Love, Algorithms, and the Illusion of Choice: Deleuze, "The Swimmer," and the World of Love Is Blind

Reality dating shows have long promised an escape from the complexities of modern romance, offering an idealized version of love where connections are made under controlled conditions.

But what if these shows are less about genuine romance and more about subtle mechanisms of control, shaping participants' behaviors and emotions through invisible structures?

Take Love Is Blind, Netflix’s hit dating experiment, which claims to remove superficiality by having contestants date without seeing each other.

While it presents itself as a radical shift from traditional dating, a closer look through the lens of Gilles Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control” and John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” reveals a deeper commentary on how reality TV manufactures control, mirroring the digital age’s illusions of freedom and choice.

The Swimmer and Love Is Blind: The Journey Through an Illusion

In “The Swimmer", protagonist Neddy Merrill embarks on a seemingly whimsical journey through his suburban neighborhood, swimming from pool to pool, believing himself to be in control of his fate.

As his journey unfolds, however, time bends, relationships shift, and he gradually realizes that he has lost everything—his wealth, family, and home—without ever noticing the transition.

The pools, initially symbols of leisure and privilege, morph into cold, isolating spaces, revealing the unsettling reality beneath the illusion of affluence and stability. This mirrors Love Is Blind's central premise. Contestants enter "pods," believing they are making authentic emotional connections beyond physical attraction. Like Neddy, they feel empowered, convinced that they are in control of their choices.

However, once the couples leave the pods and re-enter reality, cracks begin to form. Financial disparities, family expectations, and social pressures—previously invisible—suddenly dictate relationships.

The illusion of choice unravels, exposing the contestants to a system that was always controlling them.

Algorithmic Control: Love Is Blind as a Digital Experiment

Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control” argues that modern power structures no longer operate through rigid discipline but through continuous, fluid control.

In the past, institutions like marriage and family dictated romantic relationships; today, that control is outsourced to dating apps and reality TV experiments that manipulate emotional responses through curated experiences.

Love Is Blind functions as a microcosm of online dating: contestants are encouraged to form emotional bonds based solely on conversation, much like texting and voice calls on apps like Hinge or Tinder. They believe they are choosing freely, but in reality, the show controls the environment, interactions, and even the pacing of relationships.

Much like how digital platforms use algorithms to shape behavior, Love Is Blindproducers edit storylines, heighten conflicts, and manufacture moments to maximize drama. The show is a controlled society, guiding contestants toward specific emotional arcs while giving them the illusion of agency.

This aligns with Jeffrey Nealon’s “Intensity",which examines how postmodern media thrives on emotional extremes. In reality TV, intensity is the currency: heartbreak, betrayal, and emotional breakdowns drive engagement. Just as Neddy's journey becomes more fragmented and unstable, contestants in Love Is Blind experience heightened emotional turbulence—relationships formed in a controlled environment struggle to withstand real-world pressures.

Romance as a Capitalist Construct: The Structuralist View

Structuralism, a theoretical framework outlined in the LTCG textbook, emphasizes that meaning is derived from underlying structures rather than individual actions. In this view, Love Is Blind does not expose a “real” version of love but instead reinforces pre-existing societal structures:

• Marriage as the End Goal: The show does not ask whether love should lead to marriage—it assumes it must. This reflects how traditional romantic structures are still embedded in our cultural consciousness.

• The Role of Editing: The show crafts narratives where some couples are destined for success while others are set up to fail, mirroring how society sorts people into categories of "desirable" and "undesirable."

• Social Class and Race: Although the show claims to be a pure experiment in love, disparities in wealth, race, and social background often lead to predictable outcomes. Just as Neddy discovers that his privileged world was never as stable as he thought, contestants find that love is not, in fact, blind—it is deeply structured by external forces.

The Workplace as Romance: “Orientation” and Reality TV Labor

Daniel Orozco’s “Orientation” presents the modern workplace as a rigid, rule-based system that dictates employees’ actions down to their thoughts and emotions.

Reality TV operates similarly, treating contestants as workers in a romantic economy. They must generate compelling storylines, perform heightened emotions, and conform to producers' expectations.

In this sense, Love Is Blindis not just about finding love—it is about performing it under surveillance, much like workers perform corporate loyalty in “Orientation". In the same way that Orozco’s office handbook strips employees of individuality, reality TV formats strip love of its organic nature, replacing it with a process: date, propose, marry, or be eliminated.

The contestants become both workers and products, much like influencers who monetize their personal lives for engagement.

Breaking the Cycle: Is Escape Possible?

At the end of “The Swimmer", Neddy reaches his home, only to find it abandoned. His journey was an illusion; he was never in control.

Similarly, contestants in Love Is Blind often realize—sometimes too late—that love shaped by an artificial environment cannot always withstand the real world.

Deleuze’s societies of control thrive on this cycle: individuals believe they are making free choices, unaware of the systems subtly shaping them. Whether through social media algorithms, reality TV structures, or online dating mechanics, the illusion of agency persists. However, awareness of these systems is the first step in resisting them. 

For contestants on Love Is Blind, true agency might mean recognizing that love cannot be dictated by a controlled process. For viewers, it means questioning how digital and media landscapes shape our desires, expectations, and emotions.

And for all of us, it means asking whether the choices we make—about love, identity, or even entertainment—are truly our own or merely another swim through a system designed to keep us floating in place.

Written by Amaris Prescott