a love island summer
Every day except Wednesdays.
For two months, that’s the schedule Love Island USA lovers were able to get their dose of reality TV serotonin.
For those who don’t know—where have you been all summer? Love Island is fairly simple; objectively hot singles, spending a dream summer in “name-of-beautiful-tropical-location,” vying to make romantic connections in hopes of finding love…or faking it good enough to win prize money. All the while, the viewers observe the contestants Truman Show-style and vote for their favorite couples each week, although the contestants never truly know how they’re being received by the public. Between the romantic connections they explore, to the friendships they form, down to the nasty break-ups and new islanders (accurately labeled “Bombshells”) whose sole purpose is to come in and break existing couples up, there’s always drama on Love Island.
Let’s call a spade a spade; before this year, Love Island USA had always been a flop. Compared to its predecessor across the pond, Love Island UK, the American iteration of the reality dating show seemed to never live up to the series’ reputation.
This season of Love Island USA was different for one main reason. There was an influx of new watchers coming straight from the American hub of trashy reality television: Bravo. If there’s one thing for sure and two things for certain, Bravo fans do not play. After it was announced that Ariana Maddix of Vanderpump Rules was coming to host this season, it seemed like everyone in America was watching. And they were.
All these fresh eyes meant a lot more commentary than usual. Of course, the public always played a large role in Love Island, primarily through voting for their favorite couples and following the contestants’ social medias. But this time it was different; there were thousands of Reddit threads sharing their opinions, good and bad. Deep-dives into the Islanders’ pasts, untelevised exes taking to social media in an attempt to expose contestants, toxic fan-edits pinning Islanders against each other, and self-proclaimed experts trying to “psychoanalyze” everyone.
People were taking to the internet to get into keyboard fights defending their favorites or completely slandering contestants they don’t like, essentially building armies of fan-bases for people that don’t even know how they’re being perceived by the public. Did I mention that the Islanders don’t have any access to the outside world during their time on Love Island?
For context, contestant Leah Kateb came out afterwards in a podcast, saying she was struggling with her mental health and almost left the show, which shocked fans as she was easily this season’s People’s Princess. Because her time on the show had such ups and downs, she was under the impression that the public hated her, but boy was she wrong.
Kateb had 12K followers when she joined Love Island USA and had come out with 2M by the time the finale aired. Now, she sits at 3.1M with over a million more followers than the season winners, Serena Page and Kordell Beckham (yes, as in OBJ) combined.
This is not to say that everyone who goes on Love Island blows up to be the trending topic of every group chat in America, but a lot do and not always for good reason. Like I said, we saw contestants get ripped apart for the past two months, as we watched their every aired (and heavily cut) moments on our screens.
Everyday except Wednesdays.
While I can’t imagine the connections you would make with people you’re stuck with for two whole months without distraction, I grew very familiar with the parasocial connections the viewers made while watching these people for two whole months. The millions of people watching this show were so ensnared with the heavily produced drama that they seemed to forget what Love Island is.
This is reality TV. And yes, we know reality TV isn’t real, but the people are. Whether or not the material we’re given is planned, chopped and skewed to be taken out of context and dramatized, or whatever else goes on in the production room of these shows, one truth always remains. These are real people with real feelings and real relationships.
Was this really “what they signed up for?”