We need to talk about the most overused phrase on reality TV right now. 

This season of Bachelor in Paradise has been volatile, incestuous and just outright, downright unromantic.

So far it would appear that there are approximately – let’s see… carry one, take away two – zero viable couples who will prosper after the filming ceases for the second season of Bachelor in Paradise.

And after the last season of the Channel 10 reality series produced only one successful couple (hello, Keira and Jarrod and even that was… rocky), the odds of these people finding true love are, simply, dire.

So upon watching this season play out, it has dawned on me… why are literally any of you here?

 

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Guess who’s dancing into Paradise tonight ???? #BachelorInParadiseAU

A post shared by Bachelor In Paradise Australia (@bachelorinparadiseau) on Apr 15, 2019 at 3:49pm PDT

Well, in the over saturated market of reality TV dating shows, there is only one thing more trite than a good ol’ cheating scandal, and that’s the phrase, “They’re not here for the right reasons”.

If we believe the contestants, they’re here because they want to find true love. They’re hopeless romantics, they tell us, and they would like to enlist Osher Gunsberg’s help (whose track record with matching couples is perhaps higher than Married at First Sight relationship expert John Aiken’s but nevertheless questionable) to find “the one”.

Seriously, I only have to hear that phrase, “I am hoping to find the one,” and my left eyebrow rises up my forehead like a tired caterpillar. Haven’t we been through this like 300 times?

You see, there is a fundamental issue with this. Because, literally no reality contestant ever goes on a reality dating show with their goal being to find love.

And all I want to know is why are these people still trying to fool us? I would also like to decipher why all contestants have a mango daiquiri in their hands at all hours of the day but are never drunk, but that’s for another time, please.

Let’s look at the facts of those who go on the Bachelor franchise in Australia.

Ahem.

Five couples have remained together from the Australian series of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, and precisely 1437 former contestants have been left in the dumps but also been okay because #Instagram.

Sophie Tieman, Megan Marx, Apollo Jackson, Tara Pavlovic and Cass Wood – to name only a few – are all former Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants who failed to find long-lasting love on their respective seasons, but have since gained over 100K followers on Instagram and have made a name for themselves in the lucrative business of influencing.

Upon dissecting and examining such statistics…

I have concluded that you probably won’t find love on the Bachelor but you may well find an Instagram career.

And thus it is ironic that if you are on one of these shows for love, you are there for the wrong reason. Reality television is now a business opportunity, and anything romantic is simply a by-product.

Same goes for the other reality shows of similar formats like Love Island and, of course, Married at First Sight – albeit there is PERHAPS the exemption of Jules and Cam, who really were way too pure to be on the Channel 9 reality show. But I don’t know that the same can be said for Jessika Power or Martha Kalifatidis who indeed are now forging career paths on Instagram.

Maybe a more authentic format for a reality show would be to gather aspiring influencers to fight it out to see who can attract the most attention. Then they can use the phrase ‘here for the right reasons,’ and my caterpillar eyebrows can get some blessed rest.