Origin
In December 2020, users of Facebook and the popular online forum Reddit reacted with a mixture of dismay and bemusement to descriptions of a purported reality television show in which “15 men will compete to impregnate a 41-year-old woman.”
On Dec. 11, a user on /TIHI “Thanks, I hate it,” a subreddit dedicated to content that readers perceive as disgusting or abhorrent posted a screenshot from an article on the website Shared.com, whose headline read “15 Men Will Compete To Impregnate A 41-Year-Old Woman In New Reality Show ‘Labor Of Love. ”
On Facebook, users shared the same screenshot widely:
The Shared.com article was real, and was originally published in May 2020. Its description of “Labor of Love,” which debuted on Fox on May 21, 2020, was fundamentally accurate. The premise and format of the show was strikingly similar to that of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette,” in which women and men compete to prove themselves worthy wives or hus