Inside the villa, the contestants on “Love Island USA” unplug from the real world as they try to find their match in Fiji.
But outside the walls of Casa Amor, the people who are vying for romance are being harassed online by the very fans who watch them obsessively on their televisions.
Each season of the dating show follows a group of singles over the course of six weeks as they race to couple up and form romantic connections, or risk getting dumped from the island. Throughout the show, the entry of new “bombshell” Islanders (what the contestants are often called) creates tension as the producers continue to insert psychological games and plot twists.
The American version, which airs on Peacock, is relatively newer compared to its U.K. counterpart — and has only recently seen a surge in popularity after last season’s standout contestants gained virality online. (NBCUniversal is the parent company of Peacock and NBC News.)
The fervent fan base has brought more viewership — but it has also unearthed the darker reality that plagues many franchise contestants when they achieve notoriety: It can come with a price. Fans have put the Islanders’ behaviors, physical appearances and political backgrounds under a microscope — leading to intensified harassment online.
This year, multiple contestants have been the target of criticism as viewers called out behaviors they described as “toxic,” “abusive” or “fake.” The cyberbullying toward contestants has become so rampant that the show has had to address it head-on. In a recent episode of season seven, which kicked off in June and drops new episodes nearly every night, the show aired a message urging fans to be kinder with their comment. Similar messages were shared on the show’s social media accounts.
“‘Love Island’ is about reacting to how people behave, but they deserve to be called out for their behavior as a contestant on a reality TV show, not as a human being and as a person,” comedian Iain Stirling, narrator of the “Love Island” franchise, told NBC News in a recent Zoom interview.
Still, viewers have continued to cyberbully contestants online. Cierra Ortega, Olandria Carthen and Chelley Bissainthe, once fan favorites, became the latest targets of heated criticism this week after former fans said they now feel these were actually the “mean girls” on the show. Their Instagram accounts quickly shut down their comment sections. (Contestants’ accounts are typically run by family or friends while they are in the villa.)
Ortega’s profile lost hundreds of thousands of followers within days. Bissainthe’s account shared a lengthy post Wednesday calling out viewers who are “coming on her page to tear her down.”
“That level of hostility, especially toward someone isolated from the outside world, is disturbing,” the post read, adding that the behavior is “not just unfair, it’s borderline dangerous if we want to keep it a stack. Think about what you’re doing. This behavior isn’t normal. It’s actually kind of mentally unwell.”
Harassment is not an unfamiliar problem for the franchise, which launched in the United Kingdom in 2005 as “Celebrity Love Island” and ran for two seasons before being canceled and eventually rebooted in 2015 as “Love Island” on ITV4.
As social media has become a more ingrained part of the viewer experience, Islanders — like other reality TV stars — are often launched into overnight fame, which at times has been coupled with feelings of depression and anxiety amid heightened fan scrutiny.
While on the show, contestants remain secluded from the outside world and cannot access social media until after they exit — at which point they get to see all the viewer reactions that accumulated online during their time in the villa. Those returning to the online world are often greeted by a massive new fan base, along with a buildup of harsh comments about expressions they made, lines they uttered or the way they looked from unflattering angles.
