How "The Bachelor" Became A Launchpad For Influencers

They're not here to make friends.
They’re here to make lots of money.

That's the headline and sub-heading from a report written by Arielle Duhaime-Ross and Byrd Pinkerton that appeared on https://www.vox.com today.

"If you’re one of the millions of Americans who watch ABC’s The Bachelor, then you know the peculiar obsession that the show has with “being there for the right reasons.”

It’s been a clear mandate for the 18 years of the show’s existence:
> Contestants must be willing to enter into a polygamous relationship where they share one man (or woman) with 20-30 other women (or men).
> They must be willing to wrestle in mud, bungee jump naked, and reveal their tragic pasts.
> And as they do these things, they must be clear that they are doing them purely for the love of a person they have just met (who, in all likelihood, will dump them on national television).

For almost two decades, contestants have been accusing each other of having ulterior motives for appearing on the show.
In the past, the accusation was usually something like, “(S)he just wants to be on TV.”

But now, there’s a new “wrong reason” for appearing on the show: becoming an online influencer . .

In recent seasons of The Bachelor, however, the show has started to let contestants discuss that reality on screen. Which got the team of Reset, Vox’s tech podcast, thinking: How has the online Bachelor ecosystem reshaped the show itself?

Host Arielle Duhaime-Ross brought on Emma Gray, the host of the popular Here to Make Friends Bachelor analysis podcast, to break down the history of The Bachelor’s relationship with social media, and all the ways that the show has been changed by technology.

Below, we’ve shared a lightly edited transcript of Gray’s conversation with Duhaime-Ross.

Listen and subscribe to Reset on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

I’ve been interested in the crossover between what happens on social media and what happens on the show.