Korean Dating Show ‘Love Alarm Clap! Clap! Clap!’ Accused of Queerbaiting

Dating Show QUEER

2023-02-03
15:04

Alongside the current rise of BL in South Korea are the rise of dating shows. In the past few weeks, however, one dating show has trended both locally and internationally – ‘Love Alarm Clap! Clap! Clap! (좋아하면 울리는 짝!짝!짝!)’.

The premise of the dating show follows the original webtoon-turned-Kdrama, ‘Love Alarm’ wherein they have a dating app that notifies them if the person that has feelings for them is within ten meters.

There are eight contestants in this program, all using nicknames and not divulging their ages as well. Two of the contestants nicknamed Jasmine and Tinkerbell have both revealed that they ended up liking someone of the same sex within their group. In particular, Jasmine made headlines everywhere when she chose to have a date with another girl nicknamed White Rose.

Jasmine confesses her feelings to Baek Jangmi (White Rose) — © WAVVE

Jasmine ended up confessing her real feelings to White Rose during their date. Jasmine, feeling dejected that she felt like White Rose does not share the same feelings, received a surprise notification that someone who ‘liked’ her is within ten meters – and it turned out to be White Rose. She told Jasmine that she wanted to give her everything to her.

White Rose tells Jasmine she wishes she conveyed her feelings well — © WAVVE

However, the ending was not as flowery as that moment because, in the end, Jasmine chose a male contestant, Deer, with whom she also had feelings. White Rose chose Deer, too. With Jasmine and Deer gaining the most hearts, they ended up winning the cash prize.

With this ending, Koreans on Twitter and around the world were surprised that the two women did not choose each other, with ‘SminJangmi (스민장미)’ short for “JasminWhiteRose” trending first on South Korean Twitter trends and ‘queerbaiting (퀴어베이팅)’ trending second, just minutes after the show’s finale ended. Fans were enraged at WAVVE, the streaming site that produced the dating show because of how the editing was done.

One Twitter user said, “What’s wrong with queerbaiting is that queers enjoy the content and become engrossed in it but then it ends up the way it did and once again, they feel excluded. This sense of exclusion is what queers feel even in real life.” Some critics of the show were enraged, saying “They’ve hidden this scene so much and now they’re revealing it like this,” “Jasmin & White Rose, it’s been fun”, “Isn’t this a fraud?”, and more.