I watched every episode of Pop the Balloon. Heres what it taught me about dating.

I’ll admit that, of all the dating shows I’ve watched over the years, none have hit me as personally as Pop the Balloon or Find Love. The wildly popular YouTube dating show, hosted by Arlette Amuli alongside her husband, BM (Bolia Matundu), has become a weekly ritual for my best friend and me, as we sit down to watch what I genuinely believe is one of the most miserable dating shows ever made.

That misery, of course, is part of the appeal. Across its roughly 90-episode run on YouTube so far, Pop the Balloon regularly pulls in around two million views per episode, catapulting Amuli’s channel from a modest vlog page with around 7,000 subscribers to more than 1.4 million in just over two years since the first episode aired on December 7, 2023.

For those that don't know, Pop the Balloon works like this: A group of contestants stands onstage holding balloons, while a single participant enters and introduces themselves. If anyone in the lineup is not interested, they pop their balloon, immediately eliminating themselves from consideration.

Clips of contestants walking in and having all the balloons pop before they even speak have routinely gone viral.

Pop the Balloon has found a massive audience, in part because Amuli’s version of the format is, unmistakably, a Black dating show. Across dozens of episodes and spinoffs like Pop the Balloon Congo and Pop the Balloon UK, which are uploaded to BM’s channel, white contestants are notably absent, though there are occasional mixed-race and Hispanic participants. That specificity is also part of why viewers believe the show’s Netflix adaptation failed to land with longtime fans, as a more diverse cast, a different host, and a generally flatter group of contestants stripped away much of what made the original compelling.

Truthfully, I find the whole thing painfully relatable to my own dating experience. Not the dates themselves, but the vetting process. The endless conversations, the mental calculus of who’s worth your time, and the quiet embarrassment that comes with being on a dating app and having to actually ask another human being out. I can’t help but imagine that, on some level, the contestants feel the same way, except they’re doing it on camera. At the end of the day, nobody wants to be made a fool.

That’s what got me thinking. I watch this show every week. I’ve seen every episode. But I started wondering if there was anything to actually learn from it.

And, surprisingly, the answer is yes.

Lesson 1: Embrace delusion

If there’s one real takeaway from watching the show, it’s this: remember that you are the prize. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur without a business yet, or a deeply devout Christian who believes that even though you’re divorced, you’re still spiritually married in the eyes of God, and therefore any new relationship counts as cheating unless your ex is dead. At the end of the day, it’s your way or the highway.

The last few weeks, I went deep into Pop the Balloon’s back catalog and came to an important realization. Whatever I originally thought this show was supposed to be — a genuine, on-camera experiment in finding love, something closer to early Love Is Blind — it has never actually been that. This show has always been goofy as hell.

And I mean that in the nicest way possible. No one on this show has a serious dealbreaker. You can be eliminated for being too tall, not tall enough, having the wrong star sign, wearing a bad outfit, wearing too good an outfit, or simply being light-skinned or dark-skinned, because yes, participants have been accused of colorism.

So what I’ve ultimately learned is to never compromise on the little things. I have two cats, so why would I date someone with a dog? I like being at the club, so why would I date someone whose idea of fun is a hike followed by Sunday brunch? I won’t date a blonde, and God forbid you’re my height and have crooked teeth. I’m 5'9, by the way, and I can’t afford braces. But I'm the prize, so you're not allowed to judge me.

Lesson 2: Waste time

On average, Pop the Balloon episodes run anywhere from 90 minutes to two full hours. On rare occasions, episodes even get split into two parts, usually for reasons far more foolish and wicked than I can responsibly unpack here. All of which is to say: these episodes are long. And you very quickly learn why. Everyone is a time waster.

Once you get past the initial visceral eliminations at the start of each contestant’s round, the midsection, especially when the guest is conventionally attractive, can be an absolute slog. The format goes something like this: a contestant walks out, gives a brief introduction, and then Amuli asks everyone who popped their balloon why they did it. Depending on how many balloons remain, the contestant will then pop one or two balloons based purely on appearance. Next, the remaining contestants explain why they didn’t pop theirs. Then questions are exchanged, either from the single person to the lineup or vice versa. Eventually, the final unpopped balloon comes forward, and Amuli asks if it’s a match. Rinse and repeat this process for three or four guests per episode.

