In one of the rare positive episodes of the techno-phobic show, Black Mirror, two people find love in a rigorously constructed dating simulation. The episode, titled “Hang the DJ,” has obvious connections to contemporary dating apps; while Bumble and Tinder allow users to make tenuous connections to hundreds of local singles, the dating technology in Black Mirror allows a couple to test the depth of one connection a thousand times in ultra-fast, virtual reality scenarios.1 While this advanced VR is a far-future speculation, multiple contemporary dating shows—like Too Hot to Handle and Are You the One?—are attempting to use depictions of science-fictional technology to imbue their caricatured contestants with emotional sincerity. By pretending their fake gadgets are more than just narrative devices, these shows enact a double-defamiliarization, testing the genre’s already dubious relationship between the scripted and the real, and using the lure of techno-utopianism to draw their viewers into the highly mediated romance.
This is not necessarily a topic I ever would have expected to write about; I’m not a frequent consumer of reality TV, though I am mass-culture literate enough to have a working understanding of the big hitters—shows like 90 Day Fiancé,The Real Housewives, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and the many, many iterations of The Bachelor/Bachelorette. In the middling days of pandemic quarantine, however, I found myself utterly enthralled by a new reality TV show called The Circle, a Netflix original whose claustrophobic and voyeuristic hour-long episodes proved a surprisingly effective balm for my own isolation sadness. The show, which bills itself as a “Social Media Competition,” follows an oscillating cast of around a dozen competitors, who must stay in their separated rooms for the majority of the show; they emerge only when granted individual, special privileges—like using the gym or the rooftop hot tub—or when they are removed from the competition. Due to this isolation, the flirtations that contestants engage in and the connections they make are incredibly flimsy. These players compete under a common reality TV rubric—popularity and deception—complicated by their means of communication. They can only connect with each other through the titular “Circle,” the fake social media platform created for the game. This false digital platform employs recognizable elements like the profile picture, direct messaging, general feeds, games, and even the option to join either as oneself, as many of the players do, or to catfish, using someone else’s pictures and persona to try and get ahead in the rankings.
While these functions align with contemporary social media capabilities, one seemingly advanced element sticks out; instead of typing on a keyboard, or uploading photos from their phones, the contestants control the Circle entirely by voice.2 They speak into their body microphones, requesting that the Circle open private chats with other players, type responses and rank their competitors for the end of episode eliminations. While Siri and Smart TV voice control have similar features, the Circle software is too intuitive to be believable; it understands cryptic instructions for which emoji to use or which picture to upload. Though some contestants give instructions clear enough for contemporary voice control AI—asking the Circle for the “heart eyes emoji” or to post “the picture on the right,” others stretch the limits of belief. For instance, one player instructed the Circle to open up the picture “with my two bun buns” (referring to her hair); another asks for “the black leather jacket photo” to be his profile picture, and a third contestant endangers the techno-fantasy by requesting a photo with “me with, like, literally what I’m wearing right now?”3Clearly, an intern or other employee in another room is navigating the platform, with the help of either a preset script or short, real-time interactions—and anything that gets lost in translation can be discussed between shots or cut in postproduction. It is fair to wonder how a game show with such clumsily fake technology, stereotypically reductive competitors, and heavily mediated drama builds a loyal viewership. The show has just completed its fifth season—the first to feature all “Single and Ready to Mingle” participants—and has been renewed for two more; season six is set to premiere in Spring 2024.4
Rather than distract viewers, the fake voice control actually adds a great deal to the show’s entertainment value. By streamlining their technological tools, the show allows its competitors to interact with the Circle itself as if it is an additional player. Contestants are constantly in conversation with the televisions that display the Circle; they are able to pace in their small spaces, interacting with the application in the bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and on the biggest screen in the living room. Beyond just issuing instructions, they laugh at the Circle, yell at it, and comment on the entire process for the benefit of the camera’s ever-watchful eye. In the era of stay-at-home orders, misinformation, and social starvation, this show struck the perfect chord of isolation and connection, truth and falsehood, and made the viewing audience believe that their own interactions with social media might plausibly stand in for the real thing—that is, connecting with others in the physical realm.
Watching reality TV has long been an exercise in credulity—or perhaps a complex kind of suspended disbelief. Misha Kavka explains that reality TV is a slippery concept. At its most basic, the genre could be described as “unscripted shows with non-professional actors being observed by cameras in preconfigured environments,” though Kavka argues that even this definition is “reductive” and leaves out many exceptions.5 It constitutes a “hybridization of fictional and factual” modes, and “blurs traditional distinctions between information and entertainment, documentary and drama, [and] public and private discourses.”6The viewer is encouraged to engage in the “tedium” of “everyday life and ordinary people”—with a significantly more intensified version of voyeurism than would normally be acceptable.7 This intensification of the quotidian, much like the literary concept of “mimesis,” leads the viewer both to believe in the flattened versions of people being presented on screen, and to know that these performances are the results of a desire to win—to beat the game, to attract followers and sponsors, to find “love” with the most glamorous contestant, or to do all three.
