More than 40,000 people celebrated New Year’s Eve 2020 together in virtual reality. It’s that of the VR chat video game, which is actually an immersive platform whose usage has skyrocketed worldwide since the pandemic. During the forced confinement, many users began spending most of their days there, forming long-distance relationships while camouflaging their true appearance behind an avatar. It’s the new reality. Just one of the dating apps, Tinder, counts (as of December 2021) more than 75 million active users worldwide. 60% of them are under 35 years old, according to the study by Business of Apps magazine. This is data that shows that social relationships in the 21st century may well be virtually possible, although we still speculate whether they are optimal. This type of relationship has become a staple of television entertainment in recent seasons.
Brit Joe Hunting is a filmmaker specializing in productions shot in this digital universe. We Met in Virtual Reality (HBO Max) is one of his most recent documentaries. In it, he sneaks into the lives of some of those loyal users of VR Chat. Some fall in love, others make friends, or just throw parties they could never have imagined in real life, even without childbirth. Or they decide to give themselves another chance to have the life and emotional circle they haven’t reached. The gaze, oblivious to the director’s prejudices, opens a window to the rest of the viewers, those who have not yet decided to go beyond the screen.
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With the same open-mindedness, host Luján Argüelles (Who Wants to Marry My Son, A Prince for…) decided to reinvent the dating shows that made her so famous on Cuatro for a decade. For this he invented Who likes my follower? and Netflix has decided to air it this year. The initial phase of the program is the novel part of the format. Three singles meet a series of applicants, of whom they can only see a profile photo, as would be the case with mobile applications, which does not fully reveal their physical appearance, and hear a sentence read aloud that defines the candidates. They have to decide almost blindly whether to block him or dare to meet face-to-face.
Mariano Tomiozzo, producer of the room, explains the bridge to the future of television that this project makes. “Our kids flirt a lot more on Tinder and Instagram than in the clubs; Also, the first step men take when flirting in person is to visit Instagram,” he says. “When networking in networks, the information that one receives from the other is always insidious, one only sees what the other wants to show. This filtered information seemed interesting to us at the television level and that is why we reflect it in our mechanics, ”he continues. Consensus is elementary here: As in networks, both parties must “coordinate every step amicably, nobody governs over everyone”.
Jonan Wiergo, Jedet, Aroyitt and Luján Argüelles in Who Likes My Follower?.
Singles are taken care of by social media stars: Jedert, Aroyitt and Jonan Wiergo. In this program, everyone “comes out of the security that virtuality gives them and faces the spontaneous,” says Tomiozzo. Being so used to recording and being recorded with their phones, “the presence of the cameras does not intimidate them, on the contrary it empowers them and they show themselves as they are”.
Other international programs go even further than this Spanish format. The American The Circle, also from Netflix, revolutionized the reality TV genre a few years ago. With a Big Brother-like mechanic, the participants don’t know each other personally, they just chat. Anyone can choose to show their own profile picture or a fake one, which can also be accompanied by a personality other than the real one. The idea was exported to several countries and Spanish content creator UY Albert! He reformulated the idea to adapt it to his YouTube channel in Muuuy connected, which used tools like WhatsApp and Instagram.
Love is Blind (Netflix) separates contestants and places them in booths. They get to know each other without being able to see each other, although they can hear each other. Once they’re sure who’s in love with them, they move out into the outside world to live together for a few days, with plans to get married. At the time of marriage, they must decide whether what they experienced in real life met their expectations and proceed with the marriage or not.
Tomiozzo assures that BoxfishTV, the producer of Who likes my follower?, would not mind taking further steps towards virtuality. “In this program we addressed issues that are very normalized in Generation Z, such as polyamory, heterocuriosity or the deconstruction of toxic masculinity. Perhaps we could go much further by robbing people of their true looks, by connecting with the other without paying attention to the labels they wear. Certainly there is much to be learned from the new ways of relating.”
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