We should have known this year was doomed on February 13. That was the day Netflix premiered one of the most patently insane monstrosities brought to television, a show so deeply removed from how normal people interact with each other that it somehow became our reality. Love Is Blind was TV’s canary in the coal mine, telling the world the social horrors that were about to unfold.
When Love Is Blind first premiered it seemed like just another questionable reality show in Netflix’s deep bench of the subgenre. An unspecified number of hot single people agreed to what was loosely called a “social experiment.” After removing themselves from friends, family, society, and and basically any sort of distraction that makes life tolerable, they went on a series of blind dates with other crazy people who took the same plunge. But here’s the kicker. All of those dates took place inside of a space-age void that prohibited the couples from ever seeing each other. Couples could only look at each other’s faces once they proposed. Now you get the title of the show. Is love blind or do appearances really matter?
Love Is Blind almost immediately took off in that mocking way all insane reality shows do. Critical articles and social media was inundated with jaw-dropping reactions. Who would agree to this bizarre “experiment”? And more importantly who would marry a person after only knowing them for a few days and without ever seeing them? What was wrong with these people?
All of those questions were asked with a smug sense of superiority. Yet 2020 has proven those holier-than-thou attitudes were unearned.
In many ways our lives has become a less organized and more pointless version of this show. COVID-19 has all but destroyed our social lives, forcing us to hole up in our homes for months on end. That’s pretty similar to the swanky suites the men and women of Love Is Blind stayed in when they weren’t pod dating. The only difference is that the contestants had more in-person conversations, a privilege we all used to take for granted.
Then there were the lack of rules, both on Love Is Blind and in our current reality. Theoretically, Love Is Blind had a list of procedures it was following. But good luck trying to name any one of them. In the show’s first episodes suitors would be introduced, give a long speech about what they were looking for in love, then disappear entirely. There were no indications about whether Mark proposed to Jessica on their fifth pod date or their 50th. No one explained where the money for those engagement rings, romantic retreats, or weddings came from. It was all a mystery, something to constantly make you feel uneasy as you watched Diamond’s screaming matches with Carlton.
Depressingly, that’s how America’s reaction to COVID-19 has felt. Lots of rules, few explanations. At first touching potentially contaminated surfaces was a death wish. Now it’s fine expect for when it isn’t. Eating out is the most irresponsible decision you can make but it’s also robbing local businesses of their cashflow, so have fun with those moral gymnastics. Takeout and deliveries are safer options except for the essential workers exposing themselves to the virus day in and day out. If you’ve painstakingly followed the barrage of news stories about the coronavirus these regulations likely don’t feel quite as random. Each lockdown and revised study has been backed by numbers and scientific studies as we’ve learned more about the virus. But for anyone who’s taken a news break for their own mental health, it’s not uncommon to return to a system you can barely recognize. The COVID-19 response hasn’t been random, but it feels like it has.
And as 2020 has taught us, long stretches without human interaction make us weird. Take for example the “Imagine” video. Remember that thing? Every celebrity from Gal Gadot and Zoe Kravitz to Will Ferrell and Sarah Silverman took to Instagram to sing John Lennon’s iconic song. Naturally they were torn to shreds for how disconnected they seemed to the threat of this virus. That insufferable video and the backlash to it happened on day six of lockdown. Day. Six. Six days in and people were already posting tone deaf videos about how hard isolation was in an attempt to connect with anyone. It’s that sort of desperate energy and need for connection that Love Is Blind unintentionally captured well before America took COVID-19 seriously.
When life was normal getting married to someone after only knowing them for a few days seemed absolutely insane. Now we’re in the middle of a pandemic that has left single people hopelessly alone with only themselves and their Netflix accounts to keep them company. Shacking up with someone decent just because they’re alive and not your inner thoughts no longer seems insane. It sounds like bliss. We’re all Love Is Blind monsters, and they are us.When it first premiered Love Is Blind teased that it could finally confirm or deny a common assumption about love. It didn’t follow through on that promise. It is borderline irresponsible to hold up the show as proof about how much physical attraction matters in a relationship. And yet the show did offer us something psychologically, creating a sort of Skinner box for this hellfire of a year. A full month before it became our reality Love Is Blind proved that if people are robbed of their social lives, professional normalcy, and any sort of distraction, their standards get a whole lot lower. It proved that we as people are so dependent on other people and out communities we will commit to subpar ones instead of risk being alone. It’s unclear if we needed that information, but hey. Netflix gave it to us.
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December 30, 2020 at 10:00PM
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'Love Is Blind' Foreshadowed the Insanity of 2020 - Decider
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