Fly me to the moon? Not tonight, thanks, I'm busy

Singer Olivia Rodrigo says men who want to go to space are weird’. It makes sense, writes Helen Coffey, who has her own list of signals that a first date is also likely to be the last

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It sounded like something from one of those parody showbiz news sites at first. “Olivia Rodrigo reveals that a guy wanting to go to space is a red flag for her.” But, on closer inspection, it turned out that the “Vampire” singer had actually named and shamed the desire to get extraterrestrial. “This is a very oddly specific question that I ask guys on first dates,” she said. “I always ask them if they think that they would want to go to space. And if they say yes, I don’t date them. I just think if you wanna go to space, you’re a little too full of yourself. I think it’s just weird.”

At first glance, this might seem like a ridiculous way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Yet, the more I reflected on it, the more I could see the genius in it. When you start thinking about the men in current culture who famously want to go to space – Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos being two of the genre’s most prominent poster boys – you start to notice the commonalities aren’t all that romantically appealing. Self-aggrandisement, narcissism, ego; little boys trapped in the bodies of billionaires who would rather expend their considerable resources on “winning” the commercial space race than on, you know, helping humanity in any meaningful way.

“This would have saved Grimes a lot of time,” one social media user joked, referencing the artist’s previous tempestuous relationship with Musk, with whom she has three children. Grimes herself then commented on the post – in a perceived “trolling” of her problematic ex – “It’s true. Only women should be going to space.” Sure, plenty of men who fancy a jaunt into the Earth’s atmosphere aren’t Maga-hat-wearing Reply Guys – but perhaps there’s enough crossover that Rodrigo has decided the blanket ban is worth the risk of a good one slipping through the net on occasion.