Love doesn’t have to take a backseat during COVID-19.
In the style of Netflix’s breakout reality show Love Is Blind comes the Instagram version, @loveisquarantine — where Instagram users interested in friendship, or romance, are matched up via Google Docs and connected for their own “pandemic pod” date that very night. But here’s the catch: the “pods” aren’t pods, but just wherever participants are self-isolating from the coronavirus.
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Roommates Thi Lam and Rance Nix launched the @loveisquarantine account Tuesday night, and it works like this: Users access the Google Doc and enter their first name and what sex they are interested in meeting, along with their phone number. Later in the evening, if chosen, each participant will be paired with someone they don’t know and entered in a group chat with the match and Lam and Nix.
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Participants then call each other for 30 minutes to start the date, after receiving some basic guidelines from the creators. Before, during, and after the date, each participant makes a video talking about what the experience was like. Each video is then posted on the @loveisquarantine account in sequence, showcasing all the dates from that night. Tuesday night’s experiment consisted of 12 pod dates — 24 people — and some even found success. It seemed Tuesday night’s “it” couple was Brooke and Red, according to social media users sounding off in the comments.
Don’t want to participate yourself? You can watch the whole thing play out on the Love Is Quarantine account. Creators Lam and Nix live-stream from their personal accounts, as well as frequently post to the @loveisquarantine account throughout the selection process and dates.
As of Wednesday, less than 24 hours after the account was created, over 370 new people signed up for “Season 2” via the Google Doc link, and the Instagram account’s following reached over 4,000 followers, and grows by the minute. Shortly after Elite Daily published a story about the experiment, submissions for season 2 closed. Lam and Nix confirmed to the publication that the selection process is totally random, and that they plan to keep the project going “until we have jobs again.”
Wednesday night’s episode will air tonight at 7:30 EST.
