The Daily Mail Set Me Up

Proud to be one half of their "most jaw-dropping Blind Date EVER."

Hypothesis

Don’t put your love life in the hands of a British tabloid.

Photo by Ben Lister, The Daily Mail

I would like to go on the record and say that I was wrong. In December 2024, I published one of my Great Offline Dating Experiments and hypothesized that “there is no need to fear the set up.” Like all of the great scientists who came before me, I know that sometimes experiments don’t go as planned and a hypothesis you were completely confident in can be proven false. This is a story about one of those times.

You can – and should – fear being set up if the one arranging the match is The Daily Mail. For context, the Daily Mail runs a weekly column in their “Femail” section called Blind Date, where they set two people up and interview both parties to hear how it went. The other week, I was one of those people.

How did it go?

Well, The Daily Mail deemed it the “most jaw-dropping Blind Date EVER.” Do I feel elite because they have paywalled the article as a part of their Daily Mail+ subscription? I’m not afraid to admit that I do. (By the way, if you are a truly dedicated Seriasly reader or delight in schadenfreude, The Daily Mail offers a free trial to read this piece.)

I’m being gatekept by The Daily Mail

If you’re thinking, “Alison, stop being dramatic, this date cannot have been that bad!” I would like to call your attention to the URL link to the article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14638571/friends-parents-died-Twin-Towers-match-Blind-Date.html

Which means that if you Google “daily mail blind date 9/11” the first search result is an interview I gave about a particularly poorly spent Saturday afternoon. So, now all I’m wondering is: does Love Island call me or do I call them?

My own Substack, recounting the date from my perspective, is also paywalled because down just a bit further there are some very incriminating photos of me from the pre-date photoshoot which The Daily Mail did not publish after I called them and begged.

In the arena of “he said/she said,” here’s my side of the story: