The game of Love Island is the game of Love Island is what the fourth audience (the viewers) think is the game of Love Island.
That determines who survives, who wins and also who wins in real life afterwards.
That is why you don’t need stakes on the challenges other than ‘winning.’ That is where a lot of the complexity comes from. And that means that a ‘boring’ strategy, or a strategy that does not involve much screen time or even in some cases more than a few days in the villa (see: Jaden) can be a winning one.
The public does not want to think of the players as wanting to be influencers, or as too cynically ‘playing the game.’ Every time you are visibly not maximizing your chances in the surface-level cynical game of Love Island you reinforce your 4TRR (for the right reasons) credentials, and that matters quite a lot. Every time you sell that you are a genuinely good person, that matters a lot too.
From what I can tell, the current (fourth) audience skews heavily female, is very young, largely 18-24, and has a very strong set of preferences. They have very low tolerance for the ‘wrong’ kinds of meanness or bad behaviors, often seeing someone in light of their worst individual moment or decision. They hate those who present as oppressors, and they love victims and the oppressed, and they will absolutely tear into the lives of anyone who violates their rules.
Thus, there is a lot to be said for a strategy like that of Pepe and Iris. Sure, you don’t get that much screen time and you will never be the full star. But by turning down clear opportunity, like Pepe friendzoning Andrina, and being patient, you can get remarkably strong support end exit in very strong position. Pepe’s idea for a Love Island breakfast spot afterwards is brilliant and they’re perfectly positioned for it.
The best part of that strategy is you don’t have to be a reality star to pull it off. Playing the star role takes a lot of skill, whether it’s the superstar you can’t ignore (Huda), the well-studied technical master who doesn’t hide what her game is (Cierra minus the two slurs) or the fully genuine person no one realizes is also one hell of a performer (Amaya) or even the de facto producer proxy who makes things happen (Ace).
You want a mix of the different roles to make everything work. If everyone was a superstar, yes that’s great television but you don’t give part of the audience someone they want to root for, and you need that, plus you only need to fill so much time.
I think the producers can be totally fine with whatever happens in this last vote, which I assume had to happen when it did for production reasons. If possible you still want to protect Huda, but the timing of the fight with Chris is awkward (and major error by both of them from a gameplay standpoint, this is one of those situations where everyone involved should be folding if they have to), and I don’t see any outs worth using if America decides it is her time to go.
We also have mostly full resolution of the Cierra situation, as she has given her statement in both written and video form, taking responsibility and agreeing with the decision to remove her from the show while explaining details of what happened. Reddit reaction was mostly that the video was as good as it could been, so much so that it had a bit of the PR nature, and she is once again gaining followers. People seem to mostly believe her account (with some quibbles), which means that the main non-fake culprit here is now presumed to be the screenshot of a quickly deleted prior post, combined with another post from 2015.
From the producer perspective, deleted but screenshotted posts are much harder to catch in advance than Yulissa going on podcasts. They could have and should have caught the post that was still up from 2015, but it’s not clear that would have much mattered. So this will keep happening even if producers are Good At Job. If someone is in the game for weeks, then news comes out, then they lose a lot of followers, that is strong evidence both that whatever it is seen as quite bad, and also that whatever it is was hard to find.
Meanwhile, predictions? The obvious thing that happens tonight is they cut Huda/Chris, given their fighting, but also the obvious target can get shielded, five-way votes to not be last are highly unpredictable. Presumably Nic/Olandria and Amaya/Bryan are safe, and at this point something very unexpected seems like it would be needed to stop Amaya/Bryan from winning.
Episode 32:
The game of Love Island is the game of Love Island is what the fourth audience (the viewers) think is the game of Love Island.
That determines who survives, who wins and also who wins in real life afterwards.
That is why you don’t need stakes on the challenges other than ‘winning.’ That is where a lot of the complexity comes from. And that means that a ‘boring’ strategy, or a strategy that does not involve much screen time or even in some cases more than a few days in the villa (see: Jaden) can be a winning one.
The public does not want to think of the players as wanting to be influencers, or as too cynically ‘playing the game.’ Every time you are visibly not maximizing your chances in the surface-level cynical game of Love Island you reinforce your 4TRR (for the right reasons) credentials, and that matters quite a lot. Every time you sell that you are a genuinely good person, that matters a lot too.
From what I can tell, the current (fourth) audience skews heavily female, is very young, largely 18-24, and has a very strong set of preferences. They have very low tolerance for the ‘wrong’ kinds of meanness or bad behaviors, often seeing someone in light of their worst individual moment or decision. They hate those who present as oppressors, and they love victims and the oppressed, and they will absolutely tear into the lives of anyone who violates their rules.
Thus, there is a lot to be said for a strategy like that of Pepe and Iris. Sure, you don’t get that much screen time and you will never be the full star. But by turning down clear opportunity, like Pepe friendzoning Andrina, and being patient, you can get remarkably strong support end exit in very strong position. Pepe’s idea for a Love Island breakfast spot afterwards is brilliant and they’re perfectly positioned for it.
The best part of that strategy is you don’t have to be a reality star to pull it off. Playing the star role takes a lot of skill, whether it’s the superstar you can’t ignore (Huda), the well-studied technical master who doesn’t hide what her game is (Cierra minus the two slurs) or the fully genuine person no one realizes is also one hell of a performer (Amaya) or even the de facto producer proxy who makes things happen (Ace).
You want a mix of the different roles to make everything work. If everyone was a superstar, yes that’s great television but you don’t give part of the audience someone they want to root for, and you need that, plus you only need to fill so much time.
I think the producers can be totally fine with whatever happens in this last vote, which I assume had to happen when it did for production reasons. If possible you still want to protect Huda, but the timing of the fight with Chris is awkward (and major error by both of them from a gameplay standpoint, this is one of those situations where everyone involved should be folding if they have to), and I don’t see any outs worth using if America decides it is her time to go.
We also have mostly full resolution of the Cierra situation, as she has given her statement in both written and video form, taking responsibility and agreeing with the decision to remove her from the show while explaining details of what happened. Reddit reaction was mostly that the video was as good as it could been, so much so that it had a bit of the PR nature, and she is once again gaining followers. People seem to mostly believe her account (with some quibbles), which means that the main non-fake culprit here is now presumed to be the screenshot of a quickly deleted prior post, combined with another post from 2015.
From the producer perspective, deleted but screenshotted posts are much harder to catch in advance than Yulissa going on podcasts. They could have and should have caught the post that was still up from 2015, but it’s not clear that would have much mattered. So this will keep happening even if producers are Good At Job. If someone is in the game for weeks, then news comes out, then they lose a lot of followers, that is strong evidence both that whatever it is seen as quite bad, and also that whatever it is was hard to find.
Meanwhile, predictions? The obvious thing that happens tonight is they cut Huda/Chris, given their fighting, but also the obvious target can get shielded, five-way votes to not be last are highly unpredictable. Presumably Nic/Olandria and Amaya/Bryan are safe, and at this point something very unexpected seems like it would be needed to stop Amaya/Bryan from winning.