“Love is Blind” introduces a unique mixture of interactional mediums that puts people into situations that are unlikely to occur naturally. These concocted scenarios mirror the blending of our communication landscape today, where digital natives engage in both purely online and offline, more traditional relationships. Hyperpersonal communication originated in computer-mediated communicational spaces, where two or more people could interact in ways curated to fit the wishes of the communicator through textual selections and self-editing (Walther, 1996). I argue that this show reflects perfectly the dangerous and nuanced world of modern dating, where hyperpersonal communication has outgrown the limitations of online interactions and now manifests itself in offline relationships.

In “Love is Blind,” contestants enter “pods” with one potential match, where they spend 10 days getting to know each other in alternating rotations. Contestants progress from quick interactions to longer dates in these pods, where candidates remain visually separated but can hear each other. At any time, contestants can choose to select their pod-mate and go on a couples’ retreat, which lasts one week. After that, they all move into apartments together and spend three weeks as a collective, meeting other couples and interacting. Then, couples choose to marry or break up.

While in the pods, contestants regulate their verbal responses while hiding their visual reactions. Functionally, these pods serve as a metaphorical stand-in for a dating app. Candidates are protected from physical contact or visual stimuli and are limited to only what the other person chooses to share via speech. This creates opportunities for curation, as well as interesting forms of deception. At one point, a male contestant divulges deep personal trauma while his female counterpart exercises, uninterested, in the next pod. This mirrors aspects of online relationships, creating opportunities for deceptive behaviors to occur in accordance with the individual’s motivations (Afifi et al., 2009). One potential mate seeks to deepen the relationship by sharing personal information. The other potential mate’s response reveals a lack of interest. However, instead of openly communicating this lack of interest, the potential mate hides her true feelings by avoiding an overt signal to cease this line of discussion and instead exercises while rolling her eyes and displaying other forms of disinterested body language (see video, starting at 1:40).

The behaviors demonstrated in the video clip mirror and give visual representation to the reality of hyperpersonal communications while not being fully hyperpersonal. While having curated interactions, one partner begins to form powerful emotional attachment, an extreme reaction, based on limited information. Meanwhile, the other partner demonstrates the opposite—without sharing that information with the other. Thus, one party forms a more extreme perception of the relationship than the other, based on a cue the other party kept private (Sherman, 2001).

Modern relationships have the potential to begin in fundamentally different ways than relationships established in the past due to CMC and other forms of non-face-to-face interactions, especially since if a couple chooses to take their relationship beyond the online status, they can switch modalities (Boase & Wellman, 2006). Recurring throughout the show is the struggle for couples to adjust to the realities of their counterparts when they move beyond the “pod” and into the “real world,” which is no easy task (McEwan & Zanolla, 2013). Couples have always faced struggles when progressing in relationships, but the struggle to progress from a mediated relationship to an unmediated relationship finds illustration here in “Love is Blind.”

What I find interesting about these things is that they place people in a middle ground between true hyperpersonal communication and face-to-face interactions. Within these initial meetings, candidates form strong initial relationships based on interactions that are partially obscured. The affordances of hyperpersonal curation are present in a limited capacity, creating opportunity for selection, mitigation, avoidance of cues, and deception for each candidate. This reflects a reality in today’s world where potential romantic partners can switch from a purely online, hyperpersonal relationship to an in-person, face-to-face relationship—and back again—at will. The blurring of the lines between these two modalities is something that should have more attention paid to it in future studies.

References

Afifi, T., Caughlin, J., & Afifi, W. (2009). The dark side (and light side) of avoidance and secrets. In The dark side of interpersonal communication (pp. 71-102). Routledge.

Boase, J., & Wellman, B. (2006). Personal relationships: On and off the Internet. The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships, 8, 709-723.

McEwan, B., & Zanolla, D. (2013). When online meets offline: A field investigation of modality switching. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(4), 1565-1571.

Sherman, R. C. (2001). The mind’s eye in cyberspace: Online perceptions of self and others. Towards cyber psychology: Mind, cognition and society in the Internet age, 53-72.

Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication research, 23(1), 3-43.