Love Island is the highest form of capitalism

I don’t watch much reality TV, but I am online, and therefore see pretty much everything. And Love Island is inescapable right now, partly because of the sheer volume of episodes (it airs almost daily) and partly because the show has mastered short-form in a way that means even if you don’t watch, you’re seeing clips of it constantly.

And what strikes me, watching this kind of reality TV, is how obvious it’s become that most of these people are not going on the show for love. They want to become famous. And fame, in this economy, is a money strategy.

Sure, people have been using reality TV as a launchpad for at least a decade. But in the past few years there’s been a palpable shift in how visibly the contestants perform for the camera. A recent piece in Trill Mag described this season’s cast as having “an acute awareness that they are not just playing a dating game but are managing a public identity that will outlast the season by years.”

Love Island is a dating show on paper. But in practice, it’s capitalism in a bikini, a show that takes a basic human desire and turns it into a competition for visibility. The self becomes the product, attention becomes legitimacy, and fame becomes the end goal.

Supply, demand, and a villa in Fiji

Here’s how Love Island works, for the uninitiated: a group of hot people (Islanders) live together in a villa. People couple up based on first impressions. New entrants (bombshells) disrupt existing relationships by introducing competition, and the public votes on who stays. There are ridiculous challenges, tears, drama, etc. When someone’s perceived desirability drops, they get dumped from the island.

The winning couple (again, voted by the public) gets $100,000 with a “split or steal” trust test. Which, is good money, but certainly not quit-your-job and retire money.

Dating has always been somewhat of a market, but what makes Love Island (and shows of that ilk) different is that this market is actively being filmed, consumed, an…