@CurryLover55
I really wonder how many times the word “ like” is spoken in this show?! Drives me crackers! It makes people sound so dim!
You are not the only person to have spotted this (amongst other things) here is an excellent summary of the show and what it says about Britain in 2021:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/24/love-island-symbol-vapid-rotten-culture/
"The word “like” punctuates every sentence like a clanging bell. Earlier in the series, one contestant, a trainee doctor no less, claimed that with a powerful telescope you could see dinosaurs on Earth from Mars. Underlying it all is a forlorn hope that contestants might have sex in the communal bedroom. As our ancestors queued up to watch public hangings, the only entertainment value that can be derived from Love Island is a sordid voyeurism at the contestants’ expense.
Interestingly, Sir Peter Bazalgette, the brains behind Love Island forerunner Big Brother, is a descendant of Joseph Bazalgette, the Victorian civil engineer. While Joseph pioneered the London sewage system, so the joke goes, his great-great-grandson has specialised in pumping metaphorical excrement into the public sphere.
After three suicides, you’d think it might have prompted some soul-searching. But Love Island promises to return next year. I could rant about this monstrosity forever; suffice it to say that it is probably what the Romans were watching when the Visigoths breached the Salarian Gate. It is grotesque that it has survived for so long.
To many, Love Island is just mindless escapism or a “guilty pleasure”, but I don’t think it is quite as harmless as that. For one thing, the show’s dominant aesthetic has become universal. It is credited with sparking a surge in demand for fillers, Botox, boob jobs and butt lifts. I see it trickling into daily life too; friends who have to watch every penny nevertheless save up for injections, while high street beauty salons hawk cosmetic procedures alongside haircuts – a bouncy blow-dry with a side helping of Botox. Though changing fashion trends have always been a feature of life, these surgical or cosmetic procedures will prove much harder to reverse than a dodgy perm or blue mascara fetish.
At the same time, social media threatens everyone’s self-esteem. Where once girls and boys might have tried to be the prettiest, or most muscular, in their year, now they must contend with the entire virtual world. Instagram is a particular offender, immersing its users in idealised, curated images which masquerade as being “real” or “attainable” – but in truth all platforms encourage a solipsism that can be damaging to those with body image problems. Lockdown, by limiting external interactions and narrowing horizons still further, has only made things worse.
Though there is nothing wrong with taking pride in your appearance, we should also ask why the pornified, Love Island “look” (doll features, guppy lips, aggressive contouring, perma-tan) has become so widespread. Its popularity, like that of the show itself, suggests a society that, for all its alleged empowerment, values shallow things – and a culture in which young people struggle to value themselves as they are.
The noughties, when I was a teenager, saw concern about stick-thin supermodels, and rightly so. “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, Kate Moss said, launching a thousand eating disorders along the way. Though both are ghastly, I wonder if the influencer celebrity culture which replaced “heroin chic” is marginally worse; at least Moss was honest about the misery involved. Instagram, mingling unattainability with feigned “down-to-earthness”, seems somehow even more insidious.
Love Island isn’t just influential in its own right; its rise symbolises something much more rotten. It embodies the body ideals and selfie-driven narcissism which spark misery everywhere. It fetishises mediocrity, sending a message that you don’t need to do, think or achieve anything to get ahead in life. Our Love Island love affair does us no credit at all."