down the bachelor reddit-hole (yikes)
technically, thoughts on The Bachelor S28, E8, but mostly about reddit & why we love reality dating shows
This week, I’m going down the /r/TheBachelor reddit-hole. That’s right, we’re making it about me again, instead of about the lovely people falling in love on our televisions, and their lovely families who only want the best for them, and their lovely fathers who will only subscribe to the gendered and outdated practice of “giving one’s blessing” if their daughter also chooses Joey, because, as Maria’s dad says, “it’s a two-way street.” Whatever. Everyone’s happy and momentarily well-adjusted, so what is there left to talk about after hometowns?
In theory, I am above it all when it comes to reddit snark and the comment section. I come to my own conclusions, don’t I? I am not a victim of group-think. Well, think again, silly! Every week, after finishing the newest episode of The Bachelor, usually two (or more) days late, watching on the tiny screen of an iPhone during my lunch break, scrawling down notes in handwriting so poor that even I have trouble deciphering it, I’m left twiddling my thumbs. Well, now what? I’m bored, I want more. I can’t listen to any recap podcasts1 yet, lest my opinions be influenced by their own.
And where does that lead me? Shamefully typing “The Bachelor season 28 reddit” into Google— I’m not sure how else to get there— and pouring over the comments and arguments. Despite reddit’s reputation, most of the comments are like, “guys, can’t we all just get along!!” This subreddit (is that what they’re called?) is basically the written version of the four-hour-video-essay-deep-dive side of Youtube. Full dissertations on producer intervention and frankenbiting and racism and calling out the audience for its own complicity and dogpiling on contestants after-the-fact. I opened a thread about how Sydney’s business is getting review-bombed on Google and found nothing but comments of dismay, horrified that people would think it’s okay to mess with someone’s livelihood because of something they said on a TV show.
The active participants in The Bachelor subreddit are, dare I say, a pretty logical group. Now, I haven’t been on Twitter in a number of years, but from what I remember, the fanbase was…different. There was a time when all of the comments underneath a Tweet were beratements over Chris Harrison’s “un”-timely demise and promises from middle aged white women to never watch the show again, interspersed with irrevocable support of Becca’s (Bachelorette, season 14) ex-fiancé, Garrett, and his politically charged Instagram likes. TikTok as a platform is essentially the dogpile capital of the internet— maybe by sheer virtue of the algorithm’s single-minded determination to shove similar content down your throat if you dare to like one video alluding to Maria’s stint on The Bachelor. There’s no variety. Reddit, on the other hand, allows an actual conversation to happen— wow, I can’t believe in the year of our lord 2024, I’m getting on Peter Weber’s2 internet and defending reddit as a platform.
Sure, there’s probably something about the human condition in our obsession with reality TV, or it’s a sick, voyeuristic instinct to watch it all fall apart. For my part, it’s a little of both. I’m not interested in these people after the show, in their rise as influencers whose whole job seems to be going out to dinner in a dress from Reformation, or in the random businesses they start (Kaitlyn Bristow’s…*checks notes* scrunchie…company?), the ghost-written books they slap their names on (sorry to Hannah Brown and Rachel Lindsay, whose romance novels are most kindly reviewed as “fine”), or the announcements that they quit the career they were allegedly passionate to pursue other ventures.
But when they’re on my television, I’m bought in. I’m invested in the happiness of these strangers, and also would really like them to go to therapy, because it seems that everyone takes their worst, most insecure self onto national television. In the history of reality TV, there have been some of the messiest, snarkiest, most insecure characters who flourish into fan-favorites. And there have been people who do everything right and the audience despises, despite— or maybe because of— that.
For the first time in my stint of watching the franchise, Season 28 has offered a cast full of compelling characters. We’re not seeing one or two likeable contestants, none of which have any chemistry with the lead. We’re not seeing a lead who comes off as wooden or boring, personality sloughed off like he was given a lobotomy pre-premiere. And when we like the people on TV, we’re more engaged because it gives us something to root for. I’m rooting for Joey’s happiness…and I would also like him to go to therapy because it seems like he has some self-worth issues to work out, and I don’t think a filmed conversation with a producer is going to do the trick. I want to root for someone. I want to watch two people fall in love and get engaged, and then watch someone’s redemption arc after getting their heart broken.
Like anything else, the discourse is half the fun. If I had to watch The Bachelor, alone in my house, and then just move on, I wouldn’t even bother. I’d be so bored! My husband participates in multiple fantasy football leagues. I’m often on the receiving end of his complaints about how wrong his friend’s opinions are about the skill level of our local high school and college hockey teams. Is The Bachelor not my own personal D3 college hockey? Is the Women Tell All not my Superbowl?
Reality TV, and specifically reality dating shows like The Bachelor franchise or Love is Blind or Love Island, effectively proves something I’ve thought about for a long time. For most of my life, from age 13-ish and onward, I’ve been hyperfocused on romantic love. Women are taught this, right? Brought up on princesses waiting for their prince, engaging in the taboo rite of passage that is sneaking our mom’s romance novels precisely because she told us we weren’t old enough to read them yet3. That hyperfocus has turned me into someone who almost exclusively reads romance novels, and a romance writer myself. A hefty amount of my limited non-fiction reading revolves around this topic, too: All About Love and The Will to Change by bell hooks; books about sexual politics and female pleasure, like Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism by Kristen Ghodsee and Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski.
My point is, I guess, that I’ve long since thought women make a hobby about of love. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. We discuss relationships and desires at length, what we want in a partner, bad dates and our friends’ partners. We resent the notion that Taylor Swift only writes about ex-boyfriends because part of us is like, so what? What’s so wrong with that? We have journals filled with bad poetry inspired by our first heartbreak. We watch the same rom-com over and over again, comforted by its familiar arc. And we watch shows like The Bachelor to scratch that itch, to watch a love story unfold. Maybe it’s not a fairytale, which is fine because most of us would probably agree we’re too old for fairytales, anyway.
And that Bachelor subreddit might just be our fantasy football group chat, where we go to share our hobby with likeminded individuals, to have a lively debate over who should be the next Bachelorette or share sleuthing screenshots that prove the Bachelor and [insert contestant here] are definitely in the same place.
I am obviously not entrenched in the reddit-verse at all. I don’t have an account and I’m eternally grateful that, unlike Twitter and Facebook, its interface lets me browse to my heart’s content without signing up for anything. I’m sure there’s a lot of terrible happening on Bachelor threads all over the site, so don’t be mad at me for speaking kindly of it, okay?! You know I don’t do my research.
For more on Reddit culture, I have to recommend Eliza McLamb’s newsletter about Influencer snark pages:
TL;DR: I kind of lost the plot on this one, but if you’re still reading, you’re my best friend now
The only one I listen to is Love to See It, as I was a devotee of Here to Make Friends before Emma and Claire left that behind.
TikTok has allowed me to catch the highlights of Peter’s stint on The Traitors, a show I will never watch despite the rumors that he might be dating Turkish goddess, liar, actress…Ekin Su?! But that’s a convo for another day.
On my 19th Christmas, my mom finally decided I was ready for the Outlander series and gifted me the first three books, and though I only made it halfway through the first (sorry mom), I saw the gesture for what it was: a welcoming into womanhood.