What ‘Love Island USA' Revealed About Culture and Dating Is Straight-Up Sinister
Let's state the obvious: the seventh season of the show was an absolute mess. The four remaining couples who competed in the finale perfectly exemplify how incredibly stupid this season was: not a single couple had been exploring their connection before Casa Amor, and two of the pairs had only coupled up in the final week. One of the couples even broke up on their final date, a first in Love Island history.
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But the mess went beyond the kind of lackluster romance: fans scoured each of the contestants' digital footprints better than the producers had. Two contestants were removed from the show for using racist slurs. Stan wars for other contestants led to the 'exposure' of even more allegedly problematic behavior online, though the flood of screenshots and allegations started to blur between the real and the photoshopped.
Love Island has always been a source of extremely parasocial viewer behavior. The show invites it: there are new episodes six days a week in the UK and five days a week for the USA format for nearly two months straight. While the islanders are cut off from the world outside the villa, their family or friends usually take over their social media pages to support and, increasingly, defend them. And while the fate of the islanders is mostly in the hands of their fellow contestants — you must remain in a couple to stay in the villa — there are viewer votes in the app where their popularity matters, especially when it comes to determining a winner.
Love Island UK, the first version of this global franchise, has been a case study in the pros and cons of the show's all-consuming success. The contestants, typically ordinary people with normal jobs in the earlier seasons, would leave the villa with massive followings and brand deals, drastically changing their lives. But the reality of the public watching at least six hours of footage of romantic trial and error left many islanders scrambling to re-piece their lives together in the aftermath; two islanders from the UK series committed suicide in 2018 and 2019 following cyberbullying from fans who disagreed with their romantic choices and behavior on the show.
But at the bare minimum of each season, there was some real romance, and the most authentic couples who had great stories tended to rightfully take the top prize. Last season of USA saw the American version finally catch on for this very reason. Originally airing on CBS for three seasons before moving to Peacock, the show was always in the shadow of its UK counterpart, which releases episodes on Hulu stateside. After hiring Vanderpump Rules breakout star Ariana Madix to host, the show finally started to gain some traction and tally up the views in the process. Last summer's sixth season was dramatic and beloved: the girls on the show created a powerful sisterhood in the face of the men's rampant and mischievous exploration with new bombshells. But true love stories emerged, with three of the final four couples sticking together to this day.
From the beginning of Love Island USA's seventh season, it was clear that the majority of the show's contestants were more hellbent on winning than fostering the types of connections that typically help a couple take the top prize in the end. It seemed like the islanders, most of whom were working influencers and models prior to the series, had never seen an episode of the show in their lives: they would punish each other for leaning into strong connections, eliminating individuals they felt weren't 'exploring' enough and used the ever-trending phrase 'lovebombing' to insult each other, in spite of the show's very real necessity that they work to build intense romantic connections quicker than usual.
There were stark divisions and cliques in the villa, but they were nothing in comparison to the type of pop stan-like followings the islanders were gaining outside. Fans of individuals on the show were fighting more ruthlessly than the actual contestants. Any perceived slight would lead to a flood of hateful comments and messages on the contestants' Instagram and TikTok pages, or even mass unfollowings in the wake of feuds or recouplings. Individual popularity has never meant more than on this season of Love Island: even though couple Ace Greene and Chelley Bissainthe had been exploring their connection longer than any couple on the show, they were eliminated via public vote just before the finale. From early on in the season, the pair were plagued with accusations of being in a relationship prior to filming, and Ace's public image barely recovered from the perception of him playing the game too competitively after pushing for the elimination of Jeremiah Brown as Jeremiah was building a new and potentially strong connection with bombshell Andreina Santos-Marte. Even Chelley, one of the girls to quickly rack up followers while on the show, couldn't quite overcome the even more passionate following for her villa frenemy Huda Mustafa, especially after Huda coupled up with Chelley's Casa Amor connection Chris Seeley.
Not making matters any better was production itself. This season was full of twists that made the show nearly unwatchable. Many of the eliminations were vote-based instead of through internal re-couplings that leave islanders single and therefore eliminated. The choice to do viewer and islander votes made the show feel too produced, keeping people on for longer than they probably needed to actually be there. Even the choice to make islanders couple up with bombshells in Casa Amor felt demented. When fan favorites Olandria Carthen and Nic Vansteenberghe were left 'single' in Casa, they were paired up and briefly explored a connection that viewers had been hoping they would since the first day. But the whole schtick felt more like fan service than an authentic realization; they were placed back in the villa, then immediately friend-zoned each other in order to fight for their original partners. They would only pair up again in the final week after Nic's partner, Cierra Ortega, was removed on Day 26 for using anti-Asian slurs in past Instagram posts.
What Love Island revealed this summer about culture at this moment feels sinister. The outcome of the discourses and behavior both in the villa and online reveals how nasty and toxic fan culture has become. Increasingly so, production for reality series that are this popular will have to navigate casting a generation of people whose whole lives are one big digital footprint, one that will have captured the whole gamut of their growth as an individual. And as viewers lean into the popularity contest of it all, they will take advantage of that access, for better or worse. While holding Cierra accountable for her using derogatory language is important, there should be no room for death threats towards her or calling ICE on her family, who are of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent.
The most telling reflection of all is how modern dating has evolved. The dynamics in the villa were gross and cruel from the jump, with the men seeming to often punish the women who would begin to show affection towards them, while the women grew territorial over their connections, even before knowing if they wanted to commit to them. Early in the season, Ace chastised eventual winner Amaya Espinal for calling him 'babe' while Taylor Williams was incapable of telling Olandria that he was just not that into her, even though she was clearly very into him.
Third place couple Huda and Chris' final few days in the villa were hard to watch; in moments of conflict, both would talk over each other until Chris would shut down and Huda would walk away. In the final episode, she threatened a fight after he chose to sleep over cuddling with her in bed. When they spoke about it during their final date, Chris egged her on to end their romantic connection instead of being upfront and doing it himself. They left angry and even crying in Huda's case, just 24 hours before the winner of the entire show was revealed.
This was Love Island USA flying directly into the sun. There's a real reckoning to be made about the casting process and how to move forward, especially given the type of influence and clout the show can create for its contestants. The show also needs to reexamine how it can even be structured when the fans are this emotionally involved. There's a reason that over the years, the show has started to prioritize casting people who have online followings to begin with. They already have a taste for the type of scrutiny and influence that comes with starring on the show, albeit on a much smaller scale. But given just how toxic the online scrutiny became this summer, it feels reasonable that less and less prospective contestants will want their lives viewed under that type of microscope. Only time will tell how this season's contestants fare in the real world once the dust settles. Most of Season Six has been able to largely move on and profit from the experience and their followings, starring in the Peacock spin-off Beyond the Villa. They left most of their feuds back on the island and focused on their real connections and very real emerging careers. Let's hope the season seven cast will be able to do the same.
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