Why the Love Island Contestants need to be less Demonised on Social Media

Since Monday 3rd June much of the UK has been united through watching Love Island. Whether you love it or hate it, we all know it’s going to be a very big conversation starter for the next 2 months... it is what it is guys. We also all know someone who loves to slate it, but is also the one that follows all the islanders on instagram, or catches up on their twitter feed, (I know who you are).

My post today is to talk about the toxic power of social media when it comes to commenting on what goes on in TV shows like Love Island.

A huge talking point and trend on twitter and instagram recently was Love Island’s Joe Garratt. Joe became the first boy to be voted out of the villa on Monday 17th June. As many of you reading this will know Joe’s behaviour with Lucie Donlan has been very much under scrutiny, and has angered a lot of people. He has been amid widespread criticism of what many saw as 'controlling' behaviour toward Lucie Donlan and after leaving the villa has had a bodyguard in charge of keeping him safe.

Firstly I am not defending his behaviour or think it was perfectly ‘normal’ because it wasn’t. He did show signs of possessiveness and being jealous and insecure, which wasn’t healthy at all. I felt sorry for Lucie because you could see at times she felt uneasy by his words.

Adina Claire, Co-Chief Executive of Women’s Aid,responded to Joe’s behaviour and red flagged him with extreme statements such as- “Controlling behaviour is never acceptable, and with Love Island viewers complaining to Ofcom in record numbers about Joe’s possessive behaviour towards Lucie, more people are becoming aware of this and we want to highlight the early warning signs of an abusive relationship”.

Over the last few weeks I have read many a meme, or tweet, or article brandishing Joe with sweeping statements that he is a monster, or even being compared to the character from the Netflix series ‘You’ about a sociopath who goes to extreme measures to insert himself into a girls life, and ends up murdering her in a basement.

The show has been accused of an irresponsible attitude to islanders in the past and myself included over the past week are worried that Joe has been misrepresented.

I think viewers need to remember that this is an entertainment show and that the producers only want us to see the very juicy, scandalous and gossip fuelling content. We only see snippets of 24 hours within just one hour. For entertainment every show needs a villain,(Joe), a damsel in distress (Lucie), a clown (Curtis), a diva (amber/lucie, debatable for sure). As we know Joe has very much been the villain.

I think social media is amazing for talking about important issues and highlighting peoples inappropriate behaviour. Social media has also been a really positive platform for raising awareness of sensitive topics such as men's mental health, sexism, the MeToo movement and of course brilliant movements likes us (woo!) Twitter has been incredible for highlighting these issues. In light of this I have noticed many people I follow, are tweeting, retweeting the importance of being aware of peoples feelings, the affect of words and mental health, however are the same people that are writing aggressive sweeping statements that Joe is abusive, a monster and should be banned from the show, amongst many other nasty comments that he will kidnap lucie and murder her etc.

Don’t get me wrong I love ‘banter’ and have a dryISH sense of humour, but it makes you question when are these tweets taking it too far. How would you feel if you had half the country making you out to be a monster, just from the producers of love island broadcasting snippets of you at your most vulnerable and anxious state? Again I’m not defending his behaviour, but as someone tweeted recently "truthfully I think how Lucie reacted to Joe leaving, shows how much the love island producers really have manipulated the way Joe is perceived, poor lad”. You also have to bare in mind we haven’t witnessed any of the islanders making a comment on Joe’s possessive behaviour so it does make you question, how much are we viewing is real?

As former Love Island Contestant Olivia Bowen Buckland tweeted recently “ You can have an opinion without always tweeting it”.

I was also going to go into great detail about Maura but I’ll refrain, at how her forward and ‘suggestive’ behaviour, has been taken to the extreme again. I don’t advocate that all her behaviour is ok and it was very cringeworthy at times e.g “ Does she turn you on like I do” etc etc, however again there has been a wave of tweets, memes and insta post that feeds into this narrative that women can either be complete ‘sluts’ or ‘virgins’.

All in all I think Love Island is great and social media is great, but both have a dark side that can do an awful lot of damage to people’s mental health. However it is still the case that these contestants applied to enter this show, and knew what they were getting themselves into, so it is hard to see where the blame lies. I think peoples language used on twitter can at times be very overly dramatic, and extreme. I just think we need to be a bit more mindful of the power of the language we use, and be aware that at the end of the day Love Island is an entertainment show.