. The prominent marker at the top identifies the user immediately as someone who is concerned about the climate. It also allows users to only swipe through potential matches who are advocates.
Nearly 400,000 people used it last year when it was first introduced. According to an OKCupid spokesperson, over half a million people have added the badge to their profiles this time. The company doesn’t reveal how many users it has in total, but it claims it caters “millions and million of daters around world.”
OkCupid says that over half a billion users have added the badge of climate change advocate to their profiles.
Climate advocacy or virtue signaling
Ruby is one of the hundreds of thousands who has added the badge and regards it as a useful way to find like-minded people on OkCupid. Ruby stresses that nothing replaces deep conversations that follow a profile scan. She might have a different understanding of what it means for climate action than other daters.
“Sometimes it almost seems like just another clout seeking label,” she said. “In this progressive space on left, there’s a lot of competition for being as good as you can.”
Max, a 23 year-old German-Berlin native, refuses the badge despite the fact that climate consciousness is important to his in a romantic relationship.
“Its nothing more than virtue signaling,” he said. “Both for people using the app and the app itself. It’s another reason to congratulate yourself without actually doing anything.
In response to such criticism, OkCupid told DW it had donated $20,000 this year and $25,000 in 2021 to the non-profit Earth Day Initiative as part of its climate change advocacy feature. Match Group Inc., the owner of OkCupid and Tinder made $852 million last year in operating income.
Cal, a 25-year old from the northern English city of Leeds, understands others’ reservations. Though he grapples with the name of the climate change advocate badge “it sounds like you love climate change” he likes how it clearly identifies a users stance at the top of their profile.
“For me and quite a lot of other people, that’s a pretty big deal breaker,” he said. “I want to date people who share my views on climate change, which we must address urgently.”
Climate stance as a litmus-test
Cal claims that even without the badge, he gravitates towards apps that allow him to filter out people based on climate questions. This avoids unpleasant surprises in the future. And because it is an indicator of other issues on which he and his match might not see eye to eye.
Nora, 33, also had this experience. Though she is now no longer on OkCupid, when she lived in the rural US state of Montana, she used to filter potential matches based on their opinion on climate change. It was almost like a test of ideological compatibility.
“If a person doesn’t believe that climate change is real, that to me is like a cascade indicator of things that they also won’t care about or value,” she said.
Ruby, back home in California can relate. She wants to avoid interactions that detract from the main objective of dating apps: forming connections.
“If I have to convince someone why they should care about the environment, why they should take steps to address their personal contributions to harm reduction, that’s time that I’m not spending bonding with them,” she said. “While that is important work it is also emotional work.”
Edited by Tamsin Walker
