My suggestions on making Love is Blind better...
& one little favor for me 📸
Welcome back to affectionately online! What you may not know is that this here newsletter is a challenge to myself. A challenge of consistency and creativity. I’ve relinquished the pressure that every issue needs to be thought provoking, hilarious, or jam packed with all the hottest gossip. I write because it makes my brain feel good. As attention spans dwindle and screen times increase, I’m trying to hold on to whatever critical thinking skills I can. I say all of that to say: even when I’m not the most confident about what I’ve written I’m so proud that I wrote.
If you resonate with something, think it’s cool or funny share with others. Take a screenshot of the passage or something, tag me, and share the link below. Thanks in advance for helping this grow 🌱
Without further ado, here are my tops and bottoms ⬇️
Is love getting less blind? ❤️🩹
First of all, can you believe Love is Blind only just premiered in 2020? They’ve been going through these seasons quick! Even crazier, the season 1 throwback clips they showed on this season’s reunion look ancient—like watching an old season of The Real World. However, the video and editing quality isn’t the only thing that has changed over the past 5 years. The experiment is flopping. Less and less contestants are finding love sight unseen.
Out of ~40 couples, about 11 of them are still together today. That’s approximately a 25%-30% success rate. Which honestly isn’t horrible—especially compared to other dating shows like The Bachelor and Married at First Sight (basically the opposite concept of Love is Blind). But, we haven’t seen more than one “I do” at the altar in fours seasons. Excluding, Ashley and Tyler from season 7 who split after one year of marriage.
Across all seasons of this Netflix dating experiment, the statistics tell an interesting story not just about finding love in the pods, but about how to produce a dating show. I am certainly no expert, but it’s clear to me that the producers care less about finding love and more about creating the absolute most toxic storylines ever. I think with a few structural changes Love is Blind could be much more than just rage bait—although we love to rage. No one asked, but here are my “I have no idea what I’m talking bout” suggestions to increase the show’s success rate:
Increase the age. Luckily, the internet yelled loud enough about this. 35-year-old women dating 26-year-old men were destined to fail. Over the past few seasons, we have definitely seen this shift.
Post-engagement therapy/relationship coaching. The show should provide couples with relationship therapists immediately after engagement to help navigate the transition from pods to real life. It’s actually absurd that they leave it all to the couples and their mostly unhelpful family & friends. I think implementing this could make space for the tough conversations many couples break up over.
Trial life scenarios. I know this sounds very weird, but right now all they are trialling is living with each other—arguably the hardest hurdle to combat. I’d love to challenge them to plan a trip together, manage & create budget, or even navigate a simulated crisis. I could see viewers anticipating the “simulated crisis” episode ever year. This actually reminds me of Behind Closed Doors, a simulation activity we did in college to as part as resident assistant training.
Longer engagement period. Yes, the stakes are extremely high when the cast is required to make the biggest decision of their life in just one month. But, it’s just not enough time. Even in this season, a few couples didn’t say “I do” because they really felt they didn’t have enough time to get to know their partners.
Prioritize casting people from diverse backgrounds. When the cast is monolithic, we end up with those "small world" moments—everyone running into each other at that same one bar, accidentally following and unfollowing potential matches on Instagram, or discovering they went to the same high school as their future fiancé (hello, Minneapolis season!). Beyond just avoiding these cringe-worthy coincidences, bringing together people with different life experiences and cultural backgrounds creates more genuine learning opportunities between couples and nuanced storylines for the viewers.
Now I'm curious – what would YOU change about Love Is Blind to make the experiment more successful? If you’re reading in the Substack app, leave a comment with your thoughts!
You and your coworkers likely need new headshots 📸
Yes, this is a plug. Many of you know (cause I shared in this very newsletter) that I am unemployed after a company layoff in November. My side hustle has now become my main source of income. So, if you're seeing this and your company is based in NYC, go ask your People Team when was the last time they offered new headshots to their employees. Tell them your LinkedIn profile picture is from college...then hit me up.
Seriously, the most frequent comment people say to me when I take their picture is “My LinkedIn profile pic is from college. I look like a baby!” And we've all seen those team pages where half the photos look like they're from different decades. Be the office hero who brings this up!
I'm not asking you to personally book me—I'm asking you to plant the seed with your People team or manager. Por ejemplo saying: "Hey, have we thought about updating our team headshots?" Trust me, your colleagues will thank you when they're no longer cringing at their outdated profile pics.
Share my portfolio and feel free to have them reach out to me via email at shakivlatodd@gmail.com 💌
For you page 🔎
My personal TikTok factory: always wanted to yell at the top of my lungs on top of a mountain, come with me to my shoot at Peloton, and this Love is Blind star had me and the internet loling.
Other TikToks to make you giggle: who the heck is Tate McRae, when you remember Ireland is an island, and I just never met a lesbian before.
My friend, Autumn, hosted a Traitors murder mystery party her birthday and it was pretty epic. The best part is that I was selected as a Traitor, and I WON THE WHOLE GAME…but I lost all of my friends.
“I won the whole game!…but I lost all my friends” 🤣🤣
My hot take abt LIB is that the show is not strong enough to break the 4th wall and acknowledge that it’s a show, and that’s part of its downfall. You wonder whether ppl are there for the “right reasons” and can just look them up on IG and find out! The other locations tend to stand more firmly in the show’s premise so all the delulu is more believable.