Like a Firing Squad, but for Romantic Rejection

The rubber balloon has worn many hats since it was invented 200 years ago. It has been used to spruce up birthday parties and political rallies, operate flying machines and open arteries. The fictional killer clown Pennywise used one to lure in his child victims; some expectant parents deploy them to reveal their unborn child’s sex.

Now it’s being pressed into service in the hunt for love.

In a popular new dating-show format, a contestant is brought out to face a line of singles, each one holding a red balloon. If the singles like what they see, they hold on to their balloons. If not, they are free to pop one at any time, sometimes — often, in fact — before the person even has a chance to speak.

It is unclear who created the concept or when it first hit the web, but content creators have begun to spin up one iteration after another. There are gay versions of the show; versions in which contestants are rated based on their body types; and even versions that dispense with balloons entirely, using printed-out bank statements to inform selections instead.

In the YouTube series “Pop the Balloon or Find Love,” one of the more popular takes on the concept, one man was rejected after revealing that he worked in law enforcement and another for liking anime. In another round, a woman was rejected for appearing, in one man’s estimation, to “need therapy.”

According to the series’s creators, the producer Bolia Matundu, 31, and the host Arlette Amuli, 28, a married couple who live in Phoenix, they wanted their blind-dating show to be a more mature take on the concept, from the studio setup to the seriousness of the contestants.