BENGALURU : The pandemic has affected every area of life and dating is no exception. Now, questions about vaccination are just as common as conversations about interests, hobbies and the usual fare. Recent data from app OkCupid shows that among Indian daters, people who answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Will you get the Covid-19 vaccine?’ received 25 per cent more likes and resulting conversations than those who answered ‘no’.
“This is a clear indication that daters are prioritising health and safety in their quest to find love. Forty-one per cent women went so far as to say they would cancel a date with an anti-vaxxer compared to 30 per cent men,” says Sitara Menon, senior marketing manager, OkCupid.Questions on vaccination were added in January and data has been gathered from around 90,000 users across India, according to a company representative.
Online dating platform QuackQuack reported similar findings last week. Around 73 per cent of 20,000 respondents surveyed across India between February-end and early April, said they would want their date to be vaccinated. “People are also spending more time getting to know each other. They aren’t jumping to conclusions quickly or meeting them soon after connecting. The conversations are more serious,” says Ravi Mittal, founder and CEO of the platform.
Topics of discussion too have changed in the past year. “Last year, daters spent time talking about masking and physical distancing. Now, it’s more about people’s take on vaccines, what the situation is like in the area of residence of the other person and so on,” says Mittal. For city-based copywriter Hitika P, the vaccine seems to be the only way to regain some semblance of the old normal.
She says that if she were to meet someone she knows beforehand or a person recommended by a mutual friend, the vaccine wouldn’t play that much of a role. But meeting a stranger through a dating app comes with an added layer of concern. “If it’s someone I don’t know at all, I’d only like to meet them after they get both their doses of a vaccine,” she adds.
Celebrity makeup artiste Anjali Tater, on the other hand, is trying her best to guide those with misconceptions in a different direction. “Some think the vaccine can be harmful. Instead of cutting these conversations off, I try to have a friendly chat with them. I ask them what their fears are and then share my views if I’ve read something that counters their view. I’ve learned that it’s best to sprout a seed of curiosity and then leave them to do their own research.”
One for planet earth
According to another study by OkCupid, millennials are also keen on meeting people who share their views on climate change. Data shared by the team read, “Climate change is surely a leading issue for the majority of the millennial daters with most of them agreeing to the need to add a profile badge to their profiles, show their support and match with someone who cares about the environment equally. Data reveals that 84 per cent users in India, 88 per cent users in Turkey, 90 per cent in UK and 86 per cent in the US say they’re hugely concerned about climate change and would want a profile badge to be added to their profile to showcase the same to avoid meeting anybody who is not on
their wavelength.”