Every so often a new tic takes over dating apps, as though some Tucker Max type convened every bro in America for a weekend seminar and sent them home with profiles that all said “6’1” since apparently that matters.” In a previous era, liking tacos and referencing The Office once cropped up as personality signifiers. For a while there, it seemed like every other guy would have you know his stance on the Oxford comma. And in the first few months of the pandemic, it was quite common to swipe past dudes claiming that they “got the antibodies.”
Now it seems the latest buzzwords of seduction are social justice-themed. A Tinder bio ending with “Overthrow the government and chill?” The Hinge prompt “Together we could” answered with “Abolish the police.” On another Hinge profile, a list of things “I geek out on” including sourdough, design, and BLM.
Given that we're in the middle of the birth of a new society-altering social justice moment, on some level this makes sense. And maybe it's uplifting that so many singles these days are peppering their profiles with progressive soundbites on the path to romantic connection. On the other hand, Black Lives Matter is certainly not a lifestyle choice that you “geek out" on! It’s one thing to signal to a potential match what causes really matter to you, but it’s something else to toss in a lefty slogan to seem like you’re hip to protest culture in the same way you're up on natural wine or Succession. What I'm saying is: perhaps the guys popping ACAB into their bio haven’t sufficiently engaged with the values behind the language.
But it's telling that so many people feel compelled to do this. If it seems like politics is more important in dating than ever, recent research backs that up. Match.com’s October 2020 Singles in America report finds that more than half of singles surveyed consider dating someone with opposing political views to be a dealbreaker. Personally, that checks out for me: if someone so much as lists “moderate” on their profile, I’m swiping left.
For some politically active daters, seeing a match explicitly include their political or ideological leanings on their profile assures them that’s a person who prioritizes being engaged with social justice issues—a green flag for them, if you will. And by the same token, a profile that omits any mention of politics could be a turn-off.
For example, Tinder recently added a new feature that allows users to choose six “passions” to list at the top of their profile. Rachel, 33, a Brooklyn-based political organizer, told me that the new feature helps her weed out what people on the app really care about. “I can't swipe right on someone that doesn't choose any social justice related stuff—I guess that's most people,” she says. “Like, I can’t put ‘Netflix’ over ‘feminism’ when I’m limited to six [passions]. And you can’t pretend like you don’t see ‘Black Lives Matter.’” Rachel admits that she swipes left on significantly more profiles now. “And now that I have ‘vegan’ in there I’m sure I get fewer matches too, but maybe that’s O.K.?”
Context matters, though, and when so many profiles include nearly identical political language, it can make some feel suspicious of the intention behind it. Jonah, 27, says he sometimes finds it strange how people on the apps seem to “shoehorn” politics into their profiles. “It’s really difficult to determine sincerity versus virtue signaling, so I’d just as soon leave [politics] out of the profile and have those conversations down the line,” he says. “Do I want someone to swipe right on me because I support Medicare For All? In my head, support for a policy like that is a total baseline assumption. It would be like putting ‘I put on pants when I go to the store.’”
For others, it’s just a way of covering your bases. “I think slogans are most effective as shorthand—an effective (if blunt) way to say where you stand,” says Frank, 29, whose Hinge profile asserts that “the key to my heart is abolishing the police.” “I think the prospect of dating around niceties is especially untenable in 2020. I put that on my profile because it’s an easy way to say, ‘Hey, this is where I am, if you’re not here, it’s gonna be a no from me, dog.”
But not every single guy is this sincere—it turns out there are enough lefty con men out there to inspire a new term, “wokefishing", to describe users who pretend to be progressive on the apps as a way to lure matches—catfishing, but posing as someone with good politics rather than a horny single on a different coast. (Of course, this behavior is probably nothing new: One shudders to think of how many insincere ‘60s fuckboys got laid after the sit-in with a little help from a “Make Love Not War” button.)
So how do you know if somebody is truly “down to seize the means of production together” or actually just DTF? Well, unfortunately you can’t, until you actually get to know the person, according to Damona Hoffman, certified dating coach and host of the podcast Dates & Mates. But you can aim to be more authentic, on your part. For one, don’t wokefish. And even if you’re well-intentioned, don’t sprinkle your profile with trendy terms if you’re not really sure what the issues mean, or at least not enough to engage in a real conversation.
If you're considering how to handle this dilemma while writing your profile, Hoffman suggests considering “the perspective of not where you sit but of the person who is reading your profile.” Because we’re all looking for shortcuts and red flags to help cut through hundreds of faces, “if you lead with specificity and storytelling rather than headlines, you’re going to be perceived as more genuine and you’ll make better connections.”
If you can't think of a better way to get across your authentic commitment to social justice movements than a catchphrase, because there isn't really one, maybe do some reading or go to a protest and address that problem at the root. Otherwise, you risk coming across as just another boy who cried ACAB.
Read MoreHere's the Problem With Couples Who Always Refer to Themselves as “We”It's an annoying language tic that might also be a sign of creeping codependency.
By Kate Mooney