Only the psychologists, social scientists, and behavioural researchers that toil away night and day in the Top Secret Bachelor laboratory located well below the surface of a remote salt lake in Nevada are privy to the selection process of contestants for the show and its spin-offs. We can only hazard guesses. It’s safe to assume that a large number of the considerations are practical ones: whether they already have a partner, whether they can take the time off work, whether they are in good enough health to do a date that for no good reason involves fencing or skydiving. The others are slightly more obscure.
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20% of the show’s success relies upon the careful goading of on-set producers trying to shape appealing emergent narratives. 30% of it is dependent on a very selective editing process, working towards the same end. But the lion’s share of what makes an episode or season good or bad is the sum of the various brain chemistries of the contestants — the drama that emerges from the combinations of their various hang-ups and tics.
We only have a ‘black box’ view into this process: we can only see what goes in (submissions from lonely people who want love or fame or both) and what comes out (people who are simultaneously the most boring and most cooked people alive).
This weekend, we were blessed with a tantalising look at the Bachelorette blokes who will be gunning for what we can only assume is a completely real, completely sincere, long-lasting relationship with Ali Oetjen. With a few exceptions (the most prominent one perhaps involving a suit of armour), these dudes all look like every man whose name I have forgotten immediately upon being introduced to them at a wedding.
Pictured: The diversity the MSM is jamming down our throats!!!
Sure, we could hold out for the brief one-sentence teasers about the individual Bachelorette contestants involved that will trickle out in the lead-up to the show or, instead, we could do the one thing we were all told not to do in primary school and make judgments about who they are based on their appearance. In case it is not clear: we are doing the latter.
From left to right:
Paddy, 27 | VIC
While he might give off the vibe of a relatively new and slightly too enthusiastic Just Jeans employee, Paddy is the closest thing that Australia has to a Jason Bourne–type figure, with over two dozen confirmed kills under his belt. Paddy is taking a brief break from assassinating foreign dignitaries and fleeing Interpol in the hopes of finding romance. Good luck, Paddy.
Turn-ons: Hotwiring cars, forging passports, the full range of Beretta firearms.
Turn-offs: Mossad counter-espionage agents, karaoke.
Taite, 28 | VIC
Given that he is a lovely, humble gentleman, Taite would never make a big deal out of this himself, but he is one of the foremost rat taxidermists in Australia — if not the world. He might be an anonymous face in the crowd by day, but his great taxidermic works Rat de Milo and Michelangelo’s David But It’s A Rat have been exhibited at galleries worldwide.
Turn-ons: Rats, rodents, taxidermy.
Turn-offs: Large birds of prey.
Robert, 29 | VIC
In a true indication of just how far Australia is coming in terms of social progress, Robert is the first contestant on a Bachelor-affiliated show anywhere in the world to be an openly practising chaos magician. Yes, behind that winning smile and those blank eyes is the mind of a powerful sorcerer – one who had to promise the producers that he would not use his arcane magicks to influence the outcome of the show.
Turn-ons: Rituals, symbols, full moons.
Turn-offs: Medieval witch hunts.
Wes, 31 | QLD
Forced to make his application for The Bachelorette by tapping it out in morse code, to then be transcribed by passersby, as far as we can tell, Wes is one of the only contestants ever to apply to be on the show while trapped in the sewers of Brisbane. Don’t let the photo of his face that they photoshopped into the group photo fool you: he is still in the sewers, and he is having a terrible time.
Turn-ons: Partially unconsumed bits of food, long periods without rain.
Turn-offs: Flash flooding, blind sewer crocodiles.
Daniel, 30 | VIC
Currently working part-time at a nude CrossFit gym, Daniel uses the rest of the week to work on his side hustle: removing side mirrors from parked cars and selling them on eBay for $10 a pop. Daniel is new to the dating game, having recently ended a long-term relationship with his ex after she was arrested and jailed for removing side mirrors from parked cars and selling them on eBay.
Turn-ons: CrossFit, nudity.
Turn-offs: Police.
Jules, 24 | NSW
Let me tell you all about Jules in just two words: Street. Magic. Is this your card? No? How about this one? Also no? Well, look in your purse, what do you see? Nothing? No card? Are you sure? How about this card I’m holding? Not this one either? Hey, fuck you pal, we all make mistakes sometimes, I don’t come down to your work and tell you how to jerk off horses. Don’t tell ME to calm down, YOU calm down!
Turn-ons: Fedoras, waistcoats, the rapt attention of tourists.
Turn-offs: The people from the council who decide if you can busk or not.