This element of estranged reality has an odd distorting effect, which allows reality shows to present eccentric behavior as if it’s natural—and allows science-fictional gadgets to seem as though they might be science fact. The requirement to be both factual and fictional strangely parallels critical descriptions of the science fiction genre. Like reality TV, science fiction has many definitions and traditions, but one popular organizing principle is Darko Suvin’s term, “cognitive estrangement.”8 According to Adam Roberts, the “cognitive” portion of this term refers to “that aspect of SF that prompts us to try and understand… the alien landscape of a given SF book, film, or story.”9 The second piece, “estrangement,” refers to “that element of SF that we recognize as different, that ‘estranges’ us from the familiar and every day.10 In other words, while in science fiction, a “cognitive” understanding of economic inequality might be “estranged” by the framework of an alien planet or future dystopia, in reality TV, we encounter a more mundane form of estrangement. Though occurring in our time and on our planet, reality dating shows often take advantage of the “preconfigured environments” that Kavka delineated as a key factor of the genre. Whether this environment is the isolated rooms of The Circle, or the tropical paradise of both Too Hot to Handle and Are You the One?, removal to a new location inevitably distorts how the “ordinary people” starring in the show behave. Removed so far from the framework of what we would call “reality”—everyday life—and beneath the ever-present eye of the camera, our expectation for how the contestants will behave changes as well.
Inside this mediated version of reality, the inclusion of science fictional gadgetry feels unsurprising; in fact, the two genres do similar critical work, according to some theorists. Kavka notes that many critics now ask what role reality TV plays “in helping viewers to negotiate the social, political and technological forces that shape our lives.”11 This description mirrors Sherryl Vint’s theory about the productive potential of science fiction. She claims that SF is “a cultural form that offers an ‘everyday’ language for thinking about and responding to daily life in the twenty-first century.”12 Both forms can act as an inoculation for readers—or viewers—against future shock. Like SF, reality TV fortifies viewers to expect technological change; the science fictional gadgets in these shows act as an organic element of the estranged framework. Perhaps these devices are false—but they may also be looming on the horizon, ready to change the way we date, fall in love, and interact on a daily basis. The audience is permitted the belief that love is possible in an age of technological uncertainty and increased isolation; indeed, they are given the fantasy that these elements might even improve our chances for romantic success.
While The Circle attempts to hide the falseness of its social media device, the sex-fueled island series, Too Hot to Handle, ups the ante for unrealistic technological tools. The participants in this Netflix series are handpicked for their investments in hook-up culture, and told that they’re signing up for a steamy tropical dating competition—which is technically true. The show’s twist, however, makes the steamier elements less lucrative. Here enters the gadgetry: Lana, a small, cone-shaped device similar to an Amazon Alexa, rules this game. The tiny anthropomorphized speaker acts as scorekeeper, stand-in host, and spy. She is frequently shown sitting in hidden places, almost as if it is her, and not the cameras, watching players canoodle. Her observations bring consequences along with them; in this dating competition, players are banned from engaging in sexual activities. Each time the players kiss, hook up, or otherwise engage in intimacy, the all-seeing Lana deducts from the shared pot of money that the players will take home at the end of the “retreat.” The players treat Lana as the source of this misfortune; they listen as she passes judgment on their activities and frequently call her a “bitch.” At one point in season two, contestants Emily and Cam even pray to her—albeit sarcastically—and ask that she forgive them for their sexual misconduct.13 In her big moments, Lana behaves as a teacher, chastising the young people and telling them to take this experience “seriously”—attempting a puritanical tone that fools none of the viewers.
This element is perhaps the trickiest, and most interesting part of the show’s success. Watching people connect on screen and test out their chemistry is one of the biggest attractions of reality dating shows. But the viewer hasn’t chosen this particular show, out of the hundreds of streaming options, to watch a bunch of sexually active, attractive people “reform” and begin serious relationships. The show’s name—Too Hot to Handle—says it all. Its producers provide competitors with revealing wardrobe choices, co-ed sleeping and showering areas, and thrust them into a variety of ridiculous and arousing activities. For a show that claims to be about resisting one’s temptations and forming “stronger connections,” the creators are awfully liberal with the body oil and compromising situations. Viewers watch the show not to witness reform, but to be titillated, scandalized, and to revel in the poor decision-making of people who are behaving in a markedly less mature manner than the average adult. Lana can be seen as a stand-in for the viewer, her tiny form acting the voyeur much like the eye of the camera, highlighting and estranging the act witnessing. She chastises the players for their “bad” behavior—but watches, all the while, and allows viewers to enjoy the drama of beautiful people desperately trying to control themselves. The gadget draws the audience more fully into the narrative, giving them a finger-wagging excuse to watch, all the while questioning the boundary between the witness and the object of scrutiny.
