u/Jiji0730

Like sure I think seeing this opinion once or twice would be fair, but the amount of times I see this opinion on this subreddit is honestly really surprising.

I’m not sure if the majority of these opinions are a nostalgia effect, but after re-watching the first season recently I genuinely thought it fell off very, very hard. MANY contestants on the show got completely sidelined like ofc sang ho after he gave up, seungchan and miji who did the complete opposite of changing the game, and yeomeong. That’s basically a third of the cast. The rest of the cast had to stay in certain storylines to get a few scenes. Like Jae Yun just being Jae Yun, the Ji su plotline with hyunkyu and seung li, or the jeongmok x yido x jiyeon plotline. There weren’t enough conversations that were initiated by the show. The editing, the pace, and the content, especially for the later episodes were just abysmal.

Also I get the criticism of the newer season that it doesn’t seem as natural or the contestants don’t seem as socially awkward (which is weird bc they also shame dudes in s2 for being socially awkward compared to the girls but that was a different post). But without prompting anything from the producers you get a series with barely any interesting content and a lot of the conversations that happened in s1 were either very boring or super hard to watch and uncomfortable. It was like seeing seo yeon and Jae seo times 10 where obviously one person wanted the other in the conversation but the other person didn’t want to be there at all, like all the Jae Yun and yeomeong or jiyeon and Jae Yun or sangho and anyone other than jisu conversations.

A lot of the social awkwardness vibes they bring up are with Jae Yun and half the time the people who watched the show last year complained about how he shouldn’t have been in the show and felt bad for him because many people would say he either had some form of Asperger’s or autism. I think it’s very fair to say that this season is MUCH better directed, produced, and more content oriented/show relevant contestants. You can also tell by the statistics such as viewer count that this season is leagues better than the first.

TLDR: confused by the number of posts praising the first season over the second season when the second season seems to not only be performing better but also has many factors to back up why it is doing so

This is not a post supporting or defending hyuk joon btw bc I don’t rlly like him either. But I feel like I keep stumbling across posts and comments that throw shade to the guys, calling them all socially inept and suck compared to the girls and the girls are all these perfect, beautiful, highly social beings who are way better than the male contestants.

Are we forgetting the main point of this show is for people who have never dated, and for a reason? Isn’t that the main reason why it feels like suji is an imposter on the show? The expectation is for them probably to be more socially inept than for them to be highly experienced, smooth, and effortlessly flirting. It feels hypocritical especially for all the people who praise season 1 over season 2 bc they prefer the social awkwardness vibe of the show, esp when most of the ppl bring up the scene with Jae Yun hiding the grass bc of his social skills.

I have a lot of appreciation for the female contestants, particularly my faves soo hyun and hyun seo, but we can’t pretend that the majority of the time the girls arent doing the same thing the guys are doing by deciding which singular person(s) they want, not being open in getting to know the other guys or in general not initiating interactions, and then getting hurt by the fact that no one likes them (outlier being soo hyun cuz she’s so awesome). The main culprits being Han joo, seo hyeon, and hyun seo. Yes it’s fair to say that all the guys shouldn’t be focusing their attention on suji, but at the same time we can also tell it’s mostly the guys that are expected to initiate interactions and lead the conversations when obviously they’re not used to doing so. The biggest examples of this were when both the girls and guys got to choose two people of their choice and the first impression/cultural food dates everyone had.

TLDR: confused by all the general hate/insults/preferential treatment the guys are getting, calling out their social ineptitude when the same ppl preferred having more social awkwardness in the season before and dont take into consideration the social dynamics and expectations between the contestants.