How did Wooking For Love manage to go viral before a single episode was filmed? LaRue Allegretto told EDMID the full story behind his idea.
LaRue Allegretto answered the door at the Denver area house where he’d been celebrating his 35th birthday for roughly 24 hours on a mid-December weekday. A dog lunged toward the entrance and barked with excitement until he and a topless woman in harem pants scolded it away.
“Sorry my tits are out,” she shrugged. “It’s a tits out party.”
This was far from the most exciting scene to play out in Allegretto’s world as of late. Over the past few months, he’s gotten to witness his Wooking For Love reality show concept evolve from a cheeky inside joke into a viral internet phenomenon garnering interest from major pillars of the entertainment industry.
Barely in its infancy, Wooking For Love has been covered by media outlets like FOX News, DJ Mag, and even Resident Advisor, with Rooster Magazine collaborating with Allegretto on a Valentine’s Day audition event at NOVA Studios. He’s in talks with the streaming service Peacock about broadcasting the series, and event promoter conglomerate AEG Presents has expressed enthusiasm about partnering with them in their recent meetings.
“To be completely honest, nobody’s really driving this thing as much as I am just sitting on Shai-Hulud and riding the sand worm,” said Allegretto in reference to the fictional creatures from Dune during his interview with EDM Identity. “I have not bought into the illusion that I have any control over this thing. I know that I am in a flow state with it, that I am a conduit for it, and that my best moves are in following its moves.”
Who is LaRue Allegretto?
LaRue Allegretto, who admitted that “wook adjacent” might better describe him, was wearing pentagram and vampire fang necklaces during his interview with EDM Identity. And of course, he was covered in about as much ink as you’d expect a tattoo artist to be.
“I definitely feel a bit more goth; I like prog metal and stuff,” he explained. “And while I also like everything from IDM to bass music, I’m definitely more alt. I’ve always said I’m the goth kid at the wook party.”
Allegretto was born and raised in Northwestern Florida, or what he calls “the Alabama part” of the state. He discovered artists like Shpongle and Juno Reactor via The Animatrix soundtrack at 15, planting the seeds of a lifelong passion for music styles that would evolve into the experimental bass music of today.
He graduated high school early and studied the physical sciences in Asheville, North Carolina, whose intimate music scene afforded him opportunities to meet touring musicians. Helping out with transportation for gatherings like Connection Campout and Solasta Festival, he got personally acquainted with the likes of Random Rab and Detox Unit.
After moving to Maui and then ending up back in Asheville, Allegretto relocated to his current hometown of Denver in 2018. He started pursuing tattoo artistry in 2021 and landed an apprenticeship in 2022 — but he’s never grown any less active in the music scene, especially since he now lives in what locals affectionately refer to as the Bass Capital.
The Origin of Wooking For Love
Two years ago, Allegretto and his roommate were “always trying to out-pun each other,” he recounted. Reality shows were popular in the household. While Allegretto had previously resisted their trashy allure, he conceded that “we’ve got monkey brains and like to get caught up in the drama,” noting that he had started to follow shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and Baddies.
“We were cutting it up one day and I just said, ‘Dude, we’ve gotta start a dating show for these wooks and call it Wooking For Love,’” he recalled. “It was literally just that.”
Fast forward to October 2025 and the ninth season of Love Is Blind premiered, featuring singles from Denver. Although virtually omnipresent in the Mile High City, wooks were notably absent.
“Then, City Cast Denver made a TikTok post saying, ‘Where’s the wook? Where’s the granola girl? Where’s the bike guy?’” said Allegretto. “I made a response video, very tongue in cheek, saying, ‘We should start this, we should do this.’ And before I knew it, it just started getting thousands and thousands of views, and people kept commenting.”
The TikTok post prompted all kinds of entertainment professionals to get in contact with Allegretto. One was his cousin, who runs a film production company. But complete strangers with experience working on shows like Love Is Blind, Love Island, and the Jersey Shore reboot also expressed interest in working on the project.
As of today, the Wooking For Love team includes a lawyer, casting director, social media manager, web developer, and EMT team (Allegretto opted not to give any of their names at this stage). Denver creative space NOVA Studios will serve as their headquarters, and its owners have also recently bought a villa where contestants will stay.
Reality Show Format
More than 1,000 people have applied to participate in Wooking For Love, but LaRue Allegretto said the team plans to narrow it down to 16 contestants. Most episodes will start with casual conversation at the villa before everyone loads up to participate in a challenge. Winners will get sponsored prizes like themed dates (for example, by a brand like Astral Hoops if it’s a flow arts challenge).
Allegretto wants to give viewers a glimpse of how the festival scene actually functions, and the challenges will reflect that. Contestants will need to work together to rig a stage or run a vendor booth at an event, among other hurdles faced by career creatives.
“I’ve seen couples break up because their workload is too much,” Allegretto explained. “I’ve seen people who can’t handle their partner getting too much attention as a performer. I’ve seen partners not have good luck vending at a festival, and that puts a strain on relationships. I want to show that, but also say, ‘Hey, this is how the magic works.’ People don’t just show up and fuck off. There are people putting their heart and soul into making this show happen.”
