Fucking Day: Love in the Jungle (Patreon)

I recently saw a reality TV show that made me wonder how hot people determine if they are really signing up for a reality TV show, or if they're being abducted and released in the jungle to suit the whims of a Batman villain. Are those two scenarios so different when you think about it? Recently Discovery Plus, the television channel voted Most Likely to be Run By Jigsaw, produced a show I believe was legitimately created to psychologically torture charismatic, hot people. It's called Love In the Jungle.

The contestants on Love In the Jungle are supposed to select a potential boyfriend or girlfriend using animal mating methods. It's a stupid and degrading premise right up front, but the contestants end up loving the humiliating animal mating rituals they're supposed to perform. By the third episode, they were practically begging to be allowed to slather themselves in mud, put on a dumb hat, and scream in each other's faces on national television (that's an example of a real game they were forced to play and enjoyed).

The secret to this show is that the contestants aren't allowed to talk to each other because animals can't talk, you see. This is, I guess, a major disadvantage in the animal dating world? Mr. Ed and Babe: Pig In The City got so much puss. Lancelot Link fucked.

So you've got a group of extremely outgoing people, so outgoing they signed up for a show where they mate like animals even though their parents and grandparents probably own televisions and will know what they did. The producers took away their ability to speak to each other, then gave them nothing to do but sit by a river and drink all day in silence. I've never seen so much alcohol on a reality show. They usually try to hide how much the contestants are drinking on classy shows like The Bachelor. On Love In The Jungle, it would be difficult to find a single scene where someone doesn't have a beer in their hand or three empty wine glasses piled up next to them on a rock.

Each contestant is assigned an animal at the beginning of the show that represents them, but there are only so many sexy animals, lion, wolf, tiger, which are all immediately snatched up, leaving contestants forced to choose from the noble but unsexy bee, the guppy, or the duck, nature's most famous corkscrew-penised rapist. The producers told them that while they couldn't talk, they were allowed to make their animals noises at each other. So now you've got a bunch of drunk hot people trapped in the jungle communicating only with lewd hand gestures and animal sounds.

And these people aren't geniuses; no one here is going to cure cancer. The girl in the middle in the above picture said she was afraid to go in the river because of "megalodons," and the man on the left in the picture has the word FOREVER tattooed on his chest in three inch tall letters. Forever what? Nothing in particular; he just likes the general concept of forever.

They're so hot and so dumb that you almost believe them when they are shocked that the show's premise is happening again every week. "But this just happened last week," they will say, bewildered into the camera. I worried for them.

The show's premise is that each week, the men or the women perform an animal-style mating ritual as a group. One week they tarred and feathered the women in pink feathers, and they did a flamingo dance for the men, which was just whatever they came up with at the moment. One girl did a backflip and got first place.

The winner of the mating ritual becomes the alpha and gets to pick two other contestants to go on a date with, and they can talk during the date, so everyone genuinely really wants to win the dates, not because they're fun but because it's the only thing there is to do. If your options are going slowly insane or going cliff diving, you pick cliff diving.

They don't ever go anywhere on the dates, so they end up zip lining or tubing down the river, sometimes in full view of everyone who didn't get chosen for a date, because that seems like the cruelest possible way to do it. Everyone who has to sit and stare at trees for three hours can alternatively watch all of the slightly hotter people have more fun than them a few feet away, while talking.

At the end of the episode, whichever group competed that day, the men or the women, gets to choose who they want to spend the night with. They can talk to each other when they are alone in their rooms at night. My God, this sounds more and more like the rules were written by a cult survivor. To keep everyone from just pairing off forever and making the show boring, they introduce a new man or woman at the end of every show, usually via a close-up of their crotch.

Four people chose to eliminate themselves from this show which is a lot for a cast of sixteen. Roughly 25% of the people who were carefully selected by producers to be insane enough to do this said, "this is not worth any fame I would gain from it," which is astounding. My theory is that the Wolf eliminated herself because she found out one of the male contestants was a country music rapper and determined she was in danger. Talking to people is how we decide whether or not they are psychopaths, and only being able to quack and body roll at potential partners is not enough information to figure that out. In fact, a psychopath would thrive in this environment.

The Otter left because he was the only dude without abs and couldn't take the constant romantic rejection. The Butterfly had a legitimate on-camera mental breakdown in the final episode. She was repeatedly referred to as the youngest member of the cast, and I dunno maybe sticking a twenty-year-old in the jungle and forcing them to sit in silence with nothing to do but drink alcohol and contemplate their lives isn't great for mental health?

Seriously, some of these cast members are only going to learn they were on a reality show after they wake up at a Super 8 in Tulsa in six months, see themselves on TV and realize they have a problem. The Butterfly was swaying at the token ceremony, and when the Duck chose her, she said, "Yeah, you know more, you know what's going on." Then later, she had a panic attack and was running around yelling, "they're here, they're here!" and generally acting so erratic the producers made sure to show they got her psychological help for her “dehydration and exhaustion."

This is when it hit me that there is no prize at all for this show. It's framed repeatedly by the contestants as taking part in a social experiment that just happens to make money for the cursed statue that runs Discovery Plus. Contestants who get too into someone are told by other contestants that they are "not embracing the experiment." It's like the Stanford Prison Experiment but with twice the abs.

In the end, there are no winners. Two couples decide to stay together at the final ceremony, and only one of them remains together after leaving the jungle for a few months. So it seems like the experiment failed? No need for a season two, I guess. Who could have ever known that dressing up as a spider and wrestling other women for a butt token (another real thing they did) was a lousy way to choose a life partner?

I'm not sure if Discovery Plus will try to do this again, but I predict if they do, there will be some changes to the rules to keep the contestant from leaving the show in an ambulance. If they decide to produce season two under the exact same circumstance and more hot people are willing to sign up for it without watching the first season, I'm going to say that's proof that some sort of ritual sacrifice is happening here.

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