‘Love Is Blind’ Is Out to Make Us All Hate Marriage
The U.S. marriage rate has spent the past few decades kneeling into obscurity. No one gets railed anymore, either—surveys show that Americans have never been so depressed, isolated, and revirginized as they are in the passionless present. But I’m convinced that Love is Blind Season 6, whose finale premiered Wednesday, is the true death of romance. Its couples’ will-they, won’t-they whining tantalized our loneliness—while reinforcing the doomed state of modern marriage.
The frazzled idealists on Love is Blind don’t know what they’re doing, coveting a marriage license like it’s a Birkin, but neither do we. Via hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey, marriage has been reduced to just a thing you can do instead of looking at your phone.
That’s not how Love is Blind presents it, of course. Like the rest of reality TV that hinges on a marriage plot—The Bachelor, Married at First Sight, The Ultimatum, 90 Day Fiancé, etc.—Love is Blind starts as a mango-sweet hyperreality. Its couples are presented to us as a winning selection from an already limited selection, the cream skimmed off the shallow pool of eligible contestants who all claim to be in it for “the right reasons,” to borrow The Bachelor parlance.