Is quite possibly the lowest, scummiest, most exploitative reality television programme that Britain has ever seen. And mine is the nation that spawned The Jeremy Kyle Show, Naked Attraction, Open House, and The X Factor, so that's some pretty stiff competition.
The premise is this. Originating as Celebrity Love Island as a one off in the 2000s, in 2015 it was resurrected for normies and spewed onto ITV. Where it has been on to this day, clogging up every evening's schedule in the summer months with the cast's latest amorous adventures, and then clogging up the ears of its viewers' co-workers by proxy the next day. A bunch of young men and women are mewed up in a villa on a tropical island, usually the Canaries or somewhere in the Med, which is full of cameras, and are encouraged to couple up with each other and to play flirtatious games to encourage said coupling. We are given to believe that all this coupling and getting all loved up and suchlike is entirely organic, but in reality the producers off camera wind them up like clockwork mice by telling them all the drama between the objects of their affections and/or their rivals and generally fomenting discord and then let them loose to run run run into shot and cause drama and fling accusations and acrimony around. At the end of each week anyone not with someone has a risk of being voted off the island. If this happens, then thanks to manipulative editing, the public will hate their guts and the programme will make sure that said public are given avenues to voice their displeasure. Also voted off the island is the fans' least preferred couple. The winning couple gets an expensive sun, sea, sand, and sex holiday to somewhere exotic and a wodge of cash at the end of the series.
So basically, you have a perfect mélange for causing lasting psychological trauma to the programme's victims, don't you. You've got everyone's dirty washing and filthy little secrets being splayed across national television both at the time and forever after on catch up and YouTube. You've got the cringe of people failing to flirt with each other. The demonisation of people by manipulative editing. And the fact that none of the love in Love Island is real. Because everyone on it is basically doing it for fame and is dangled the prospect of a career in the media or as a celebrity afterwards (which rarely happens, incidentally), they all are encourage to basically be as awful as possible to each other in the hope of going viral. They've got their own argot as well. They refer to "grafting" to attract the attentions of someone, and accuse each other of being "salty" or "muggy". No, me neither. Or they might refer either dejectedly or gloatingly as to how one of them got "pied off" when rejected by someone they were trying to gain the attentions of. Basically, they're playing an endless game of Diplomacy only the producers are fiddling with their moves and in which the grand prize is to retain your dignity.
Let's digress here to ask ourselves what sort of person would volunteer to go on Love Island. Well, they are invariably attention whores who suffer from Dunning-Kruger. They are smart enough to realise that it's all a farce but not smart enough to not let themselves be chewed up and spat out afterwards. They're like that casino card player who thinks that because he understands probability, he can beat the house. Sorry, but no. ITV always wins. Physically, the men are all buffed up himbos with gigantic veneers and the eyes of an unsuccessful rapist, and the women tend to sport fishlips, bolt-on tits, cumbrellas, or all three. The programme got some criticism for promoting unrealistic beauty standards because everyone on it looks the same, to which the producers replied that they wanted their programme to be "aspirational." Lol. As if I've ever aspired to being a steroidal airhead or a RealDoll onto which someone has installed ChatGPT. In short, they are fame hungry, not too bright, and superficial types, for the most part. They did try once to break this mould by having an actual doctor appear on the programme, but because he had an original thought in his head he didn't couple up with anyone and got voted off fairly quickly.
A lucky escape, in all honesty. Because Love Island is a programme with a body count. Yes. It has been linked to no less than three (3) suicides during its tenure. One was a contestant named Mike Thalassitis, who was nicknamed "Muggy Mike" and then portrayed as the designated victim cum creephat of the series. Second was Sophie Gradon, another contestant. The third was its first host, Caroline Flack. She killed herself after being charged with domestic abuse because she smashed her sleeping boyfriend over the head with a table lamp, and attempted suicide (successfully) out of shame at being so exposed. In the aftermath of her death her family and the scum media attempted to blame online bullies for this with the hashtag #BeKind but we all saw through it, partly because I. she was facing domestic violence charges that had she been a man accused of clonking his girlfriend over the head with a table lamp would have been drummed out of the television presenting game immediately and irrevocably, and II. because she fronted a programme that had no examples of #BeingKind and was morally and ethically below even Bumfights. The new host is a lady called Laura Whitmore. It says here.
And that, my fellow noders, is Love Island. Don't watch it. It's a sad waste of brains at best and at worst an exploitative hellscape of vile things chewing on so many other vile things, the people on it are all steroidal airheads, and it has a higher body count than The Jeremy Kyle Show, which was at least honest in being human bear baiting. If I had to sum it up, it is like its male contestants' teeth. Looks all nice and shiny and pretty but then you realise it's all fake and underneath are lurking a row of crooked, hateful little pegs that a dodgy Turkish dentist has ground their real teeth down into.
(IN24/7)