‘Pop The Balloon’ Already Brought Out the Worst In People. Then It Got a TV Deal
One of the internet’s favorite — and most controversial — shows is getting a squeaky new primetime spin. YouTube show Pop The Balloon will become a live dating show on Netflix, with the streamer releasing its own weekly spin on series best known for giving judging a person at face value its very own spotlight.
“We’re thrilled to see Pop the Balloon take on a new life on Netflix,” the creators of the show, husband-and-wife team Bolia Matundu and Arlette Amuli, told Deadline in March when the series was announced. “From day one, we’ve kept love and fun at the heart of the show, and watching it evolve and soar beyond our wildest dreams has been truly exciting.”
Also titled Pop The Balloon or Find Love, the YouTube dating show is best known online for interrogating people’s knee-jerk reaction to potential romantic suitors. The setup is simple and has tended not to vary in the 50-plus episodes that exist on Amuli’s YouTube page: A group of eligible bachelors or bachelorettes — usually all of them Black — each hold a balloon in their hand. They’re then introduced to a suitor who goes through an interview with the host. It’s a rundown of your average dating show questions, like name, age, hobbies, jobs, ideal dates, and sexual preferences. Throughout the questions, those in the lineup are given the chance to pop their balloon at non-negotiables or stay their hand and potentially end the episode with a date. While Amuli and Matundu weren’t the originators of the idea — balloon-pop games and trivia shows have been common on social media in various formats for several years — they did popularize it. Amuli’s YouTube page has over 1 million subscribers, and each of the Pop The Balloon episodes easily reach millions of views on the site, which doesn’t include the reposted and cut clips that circulate on TikTok following each release. The show and its participants were even parodied on Saturday Night Live in January, with comedian Ego Nwodim playing Amuli, and other cast members mocking people’s poor conversation skills and unintelligent dating decisions.
While the balloon is a bright and loud way for contestants to say they’re not interested in dating the single in front of them, the show often goes viral for its tension-filled moments. The studio can be filled with the sounds of balloons popping before a woman even shares her name, while daters who are clear and direct that they have no job, finances, or even desire to treat a potential partner with respect can end up with a date. The format also requires each contestant to explain why they did — or didn’t — pop their balloon, and the answer can vary from incompatible religious beliefs to the color of jeans or style of glasses a person is wearing. But the most viral clips from the show often trend for making either the suitor — or the singles — absolute fools online. They can feature colorist, misogynistic, or body shaming remarks from contestants, a large majority of which seem to be consistently aimed at female contestants.
When asked by NPR’s Up First host A Martínez about criticisms that Pop The Balloon promotes colorism and body shaming, Amuli said the viral moments can’t represent the average experience on the show. “Every now and then, we do have those small little moments where someone is just a little bit more brutally honest than what people are used to, and that’s what happens to go viral,” she said Wednesday. “We just tell our contestants, you know, you don’t know these people. Take what they’re saying with a grain of salt. A lot of the time, the people on the stage or on the show, they’re not even offended. A lot of them actually become friends after the show.”
For the live Netflix version of the series, Insecure star Yvonne Orji will replace Amuli as host, but Matundu and Amuli will continue to make and post their stripped back version on Amuli’s YouTube channel. And as for the new show, the contestants are no longer random. Instead, Netflix has announced that the show will feature previous reality television stars from the streaming service like Zaina Sesay, Chase DeMoor, Farrah Abraham, and Johnny Bananas. It’s high tech version one of the biggest dating shows online. What could possibly go wrong?
