“U vaccinated?”
Dating app users who are ready to jump back into the dating scene are about to have a new way to make sure that when they get a match, they won’t get COVID along with it.
The White House announced today that it’s partnering with several popular dating apps to make it easier for vaccinated singles to find each other.
According to Andy Slavitt, a White House senior adviser on the COVID-19 response:
“Social distancing and dating were always a bit of a challenging combination.
So today, dating sites like Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, Match, OKCupid, BLK, Chispa, Plenty of Fish and Badoo are announcing a series of features to encourage vaccinations and help people meet people who have that universally attractive quality: they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19.”
The range of new features will vary by dating site, with some offering users a badge to show their vaccinated status, or allowing users the ability to filter potential matches by whether or not they’re vaxxed up, or offering profile boosts and “super likes” to users who are vaccinated.
The White House is hoping that the partnership with dating apps will help boost the pace of vaccination, which has fallen in recent weeks.
Now, I’m not sure how much this will actually encourage people to get vaccinated. I was never really into the dating apps (and I don’t have to worry about that now that I’m engaged, thank God), but young people have the lowest rate of vaccination in the country so I’m not sure how worried they are about making sure their matches are vaccinated.
And people who are willing to meet up with a random stranger from a dating app probably aren’t going to be the ones who are super worried about catching COVID anyway, right? I dunno, maybe I’m wrong and out of touch (which is entirely possible) but I’m still not convinced this is going to make a big difference.
Maybe they should add a feature to filter by STD test results. Seems like that’s something that users might appreciate even more.
But anyway, here’s Eric Church’s “Two Pink Lines” with a warning to all you crazy kids using dating apps these days.