While The Circle and Too Hot to Handle play fast and loose with emotional connection (and with the realism of their devices), Are You the One? raises the stakes considerably. The MTV series intensifies both the payoff—millions and true love—and the technological apparatus. Contestants on the show are chosen based on compatibility. While still in the pre-production stage, potential candidates take detailed personality quizzes, and are matched up by an algorithm. Each contestant enters the contest with a secret, ideal match—which could be any of the ten opposite-sex contestants (or, in the case of the eighth season, any of the fifteen other bisexual players). As the show progresses, players have to use a variety of games, date nights, and down time interactions to determine which other person they might be “meant” for. At the end of each episode, the players attend a “Matchup Ceremony,” where they couple up, trying to build their number of “Perfect Matches”—because if they figure out all the matches by the end of the show, they win a shared pot of one million dollars. While the personality tests and algorithmic matching have the potential to be effective, contestants are much more likely to win the money than to build lasting relationships. In an interview for International Business Times, the show’s host, Ryan Devlin, claims that the casting process is “really extensive,” featuring rounds of interviews, a large pool of candidates, and “this algorithm that essentially determines what a perfect match is.”14 Devlin explains that producers look over all their data with mathematicians and professional matchmakers, though of course, Devlin notes, “chemistry” between the various players confuses the outcome: “We certainly can’t write a perfect formula for love,” he states.
Perhaps to distract the viewer from asking sticky questions about the algorithmic process or the longevity of perfect matches, the show runners include another, less scientific data-collection method: biometric scanning. At the matchup ceremony, couples “lock in” their choices by placing their palms on a double scanner, which flares green and “records” their pairing. At the end of the matchup ceremony, the players find out how many true matches they have, but not which matches are correct. That information is only accessible in the “Truth Booth,” another space that utilizes the fake biometric scanning. The group may send one couple to the booth per episode. Once inside, the booth “scans” the nervous, entwined contestants with a thin line of green light, and reveals the couple’s status—match, or no match. The results are either crushing—the connection you believed in is not the recommended one—or elating—you were right. Somehow the added drama of a green light makes the entire process seem more real, and offers a sense of finality. The Truth Booth will confirm your desires and allow you to enter the honeymoon suite—and endless bliss.
Interestingly, most of the couples that have gotten together or stayed together after filming Are You the One? were not categorized as perfect matches, but succumbed to the “chemistry” that Devlin notes as being a snag in the process. Most of the couples, however, will not last long. Much like the contestants of The Bachelor and Bachelorette, coupling up is much rosier and easier in the confines of the reality TV framework. Outside this estranged space, everyday life intrudes, and ordinary people no longer perform in the same way. Without the camera’s eye watching, a contestant’s personality and expectations must surely expand from the flattened, fictionalized version cobbled together for a reality TV audience. Despite the general failure of these social experiments in love and relationships, the inclusion of science fictional devices marks a desire for a new kind of certainty. Producers are tapping into a longing for connection in an increasingly digital and technologically isolated world, considering the farther-reaching, yet potentially shallower connections one can make on Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, and Hinge. This new era of dating requires little to no commitment—no reaching out to a friend of a friend, no blind dates, no need to even exchange phone numbers and last names—and supplies ample opportunity for disappointing evenings, bad dates, and poor chemistry. In a world where we’ve streamlined other social interactions, the unpredictable dating scene can feel like the messy remnant of a bygone era. But if reality shows are any indication, romantic partnerships can’t be determined by the (technological) gods; the “perfect match” is, in fact, more commonly the one you can’t see coming.
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Endnotes
- Black Mirror, season four, episode four, “Hang the DJ,” aired December 29, 2017, on Netflix.
- In one unique instance in season five, a deaf player named Raven has a sign interpreter who speaks to the Circle interface for her—translating from sign, to spoken word, to text for the other players.
- The Circle, season three, episode one, “Circle, Did You Miss Me?,” aired September 8, 2021, on Netflix; The Circle, season one, episode one, “Hello Circle,” aired January 1, 2020, on Netflix.
- “Single and Ready to Mingle” is the title of the first episode in season five.
- Misha Kavka, Reality TV, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012): 5.
- Ibid., 3.
- Ibid., 1, 3.
- Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, edited by Gerry Canavan (Lausanne, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG, 2016): 24.
- Adam Roberts, Science Fiction (The New Critical Idiom) (Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2006): 8.
- Ibid.
- Kavka, 4.
- Sherryl Vint, Science Fiction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): 6.
- Too Hot to Handle, season two, episode three, “On Est dans la Merde,” aired June 23, 2021, on Netflix.
- Rebecka Schumann, “‘Are You The One?’ Season 5 Matchmaking Process Explained By MTV Host Ryan Devlin,” International Business Times, January 1, 2017, https://www.ibtimes.com/are-you-one-season-5-matchmaking-process-explained-mtv-host-ryan-devlin-2473862.
Sarah Nolan-Brueck