#sex, hot, fun, love, true love, oi oi, god, heteronormativity, crack on, british, rednecks, trash, blonde, muscles, tan, bikinis, the pope, chaste, social experiments, science, humanity, primal, gen Z, john, jawn, toxicity, spectacle, aesthetic, spinach, personality, culture, beauty, appeal, fetishizing gaze, TV, society, desire, body, plastic, reality, money, enjoy
Millions of viewers are flocking to Hulu and Youtube to watch [hot], [tan], and sexy men and women find [love] in 30 days in an enclosed luxurious villa in the middle of the Spanish countryside. Fitted in tiny neon swimsuits, these [hot] singles are the objects of a new wave of viewers who crave drama, detail, and heat and truly know no boundaries.
[Gen Z ](1995-present) and younger Millennials have grown up in an age where privacy does not exist -- especially in the celebrity world. The explosion of paparazzi and gossip television programs like Access [Hollywood] and Extra in the 1990s was arguably the first major monetization of the juicy celebrity gossip and first significant catalyzation of an insatiable cultural hunger to learn more about spotlighted individuals. Reality television came into intense [popularity] in the early 2000s, with shows like Big Brother and Survivor. This genre quickly earned impressive viewership numbers; for example, Keeping Up with the Kardashians generated over 1.3 million [viewer]s in its first month of airing alone. The fruition of interest in attractive elites’ lives and wild utopias symbolized the breaking down of the barrier between famous stars and average [American]s and allowed for viewers to critique, scrutinize, and replicate celebrities’ life choices, personalities, trends, and preferences. But why do we find so much [enjoy]ment in this invasion of privacy?
[Love Island] has been reproduced in many countries, though most [fan]s will argue the UK version trumps them all. In Season 1 of [Love Island] UK, Jon and Hannah fall immediately in [love] while young cutie Josh struggles to find his “one” (first breaking slutty Jess’s heart only to have his own broken by Naomi, the backyard bitch). We also watch not-so-well-behaved Zoe become deeply enamored with Jordan, who during his public-eye only interviews in the pod room (the other contestants cannot see these interviews) cannot decide between Zoe or the new girl. Over the course of the season, the show seems to become more and more like a peculiar social experiment -- as personalities clash, gossip and rumors arise out of boredom but generate real [emotional] fights, and [individual]s become more and more weary of trust and loyalty in order to stay in the game and win the final award of 50,000 pounds. It’s these social dynamics that become more and more addicting as the [viewer] watches longer and becomes more invested in the characters. Furthermore, the young contestants have no privacy to the eyes of the viewers -- all conversations and sassy comments are captured, every gossip-filled smoke break on tape and even the couples’ sexual adventures are all recorded and aired for the public to watch. The viewer becomes “[God]” -- watching over the daily lives of British [rednecks], knowing everything about everyone in the villa while the players themselves are in the dark. Furthermore, the [viewer]s are in control of who stays on the island, as there are weekly public votes which determine who gets eliminated throughout the competition.
[Love Island], like many other reality [TV] shows and versions of the genre in other mediums, reveal man’s innate [desire] for omniscience and [power] over the other [emotional] beings. This somewhat disturbing concept drives our [consumer] trends and our media consumption, but as our [culture] encourages more of such behavior, why aren’t we asking how this will manifest in when our generation finishes all the episodes?