OkCupid Launches New Profile Badge for Climate Activists
Contributed by: kellyseal on Friday, April 23 2021 @ 09:16 am
Last modified on Wednesday, May 24 2023 @ 11:04 am
OkCupid has launched a new profile badge for users to advertise their views on climate change in honor of Earth Day.
The dating app company will prompt its users with the question: “Are you concerned about climate change & want a profile badge to show it’s important to you?” For those who choose to answer in the affirmative, a Climate Change Advocate badge will be automatically added to their profile.
In addition, these users will be featured in the Climate Change Stack (categories where users can easily search potential matches according to interests), and OkCupid also plans to donate $1 per profile badge to EarthDay.org, up to $25,000. EarthDay.org is the world’s largest recruiter of for the environmental movement, which began on the first Earth Day in 1970.
OkCupid announced the move on its blog, offering the badge and benefits to users for the entire month of April.
The progressive-leaning dating app has always been on the cutting edge of cultural trends and politics, in accordance with their user base. In the last few years, they have launched inclusive ad campaigns and have highlighted political conversations on the app. Most recently, they have offered a profile badge for users to show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and a badge to display that they voted in the last U.S. election.
Climate change has been a growing topic of interest on the app, especially among younger daters who view it as one of the most important issues we face today. In fact, nine out of every ten users they surveyed said that it’s important that their matches care about the environment. They also found that people on OkCupid who “believe climate change is real” get 56% more “likes” than those who deny it.
According to Inside Hook[*1] , OkCupid has seen a 240 percent increase in environmental mentions in user profiles, encompassing terms like “climate change, environment, global warming, Greta Thunberg, and recycle.”
The company rolled out a feature in January that allows its users to filter out climate deniers, so OkCupid has already been engaging their climate activists. And even if a user doesn’t use the filter feature or display the badge, because the algorithm matches based on shared interests, it’s less likely they’ll be matched with climate deniers anyway.
Michael Kaye, Global Communications Manager for OkCupid, put it this way: “Since your match percentage with someone shows how compatible you two are, if you are a climate change activist and they think climate change is fake news, your match percentage is going to decrease.”
Still, adding the environmental badge is likely to get you more matches on OkCupid, considering the number of users who care about environmental issues and want their dates to care, too. For more on this dating service, you can read our OkCupid review.