BRB, Signing Up for This ‘Love Is Blind’ Spinoff for Quarantineés (And You Can Too)
For those of us practicing social distancing, a) good job, and b) it’s totally normal to feel lonely. Everything from dinner with friends and movie nights, to workplace chats and, yes, even dating, have been put on indefinite hold. But at least this Love Is Blind Instagram spinoff is doing its best to remedy that last point.
It all started with a couple of roommates from Brooklyn, New York, who decided to replicate the booming Love Is Blind experiment with their own “show” called Love Is Quarantine. Thi Q. Lam and Rance Nix, a content creator and real estate agent/actor respectively, decided to launch the idea on Instagram just as social distancing measures started to take full effect. At the time of writing, the @loveisquarantine account has over 15 thousand followers and dozens of daters. And you become one of them, too.
“[People are] lonely, they’re looking for connection, they’re looking for community and, most importantly, they’re looking for love,” Lam told CNN. “That doesn’t stop during a pandemic. People still want love, and we’re going to try our best to make that happen.”
But how does it happen? Well, let’s reimagine the Love Is Blind pods as a cell on Google Sheets. For the excel-averse, don’t be disturbed—this Google Sheet just happens to be how Lam and Nix track all of their submissions.
Potential contestants are asked to include a dating profile of sorts, with details like their age, and any relevant notes to help find them a future match. Then the guys do their best to pair contestants, where they conduct video chats posted to the Love Is Quarantine profile for fans to view and share.
So far, several “seasons” have taken place. And Love Is Quarantine is a decidedly inclusive update to the Netflix special, including folks who don’t all just look like they were sculpted out of marble. Special editions have focused on seniors, while another night focused on “queers in quarantine.” Hey, maybe even Netflix can take a hint or two.