Then, every three episodes or so is a “vibe check.” During these, contestants can voice how they’re feeling about their relationships, with options to leave their partner or get involved with a new one. Allegretto explained, “The host will ask, ‘Do you want to give them backstage access [winks] or cut their wristband?’”
A contestant who gets their wristband cut will be known as a “groundscore.” As the name implies, they can get picked up by new partners — but if they’re still flying solo by the next vibe check, they get kicked off the show.
Allegretto, who professed to be in “a very healthy polyamorous relationship,” said the show will “lean a little bit” into non-monogamous configurations. “I did a little calculus, and the reason we have 16 contestants is that 16 allows a splay of monogamous, non-monogamous, bi, straight, and gay, and it has multiple options for everybody. So there’s no situation where there’s only two gay guys or two lesbians and they have to date each other because they’re the only ones.”
Of course, Allegretto is willing to keep an open mind about his vision for the show as more decision makers come into the fold. Where he draws the line is his personal values. “I can be nudged here and there, like ‘Hey, this is your vision, but television works like this,’” he said. “I can take criticism and adjust. But I would rather not put this show out than put it out in a way that’s detrimental to my community.”
That means that the Wooking For Love team will exercise caution in how it portrays drug use. Allegretto said, “We’re gonna make a lot of cheeky allusions to it. We’re gonna reference it. We’re gonna acknowledge it. But there’s no situation in which we’re gonna be giving participants anything. There’s no situation where we’re gonna be coercing them into partaking in anything that anyone else is providing, no challenges that predicate them taking something — none of that.”
He continued: “What we are gonna have is trained medical professionals on site, both EMT and mental health professionals who specialize in addiction. We’re doing a lot of pre-screening to make sure that the people we have on are fun, wacky, weird, and maybe a little loosey goosey, but not actively suffering from addiction. We’re not gonna take someone who’s been on one for, like, years and point a camera at him just because it would be funny.”
On that point, LaRue Allegretto is not willing to budge. “I’ll work within this vision, and I won’t move past that. I’ll go to YouTube if I need to. It’ll still do well, and I’m not afraid.”
What is a Wook, Anyways?
If Wooking For Love ends up on network television, wooks will suddenly occupy more of the mainstream spotlight. That gives Allegretto and company an opportunity — and, really, a responsibility — to help define the curious subculture.
“Everybody’s got a different definition of wook,” he said. “That’s really important. When everyone says wook, they’ve got a different thing in mind. I think the operational definition that we’re using for wook is someone who loves music, is in the scene, and considers going to these events an integral part of their life.
“The decisions they’re making on work, where they live — those things are all in order to align them with enjoying the beauty and connection that happens at festivals and the music scene, and they generally subscribe to some physical aesthetic of it,” Allegretto went on. “But we’re in a scene where that’s developed and not limited. I could look at people in two completely different sets of dress and know they’re both wooks.”
Allegretto posits that wook culture is rooted in the ‘60s hippie movement, which was carried into the 2000s by the Grateful Dead and jam bands. It intermingled with the rave scene, whose roots extend back to the late ‘80s, with styles like psytrance and breakbeat each leaving an imprint — not to mention the creative crucible that is the Burning Man community.
“I wanna be clear that this isn’t just electronic music,” he clarified. “This is for music lovers in the festival scene. But we’re probably not gonna have a lot of metalheads, or emo kids, or anything like that. I wanna stick with wook. That’s why ‘music festival’ has really been the anchor word. Like yes, there are metal festivals, but that’s not really the festival scene.”
Importantly, LaRue Allegretto seemed hesitant to boil wookdom down to a series of undesirable traits. He explained, “I also think that sometimes a wook behavior is, like, seeing that your homie doesn’t have what he needs, and saying, ‘Yo man, your feet look like they hurt. Throw on my dusty, old Osirises so you don’t get blisters.’ That’s wook behavior, too. Ultimately, I think what everybody in the wook or festival scene is seeking is community and connection, and that ultimately comes down to filling in the gaps for each other.”
When asked about the contestants themselves, Allegretto started grinning from ear to ear.
“Some are just like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna talk about myself a little bit.’ They’re pretty boring. Then, there’s the people who know that they’re stars. They’re my favorite,” Allegretto gushed. “They’ll just go, ‘I am the wook king of New Orleans, everybody knows when I show up that you better start spinning poi,’ and shit like that. It is so funny watching those. We’ve got everything from people flowing and showing off their wristbands to people absolutely talking themselves up in the craziest ways, coming on the mic having the most attitude. There’s even people dancing but falling over a little bit.”
Contestant hopefuls who didn’t apply on the Wooking For Love website are still welcome to try out at the audition event on Valentine’s Day at NOVA Studios, Allegretto said. He’s aiming to film in late winter or early spring 2026, with the first episode airing by fall. The general public is clearly ready for a reality show about wooks, and he doesn’t want to wait any longer than necessary to satisfy the demand.
