About

The Bachelorette is an American reality television dating game show that airs on ABC. The show is a spin-off of ABC's The Bachelor and follows the same format in which a single bachelorette chooses from a pool of over 20 romantic interests, each of which must proceed through a series of elimination rounds.

History

On January 8th, 2003, the first season of The Bachelorette aired featuring Trista Rehn, the runner-up date from the first season of The Bachelor. Ryan Sutter became the winner of the first season and went on to marry Rehn and start a family.

Reception

As of May, 2019 there have been 15 seasons of The Bachelorette despite a consistent drop in viewership. 17.4 million viewers^[5] tuned into the first season premiere while only 4.7 million viewers^[6] watched season 15's premiere.

Impact

On May 22nd, 2017, The Bachelorette introduced Rachel Lindsay as the first African American bachelorette. Lindsay herself called out ABC for their lack of diversity on the show after during her season's reunion.^[7] On May 11th, Saturday Night Live premiered a skit parodying season 13 of the show (shown below). The skit gained over 1.7 million views on YouTube in two years.

Fandom

Bachelor fans typically congregate on Twitter. Almost every night the show airs the hashtag #thebachelorette trends on Twitter.^[4] The subreddit r/thebachelor^[2] has over 63,400 member as of May 2019 and features spoilers, memes and discussion threads.

Whaboom

Whaboom is the catchphrase of Lucas Yancey, a contestant on the 13th season of The Bachelorette. The season premiere of the 13th season of The Bachelorette aired May 22nd, 2017. After several men had already arrived at the house and introduced themselves to the season's bachelorette, Rachel, Yancey, a real estate developer and aspiring comedian, pulled up to the house in a limo. After making some jokes with Rachel, he introduced her to his catchphrase, "Whaboom," which he shouts while violently shaking his head (shown below).

Two days before the episode aired, "Whaboom" was added to Urban Dictionary by "Mr. WhaBoom."^[1]

Angry Weatherman

On May 27th, 2019, after tornado warnings interrupted the season 15 episode three in the Dayton, Ohio area viewers took to social media to complain to the weatherman, Jamie Simpson, that he was interrupting their show. That night YouTuber patvell69 uploaded a recording of the weather broadcast in which the weatherman yells at viewers (shown below). The video has gained over 347,700 views in two days.

[This video has been removed]

That same day, season 15's bachelorette, Hannah Brown^[3] tweeted, "Lolz too funny, thanks Dayton, Ohio for the love, but be safe. naders are no joke" (shown below). The tweet accumulated over 6,900 likes and 1,100 retweets in two days.