On January 7, Netflix released the first season of its brand new show, Hype House. The show was announced in April of 2021 and had been getting backlash since then. This eight-episode reality series tries to dive into the “exclusive” lives of nine specific Hype House members.

The Hype House is a TikTok content creator house.  It is a place for Tiktokers to live together and make videos as a group and individually. However, it falls short on achieving basically everything it had set out to do.  

The main storyline, introduced in the first episode, is the struggle that house co-founder, Thomas Petrou, faces to keep other members encouraged to film the brand deals that pay the rent on their house. 

Quickly afterwards, the show falls into a spiral of focusing on the monetary and numbers side of social media. At many times, the members are found complaining and stressing over their following and view numbers dipping or how many brand deals they are getting that month compared to the month before.

Of course, this is their main income stream and it is understandable for them to want to make money. However, the number-to-number analysis and attempts to figure out what the viewers want to see rather than making videos authentically seem forced. 

On top of this, some of the show’s lead draw-ins, like Chase Hudson and Vinnie Hacker, are extremely unenthusiastic and plain boring during their screen time and confessionals. In fact, most of the best characters on the show like Larray Merritt and Nikita Dragun do not even live in the house. The entire dynamic of the Hype House is disrupted by this less than ideal reality. 

This show, like many other shows about influencers, does touch upon the mental toll social media can have on these young adults. However, it does not try to find a different perspective on it. Essentially, the show demonstrates the same insight the audience can find in any other show made on mental illnesses of influencers and adds nothing new when it comes to the general mental health of celebrities. 

Trying to humanize the members of the house is certainly one of the main reasons the show focuses on mental health, but it fails to accomplish this because they filmed the show in a reality TV show format where the producers clearly picked a couple of characters to villainize while also trying to still make it an exposé into these TikTokers’ lives. 

The one fresh perspective the series does offer is the struggles influencer couples like Alex Warren and Kouvr Annon face when it comes to defining the boundaries of their relationship. In many incidents, the line is blurred as Warren tends to film basically everything in his and Kouvr’s relationship, leading to issues. 

On a completely different note, I found the editing of the show to be random and weird. Out of nowhere, the focus of the segment will abruptly change with captions like “Main Character Energy” displayed in block letters on the screen as a segue. The show can also be confusing to new viewers, as it doesn’t introduce any of its lesser-known members, leaving the viewer to piece together who is who. 

Ultimately, Hype House feels unnecessary for such a popular streaming service as Netflix to produce. It is a bland and boring show with little authenticity and is neither especially entertaining nor especially educational.