Make the Men on Love Is Blind Date AI Women

Unless Love Is Blind starts making drastic changes, I might be done with Netflix’s so-called dating experiment. The latest season reminded me for the millionth time the worst part of this show: The men don’t take it seriously. There are exceptions to this rule — Cameron Hamilton, Brennon Lemieux, Brett Brown, and Garrett Josemans all seemed genuine in their quest for love — but on the whole, a frustrating number of guys go on this show having done none of the material preparation or emotional introspection needed to be a good partner. Too many of them are impossibly shallow and wildly immature, have unresolved emotional traumas, are financially reckless, or live in tragic apartments straight out of Boy Room. They believe they can enter the pods as a doomed project, meet a benevolent woman looking for a fixer-upper, and somehow become marriage material in six weeks.

It doesn’t take a critical eye to spot the problem, nor is it even subtext. After making misogynistic jokes to break the ice early in season eight, Dave admits he’s been an “ass to women” in relationships and came on Love Is Blind to “confront [himself]” about it. What? People are here to get married. What you need is therapy, brother. Too many male contestants treat the experiment like a joke, and so it becomes one. I suggest the show take the joke one step further: Love Is Blind should make the men date AI women.

I’ll admit, I’m inspired by Mason’s love of the movie Her. His mind was so blown over his connection with Meg that he repeatedly told her she “can’t be real.” “You say things that, I swear to God, they just, like, created this AI bot that is just saying the things that I wanna hear,” he tells her. “Have you seen Her?” she asks, and he leaps to his feet in disbelief that someone else has seen an Oscar-winning movie. It’s a cute moment, even if their commonalities are superficial, but their relationship takes a turn after the fallout of their quadrangle with Madison and Alex. All four leave the pods without getting engaged, but unfortunately, Mason’s speculation that Meg could be an AI bot designed to tell him what he wanted to hear had done its damage, worming itself into my brain.

This is what the men on this show have actually been asking for. Not a grown adult who will challenge them and hold them to account, but a subservient voice that will give them compliments and find their faults endearing. Look no further than last season, during Nick and Hannah’s torturous engagement. Nick wanted to be treated like an equal, but he relied on his parents to pay his bills and feed his cats, while Hannah had been independent her whole adult life and sacrificed her job to go on the show. Nick never seemed to understand Hannah’s perspective and simply asked her to compliment him instead of getting frustrated when he doesn’t know how to use a broom, boil pasta, or please her sexually. Back in season three, Cole called Zanab “bratty” and “bipolar” when she intervened in the dinner he failed to make due to his subpar cooking abilities. When she expressed her frustrations over his immaturity and inability to pick up after himself, he told her he wanted a wife who laughs with him and “builds him up.” His solution to their unhappiness isn’t a compromise in which he grows up and earns her respect, but that she simply “be sweet, just be unassuming.” Sure, Hannah and Zanab shouldn’t humiliate or belittle their prospective partners on television, but the men should not have gone on Love Is Blind if they weren’t prepared to go through the gauntlet of marrying a stranger in six weeks.

If Love Is Blind insists on continuing to cast babies, the decent thing to do is give them a pacifier. Plus, the addition would add another layer to the “experiment”: How many men would actually end up choosing the artificial woman? Of course, not all the men would fail to fall for a human. But the three to four deeply unserious men who appear each season to drone on about crypto, Joe Rogan, and Brazilian jujitsu will get herded away by the captive audience of their dreams and stop wasting a living, breathing woman’s time.

You might be thinking, Men would never knowingly date an AI woman. They already are. Men are jumping at the chance to date a bot that has all the same interests, won’t balk when asked about their weight (doesn’t have a body), learn the man’s poor financial status (you only need $19.99 a month), or fail to be served a basic meal (doesn’t eat). These relationships don’t have to end at the pods. If Netflix can invest in some sort of Joi-esque Blade Runner 2029 hologram technology, the guys and their AIs can continue into the cohabitation part, where couples typically realize who is committed and who is inept. In this new techno-dating reality, the number of fights sparked by clothes being left on the floor would dramatically decrease, instead being replaced by not-at-all depressing scenes of men standing alone in their apartments talking to a speaker.

And, of course, if the men want to have healthy, loving relationships with other humans, they can always invest in some mental, emotional, and spiritual fortitude, and I will root for them, as I always do. But, as the old adage goes, men will literally go on reality TV and marry an AI bot instead of going to therapy — and I’ll renew my Netflix account to watch it happen. Chris Coelen, if you’re reading this, put down the cereal for a sec and see if Netflix can buy OpenAI before Elon Musk does. Yes, AI’s greenhouse gas emissions are directly contributing to our climate catastrophe, but if we get to see a grown man propose to an empty room, it will all be worth it.