Beyond swipes: Navigating COVID-19, dating apps and life politics

This article examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on dating app users’ experiences, revealing how it brought life politics to the forefront. Through 53 in-depth interviews, it investigates the evolution of the dating apps feature, ‘I’m vaccinated’ badges, from symbols of vaccination status to indicators of political attitudes. Users used the badges for self-representation, seeking political homophily and rejecting those with different attitudes towards the pandemic and vaccines. In this manner, instead of bringing people together and promoting the vaccine on the apps, the badges led to rifts and divisions among users. As the pandemic's severity declined and social restrictions were lifted, the importance of COVID-related attitudes in partner selection diminished. Interviewees expressed a desire to move beyond pandemic politics, a sentiment we termed ‘COVID bracketing’. Thus, this study demonstrates how intimate relationships can become politically charged during periods of social turbulence.