Even before Love Is Blind Season 8 began airing, it was causing drama online. As filming was underway in March 2024, a TikTok went viral accusing the series of casting bad guys for its Minneapolis season. As time went on, it appeared the woman who posted the video was talking about Ben Mezzenga, and it became a major storyline in his engagement to Sara Carton once the couple got their phones back from producers. Although Sara took the TikToker’s warnings seriously, the 29-year-old oncology nurse tells Elite Daily she decided against directly speaking to her.
“There was no interest for me to reach out,” Sara says.
The video was brought up in Episode 9, as Sara confronted her fiancé over the allegations. Though it never appeared onscreen, the clip in question was likely this viral post from a user named Andra, who called out the season for being full of “sh*tty men who treat women terribly and manipulate and lie all the time.” Andra claimed one of these men has “harmed people in the past” and is “willing to lie to people about wanting to get married just to be on television.”
While it wasn’t immediately clear whom Andra was talking about, she followed up with another video that included defining characteristics matching Ben, mentioning he was a star baseball player at the University of Minnesota who now works in real estate. People in the comments (which are now turned off) mentioned Ben repeatedly, some saying they had heard similar stories about him.
Love Is Blind showed Sara confronting Ben about the TikTok, only to be a bit let down by his response. He said his relationship with the women was long ago and not serious, and that he didn’t know why she was crying in her video, claiming the worst thing he did to her was ghost her after a date.
However, Sara couldn’t write off the emotional clip that easily. “I was very conflicted, because the TikTok blew up really quickly, and there were hundreds of comments within the first couple hours. I was just confused. Like, how do so many people know who Ben is?” Sara says. “I knew I obviously had to take it seriously, but I trusted Ben. I told him, ‘If there’s anything more, then I won’t be able to trust you.’”
