The Popularity Contests of “Love Island”

It’s a delicate, near-impossible task that the islanders have been given: to create a social world in which they can plausibly like and trust one another, even as they’re constantly surveilled and in competition. And in these demanding and deranged conditions—they eat, sleep, and crawl through inflatable pools of slime together—the cast invariably forms a rigid and particular set of rules. The girls of “Love Island” agree to never “put all your eggs in one basket,” yet to be sure to choose a man who is “all for you,” to be an unfailing “girls’ girl,” and to “give everyone a chance.” Good behavior hinges on “respect,” which involves a delicate balance of honesty and kindness, and hurt is quickly transmuted into anger at being “disrespected,” since disrespect is the only recognized transgression in the reluctant polycule of the villa. When you kiss a boy that your friend is coupled up with, the protocol is to tell your friend right away, while reassuring her that she has nothing to worry about, since he obviously prefers her. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” you repeat to each other fervently, warding off backlash. Let’s not forget that the show is, in the end, a popularity contest: one in which each person tries to summon the farrago of confidence, vulnerability, scheming, and resignation that falling in love demands, while the twin audiences of their fellow-islanders and the public assess their success.

The previous season of “Love Island” (U.K.), Season 12, was exceptional because the cast’s social values were divided, and the girls formed two enemy groups that actively rooted against each other. The majority side was anchored by two “nice” girls, Helena and Meg, who insisted that they were friends with everyone, seldom risked romantic failure, and generally avoided stirring the pot. Their rivals were a candid, impudent pair, the schoolgirlish Shakira and a throaty American bottle-service girl named Toni, both incapable of conniving their way into romance, prone to heartbreak, and swiftly ostracized for their overt judgment of other islanders. The foundational divide—whether to conceal one’s resentments for the good of the group, or to be “genuine” at the expense of kindness—played out among the girls, of course. “Love Island” is for, about, and judged by its girls. The boys are basically there to have a good time, and tend to feel undermined when they find themselves smitten.

Toni and Shakira appeared to be in trouble after one of the show’s most meta humiliation rituals, in which the group is treated to a showing of clips of themselves having private conversations about their castmates and lovers. (Few of us, watching this unfold, can imagine that we would fare tolerably in such circumstances.) The screening usually focusses on clandestine hanky-panky, but this season the girls’ irreverence was so abundant that the producers treated them to an unprecedented second viewing night. Here was Toni calling the other girls frauds, and Shakira designating the star boys “the most crazy, manipulative men” she’d ever met in her life. “I don’t want to have a conversation with any of these people,” Toni said. To resent a rival is par for the course in the villa, but Toni and Shakira’s condemnations registered as truly antisocial. The guys who were interested in them were forced to toe a fine and awkward line with the rest of the group. The nice-girls clique was not merely horrified; they were certain that they’d be avenged and win the season.

Bratty, guileless Toni and Shakira emerged victorious, of course. It was Toni, the shit-talking misfit from Las Vegas, who won the big prize with her innocuous boyfriend, Cach. The winners of last year’s season of “Love Island USA,” too, were a late-stage pairing of an outspoken favorite, Amaya Espinal, and the boy who chose her; both Amaya and Toni were so prone to annoying their fellow-islanders that discovering they were popular with the public came as a shock. But it shouldn’t have: the dutiful couples of “Love Island” are perennially disbelieving that the most frustrating, unguarded girls, rather than the longest-standing pairings, should be rewarded. The deliciously frank Amber Gill, whose impertinence and blind loyalty won over her audience, created that mold when she became the winner of perhaps the most beloved season of “Love Island” (U.K.), Season 5. The islanders reward one another for making their tiny, punishing world livable and fun; the public rewards them for making good TV.