@newyorker: One good way to enjoy the latest season of “Love Island USA” is to imagine that you have made the questionable choice to pursue a new relationship by appearing on the show. You’re flown to Fiji—nice clime, clear water. Suddenly, you’re no longer allowed to wear the usual sort of torso-obscuring shirt, unless it’s totally unbuttoned in order to display your trophy case of abs. (You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t spend some fascistic percentage of your waking hours in the gym.) Around your waist, you’re wearing a fanny pack full of recording gadgetry; hanging from a thick cord around your neck, like the statement gem on an avant-garde necklace, is a microphone covered in fuzz. You can’t hide the evidence of TV production and also be as naked as this particular production insists that you be, and so even as you walk around in your seemingly realistic way, kissing and telling and sleeping in a room full of couples squirming under the sheets, you are also a perpetual visual reminder of our growing habit of surveilling while also being surveilled. You’re here to meet and consort with a harem of other hotties, all pining equally for an experience of love, and to do so—hence all the equipment—in front of an audience of millions who get to vote along the way, determining, ultimately, the winning couple. “We hear a lot these days about the atrophy of attention spans . . . but here we have a nonfiction narrative, more than 30 hours in length, whose whole substance is meeting and chatting and cuddling,” Vinson Cunningham writes. Read his review of the show’s latest season at the link in our bio. Illustration by Fromm Studio. #loveislandusa #LoveIsland #nicolandria #olandrialoveisland #hudaloveisland

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Saturday 19 July 2025 19:22:05 GMT