That was a mouthful, right? See how I just wasted your time by making you read all of that. Now imagine sitting through it, only for one of the contestants to casually reveal at the very end that, despite the other saying they live in the area, they actually live across the country and don’t do long distance.

That’s where one of the show’s biggest problems comes in. As Pop the Balloon has grown in popularity, contestants now fly in from all over the United States. Early episodes focused on people local to the Phoenix metro area, but that quickly changed as more hopefuls wanted airtime, often to plug their business (and everyone has one, apparently) or kickstart a budding influencer career. Time and time again, the episode grinds toward its final pairing, only for one balloon to be popped after 30 or 40 minutes of meandering, first-date-level conversation, because neither person wants to deal with a long-distance relationship.

It’s hard to square that with the idea of "finding love," which, according to most dating experts, usually involves at least a little compromise. Especially when the distance in question is, say, Dallas to Phoenix, which is, at worst, a two-hour flight.

So the real lesson I’ve taken from this isn’t how to date better, but how to waste time with intention. Not because I’m busy or nervous, but because I’m bored. I will text for weeks without ever suggesting concrete plans. I will ask thoughtful questions, but I don’t actually care about the answers. I will let the conversation drift aimlessly because making a move would require admitting I’m only mildly interested at best. And then, right when expectations have quietly formed, I’ll embrace delusion. I’ll cite a sudden schedule conflict or a vague personal issue that means I don't have time to date, then disappear entirely.

Like on Pop the Balloon, I'm talking just to talk.

Lesson 3: Feign tradition

While Pop the Balloon or Find Love can be a fun watch in the same way Too Hot to Handle is, it’s important to remember that, weirdly enough, this is a deeply conservative dating show. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when contestants became laser-focused on performing rigid, heteronormative gender roles, but it’s been that way for a while now. Somewhere around episode seven is when the first rumblings of contestants insisting on dating someone "with faith" started to surface.

By episode 90, that expectation has hardened into an unspoken rule: everyone is a man or woman of faith, and not being religious is seemingly an automatic elimination.

To be clear, neither I nor this publication is saying there’s anything wrong with being religious. But on Pop the Balloon specifically, the show seems to attract, or perhaps encourage, a clientele that is either sincerely or performatively Christian. It’s the biggest said-unsaid of the entire format. If you apply to be on the show, which I have and have not heard back from, it straight-up asks whether you’re religious. You don’t need to love God to exist, but apparently, you do need to love God to get a match. While there are other spinoffs, you will not find episodes for same-sex daters looking for love.

Pop the Balloon has somehow distilled the essence of every cursed "50/50 dating discourse" tweet ever posted, then cast contestants who are more than willing to embrace that delusion on camera. Much like the popular online discourse surrounding "trad wives" and the manosphere, men insist they want women who aspire to be housewives. Women say they want men who can provide that lifestyle. The men then recoil at women who openly want provision because it feels "materialistic," while the women side-eye men who hesitate at being providers because that signals insecurity. And the loop continues endlessly until your eyes glaze over.

The conversations spiral into the same hollow abstractions every time: what defines a "high-value man," how strong your relationship with God is, and what kind of "value" you can bring to a man's life. None of it is grounded in reality, but it is all vague enough to sound important, creating maximum confusion with minimal substance. Somewhere out there, I imagine there's a CIA agent celebrating another successful diversion, watching Black people once again get pulled into debates about nonsense like whether your mother or your wife sits in the front seat.

So the lesson I’ve taken from all of this is simple: feign tradition. Not because I believe in it deeply, but because it plays well. I now understand that the quickest way to sound serious, mature, and dateable is to sprinkle in just enough talk about “values,” “structure,” and being “God-led,” even if none of that meaningfully shapes how I actually live my life. Tradition, as Pop the Balloon presents it, isn’t about conviction so much as performance. It’s a costume you put on long enough to get through the conversation, to seem aligned with the person you're trying to date. Then I'll quietly play that role until the mask slips.

After weeks of basically unpaid field research, I'm left at how thoroughly unserious dating has become. It's awkward, performative, and everyone involved is performing sincerity while actively dodging it. Nobody wants to be the villain, nobody wants to commit, and everyone wants credit for "trying." It’s not about love. It’s about optics. And yet, despite all of that, I’ll probably keep watching, and I'll keep on dating. I may even try the new dating app the Pop the Balloon creators have released. My match is out there somewhere — maybe on the new dating app that Amuli and her husband have created.