There is a brand-new season of Love Is Blind coming to Netflix on Friday as a little Valentine’s Day treat. It’s hard to believe, but the show is now in its eighth season. After following singles blindly looking for romance and Instagram followers in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Charlotte, and Washington, D.C., Netflix’s cameras descended on Minneapolis for this new journey through the pods. And therein lies the problem, at least according to some Minneapolis singles who were not cast on the show.
The Mini Apple, locals say, is simply too small for the Love Is Blind concept to work. “Minneapolis is a big little town,” says TikTok user @leah_bergy. “Everyone knows everyone here … I find it really hard to believe that they found a cast who doesn’t know each other at all, or at least has no mutual friends.” In fact, she claims she has personally dated not one but two men in the cast already. (One was nice, one less so, she reveals.)
@leah_bergy Did not have jump scare in the cards for my Monday morning #loveisblindnetflix #loveisblindseason8 #minneapolis #datingstorytime
♬ πρωτότυπος ήχος - Spiros Zorpidis - Spiros Zorpidis
The premise of the show is, of course, that cast members meet one another in the pods without seeing each other until one of them proposes and gets a “yes.” If the singles have some idea of who their potential mates are already, that premise starts to fall apart. (With a little more than 425,000 residents, Minneapolis has the smallest population of any city featured on the show.)
The small-town factor has also seemed to increase the number of people talking about cast members before the show even premieres. TikTok user @angiebaby310 posted a video of herself raising her eyebrows and rolling her eyes with the caption, “Watching season 8 of Love Is Blind trailer and realizing Netflix cast one of the most toxic men in Minneapolis that you know first hand.”
Another TikToker with the handle @hopeyoufindyourdad posted a video of herself crying when she learned who had been cast on the show. “Minneapolis is a big city, small town sort of vibe where everyone knows each other, and the dating pool here is very, very small, so if you’ve messed up, someone’s gonna know about it,” she says. “I’m just exhausted and tired of society rewarding shitty men who treat women terribly and manipulate and lie all the time.”
@hopeyoufindyourdad @Andra you think your dating life is hard? I’m calling out love is blind for this one #loveisblind #netflix #dating #minnesota
♬ original sound - Andra
She then alludes to the fact that she’s talking about one man in the cast, specifically, but declines to name him. “I will not be watching the Minneapolis season,” she says, “because that shit makes me sick to my stomach to see someone who’s willing to lie to people about wanting to get married just to be on television and get exposure and be a heartthrob.”
This is not a new issue, exactly: Casting directors are skilled at finding manipulative or otherwise narcissistic people to go on reality television. We have been talking about singles going on television for the “wrong reasons” since The Bachelor premiered in 2002. But perhaps Netflix caught wind of these criticisms and considered them anyway, because the trailer for the season alludes to them right off the bat.
In a voice-over, one of the women on the cast says, “When the doors opened and I saw him, I thought, He’s so familiar to me. I believe he knew exactly what I looked like the entire time we were talking through the wall.”
The horror! Elsewhere in the trailer, a different woman confronts a man about “this girl on TikTok who’s crying.” Could she be referring to @hopeyoufindyourdad? I guess we will have to watch the entire season to find out.
Personally, I’m looking forward to this season, as I appreciate some light fourth-wall breaking in my reality programs. I wish the best to the cast and the people who know them IRL, and I hope no one ends up getting legally married.