Low-emission loving: Singles use Greta Thunberg's activism to find love on dating apps

Online dating is a fine art, and these days it’s not your gym selfie, your charming dog picture, or your ‘wanderlust’ that’ll seal the deal with potential partners. It’s your opinion on Greta Thunberg.

2019 has been a meteoric year for Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. The school-skipping eco-warrior has drawn legions of followers to her global climate protests, and people have taken notice. TIME magazine declared her Person of the Year, Hollywood royalty have lined up to praise her, she’s had her likeness spray painted onto buildings, and she’s gotten into Twitter feuds with President Donald Trump.

Now, she’s helping people find love. A marketing officer for dating app OKCupid told the Hill that there’s been an 800 percent increase in mentions of Thunberg on dating profiles around the world this year.

“They’re talking about Greta on their profiles,” the marketer said. “I think people feel that supporting her or not shows how you feel about the issue and its impact.”

According to OkCupid, 51 percent of users said that climate change was the most important issue to them, coming in ahead of the economy, disease, and conflict. And, in a stroke of bad news for MAGA hat-owners hoping to get some liberal loving, 99 percent of those users concerned about climate change said they strongly disapprove of the US president.

OkCupid markets itself as a dating app for people with “passions to share, and things to talk about that are more interesting than the weather.” Opinion on current events can therefore make or break a romantic connection.

But what about the stalwart app of the 3am booty call? Nope, it seems that woke politics has infiltrated Tinder as well. According to the app’s ‘Year in Swipe’ report, released this month, Tinder’s Generation Z (18-25) users are more politically engaged than their apathetic millennial counterparts. 

Gen Z swipers were three times as likely to mention phrases like “social justice,” “climate change,” “the environment,” and “gun control” in their Tinder bios as millenials. That’s right. The phrase “gun control” on a hookup app is not a euphemism. Some users really want to get stuck into a debate on the Second Amendment before hitting second base.

It likely comes as no surprise then that young people are having less sex than older generations.

One group that seems blissfully unaffected by the politicization of dating apps are gay men. A spokesman for gay dating site Adam4Adam told Reuters that the site’s users log on “mainly to find someone either for a date or for fun and sometimes for long-term relations – not to discuss climate change.”

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