Cheyne, 28 | NSW
Founder and vocalist of Viking black metal band Gore: Ragnarok, Cheyne lives in the husk of a church that he burned down himself, subsisting on the bodies of whatever woodland animals he can catch with his hands — but don’t let his irreverent on-stage antics fool you, he’s also a youth minister.
Turn-ons: Children of Bodom, Amon Amarth, Behemoth.
Turn-offs: Blasphemy.
Danny, 39 | QLD
Refined. Knowledgeable. Respectful. Charming. Gracious. Not even once would anyone who knows Danny use any of these words to describe him. A renowned bare-knuckle boxer, Danny is only free to walk the streets thanks to having conducted his roughly 200 fights in the lawless limbo of international waters.
Turn-ons: Uppercuts, jabs, hooks, crosses.
Turn-offs: Territorial waters.
Todd, 26 | WA
I refuse to be drawn on the fact that this dude is wearing medieval armour. I simply will not discuss it.
Turn-ons: Nope.
Turn-offs: No thank you.
Dan, 32 | WA
You know how in romantic comedies the main character’s best friend is always kinda funny but has no success himself with women? You wouldn’t believe this, but Dan is actually the real-life person on which all those characters are based. When he’s not cracking wise about his best friend’s inability to get his life in order, you’ll find him unsuccessfully wooing bridesmaids at his best friend’s wedding.
Turn-ons: Humour, laughter, japes.
Turn-offs: Commitment.
Damien, 42 | QLD
Formerly a merchant sailor, Damien went missing at sea in October of 1997 and wasn’t seen again until this very photoshoot. While he won’t speak as to what he was doing in the intervening years, he has made several intimations that he spent time in ‘the other place’ and that things there are ‘very strange’.
Turn-ons: Boats, ropes, compasses.
Turn-offs: The Worm King of the Sea.
Brendan, 29 | VIC
A cynic would say that a lot of people go on these shows just to kickstart their careers, but that’s definitely not the case with Brendan, who became an overnight success five years ago when his app, Funglr, was sold to Microsoft for $500 million. Almost all of us already have Funglr on our phones but for those who have been living under a rock, Funglr is the world’s first social mushroom identification app. Funglr lets you ‘Fungle’ your mushroom pics and ‘Re-Fungle’ the mushroom pics of others. Pretty cool.
Turn-ons: App development, fungus, Myconids.
Turn-offs: Rival mushroom app MyceliumSpace.
Pete, 27 | QLD
Members of the secretive Brotherhood of Eternal Paradise rarely leave their commune in the Darling Downs but, for whatever reason, the sect has given permission for Pete, a priest of the 5th order in the faith, to go on reality TV, possibly to spread the word of the apocalyptic rapture they believe is coming in 2019.
Turn-ons: Robes, secrecy, Armageddon.
Turn-offs: People asking too many questions.
Ivan, 29 | VIC
Remember Shrek the Third, the third Shrek movie? Ivan sure does, because he’s seen it well over 120 times. As the world’s foremost Shrek the Third scholar, Ivan is ready to wow Ali with some pretty in-depth analysis of the film and to make her laugh by busting out some killer quotes from the movie.
Turn-ons: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy.
Turn-offs: Shrek, Shrek 2.
Ben, 27 | NT
Talk about the best of both worlds: Ben is both a competitive StarCraft player and a professional surfer. Currently ranked 257th in the world for StarCraft 2 and 409th in the World Surf League, Ben is as comfortable sitting at his gaming computer as he is ‘hanging ten’ on some ‘gnarly waveage’.
Turn-ons: Zerg, barrels.
Turn-offs: Protoss, lulls.
Charlie, 31 | NSW
Do the words ‘Dial 1-800-DIARRHEA / That’s 1-800-DIARRHEA’ ring a bell? That’s right, he may work in finance now, but at the tender age of 12, Charlie served as the voice of the diaper that sung the jingle in those classic Dr Poop-no-more’s Old-Timey Diarrhea Tonic commercials.
Turn-ons: Residuals.
Turn-offs: Getting asked about the diarrhea commercials.
Bill, 31 | VIC
While a lot of the Bachelorette contestants listed so far have some sort of flashy claim to fame, Bill is just regular good people. A friendly, honest, hard-working man whose family, now relocated to Victoria, are German immigrants from South America.
Turn-ons: Pretzels, lederhosen.
Turn-offs: Ancestry.com.
Nathan, 23 | NSW
Projecting the calm, confident air of someone who has never murdered anyone, it’d be hard not to get the impression that Nathan has never murdered anyone. Currently working in the banking sector, where he has never murdered anyone, it is our belief that Nathan has never murdered anyone.
Turn-ons: Not murdering anyone.
Turn-offs: Murdering people.
Wow, looks like we’re in for a wild season of the Bachelorette, based on these baseless assumptions!
