[[2026 Cafe Posts#^172725|2026 Cafe Posts]] Hello, another post based around thinking way too much about some shit that doesn’t matter — this time from watching my favorite reality television disaster, **Love is Blind**. A funny thing that always happens in this show, when the ~~clout chasers~~ love candidates start talking, we get looks into what they want out of a partnership. And for the past 20183 seasons that this show has had, it’s always the same thing: an extremely attractive white guy/girl saying “I’m looking for a best friend, someone who respects me, family is important to me” whilst the person on the receiving end *gasps* in disbelief and excitement. “This guy loves his family! I *gotta* marry him!!!” There’s a lot of reasons we keep seeing this: editing, the type of ~~clout chaser~~ person who’s interested in being on the show, etc. But! But. It reminded me of my time on dating apps, which was eerily similar. It created this perception in my brain that people just don’t have hobbies. Everyone’s always into restaurants and hanging out with their friends. Everyone’s looking for their partner in crime. Everyone likes “trying new things and traveling.” Or claim to “love kayaking” but did once a single summer three years ago. It’s weirdly exhausting. I remember I asked one girl I matched with what she likes to do when she’s not working, and her response was quite literally “I just scroll through TikTok while I watch Netflix.” Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I *don’t* do that — hell it’s how this blog post is even forming, lmfao — but it’s not a hobby. She, and many other people I matched with, didn’t read, or play videogames, or enjoy a sport, or have a thing they looked forward to when they were done being a slave to capitalism for the day or week. And I simply don’t get it. It feels like existing without any sort of intentionality, just sleepwalking through life without experiencing it. That sounds like a nightmare to me. And I think it really stands out on shows like **Love is Blind** because these people don’t even have being hot to cover for that lack of an interesting personality. Shouldn’t the fact that you’re talking to someone behind a wall mean that you have to try to be *more* interesting? I would love to understand the mental barrier that prevents what feels like a frightening large amount of adults from expressing themselves. Like, I got made fun of for my hobbies growing up, as I think most people like me did, but I loved them too much to let that stop me from enjoying them. In fact I’ve gotten even more obnoxious about them. I tell people exactly what I’m into in a social setting[^1], because I’d rather talk about that — or *anything else*, really — than about what a person does to make a living. I dunno, it’s strange. I only see this lack of interesting depth to people on dating apps and at work. I have to assume the former is just the sample size that comes with trying to be on a dating app, and the latter is people afraid to be ostracized in a work setting. Because the alternative is too depressing for me to cope with, lol. Anyways, just been on my mind. [^1]: except for anime, that one requires a higher social rank with me LMFAO