'Pop the Balloon' Was a Viral Hit for Black Daters. Then Netflix Gentrified It

One of the more heated exchanges from the original Pop the Balloon or Find Love—a wildly popular YouTube show through which eligible Black singles ruthlessly assess each other’s attractiveness face-to-face—should have culminated with a lesson in humility.

Aaron, a 29-year-old plumber whose deal breakers included “being promiscuous” and “non-cleanly” had just finished insulting a woman for having too much hair on her arms when fellow contestant Kailah cut him down to size.

“You kinda look like a Ninja Turtle, you’re not that cute, you need to relax, and you're stocky as hell,” Kailah said as the other women erupted in applause and cheers. Rather than backing down, though, Aaron shot back, “you’re not even qualified to be dealing with me,” before bragging that he had more money than her.

The moment, like many of the exchanges on the show, brings its appeal into sharp focus: Pop the Balloon doesn’t hold back. Set in a no-frills, stark white studio, with many slow-motion fit checks, the show is candid and vulnerable, often ridiculous, and sometimes problematic. It is the anti-thesis of a highly produced dating franchise like The Bachelor—but people have come to love that lack of polish; the show averages around 2 million viewers per episode and was recently parodied on Saturday Night Live.

But much of the authenticity that fans loved was absent from Netflix's reboot, a live version called Pop the Balloon Live, which debuted last week hosted by comedian Yvonne Orji of Insecure, and featuring reality stars and contestants of all races. That episode is already dealing with accusations that it’s “watered down” and amounts to “a paper bag test.” Which begs the question, what does a show lose, especially one that is anchored in Black culture, when it widens its scope to include everyone?

“Of course Netflix added DEIs,” @camsimply joked on Bluesky, upon hearing about the new version.

“We can’t have NOTHING!” @princey5ive responded.

“They gentrified Pop the Balloon … UGH,” @richgirlenergy_ posted on X.

It’s “a tragedy,” one Netflix executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, tells WIRED of the premiere, saying it wouldn’t be surprising if the team that works on the show makes several adjustments given the overwhelming negative response.

Netflix did not respond to requests for comment.

Launched in December 2023 by Bolia Matundu and Arlette Amuli, who also acts as host, Pop the Balloon has followed the same bare bones approach to finding love across its 51 episodes. A group of single women or men stand shoulder to shoulder in a line, each holding a red balloon and toothpick. They are introduced to a prospective suitor who must ask and answer questions (“What’s your love language?”; “Do you have kids?”). Although the show features people of all backgrounds—entrepreneurs, doctors, educators, engineers, even alleged scammers—the contestants are predominantly Black, straight, and Christian.

If at any time the contestants don’t like what they hear or see, they can self-elminate by popping their balloon, but must explain why they did. Maybe contestants felt he was too short or they didn’t like the sound of her voice; explanations run the gamut but lack of physical attraction is the most common deal breaker. Episodes have a tendency to veer into slapstick when a suitor has just walked on stage, hasn’t spoken a word, and sets off a chain-reaction of popped balloons. Depending on the emotional temperature of contestants, interviews can erupt into arguments over shallow beauty standards, like a large forehead, “crusty” lips, or a “Willy Wonka”-style hat.

While the original has been called out for portraying a surface-level representation of Black dating culture, those unique elements are also what many fans have come to appreciate about it.

Netflix announced that it was taking the series “to the next level” in a new live format, and likely has a much bigger budget than the original, but so far it hasn’t gone over well.

The series premiere kicked off with a young white woman unironically rapping about being an honors student within the first 10 minutes. Veteran reality TV star Johnny Bananas, 42, from MTV’s The Challenge, was the first lucky suitor but soured on the women right away. In one exchange, which initially seemed to be directed at a Black contestant, he said that her feet looked like she “sleeps from a tree upside down.” The next day he attempted to clear up his statement on X, writing: “Hey morons, I was actually talking about the WHITE girl whose toes were hanging over her shoes who is literally dressed like a fucking tree!”

The live version is being produced by Sharp Entertainment, the company behind 90 Day Fiancé and Love After Lockup. “This new iteration builds on the original’s core concept while pushing the boundaries of connection, chemistry and unpredictability,” executive producer Matt Sharp said in a statement.

Exactly what Sharp means by “pushing boundaries” isn’t entirely clear given the heft of Netflix’s influence, and the impact the company has had in remaking the future of Hollywood. A more pallatable version of Pop the Balloon isn’t necessarily a better one. In fact, Netflix is one of the few streamers, maybe the only streamer, that can take a genuine shot on culturally niche projects because of how much reach and brand awareness the company has.

“I don’t understand why they adapted it and I don’t really get why it would be a smart play for them. What audience is it going to serve?” a former development lead at Paramount, who also wanted to remain unnamed, tells WIRED. “It really feels like less of a creative evolution and more of a reactionary attempt to fill the gap in live content. I wouldn’t be surprised if a white senior executive at Netflix saw this and assumed Black audiences would rally around it or that they could get white audiences and other audiences to care about it.”

Everyone’s chasing the next breakout format, and the instinct to capitalize on a viral hit is not a wrong one—that’s just smart business—but maybe what gets lost in that pursuit, as a product moves from a user-generated platform to one without full creative control, is the secret sauce that originally made the show a success.

Sharp Entertainment did not respond to a request for comment.

Even with Netflix’s most recent push into live-programming—which is very much a work in progress; critic Phillip Maciak called Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney an “ambitious mess”—you can’t help but wonder if what real boundary pushing looks like is a Pop the Balloon not all that different from the original.

Ultimately the failure of the show is a problem of translation, says Stephane Dunn, chair of the Cinema, Television, and Emerging Media Studies Department at Morehouse College. “The original mission of the creator is not always the concern of the streaming platform,” she says. Dunn worries that as streaming platforms have become more “content hungry,” they have discarded cultural specificity, the magic that made a show like Pop the Balloon a hit in the first place, for hollow metrics. (For now, new episodes of Amuli’s original Pop the Balloon are still being posted to YouTube every Wednesday.)

“A lot of these streamers just see numbers. They go, ‘We need to confiscate that. We get that on our platform.’ But they’re not paying attention to what makes the show unique,” Dunn says. “Netflix believed they could duplicate that authenticity, but without certain makers—tone, aesthetics, a relationship to the audience—they have really just purchased a cultural skeleton of the thing.”