America’s “Love Island” fantasy couldn’t survive Trump

This summer has felt like a series of surreal reckonings that no restaurant chain, ad campaign nor cultural sphere — and not even a television dating competition — could outrun. Not in Donald Trump’s America. Our consumer culture is wholly political, and there is no escape from the gravitational pull of the culture wars.

Five years ago, during the last summer season Trump spent in office, the nation grappled with racial justice protests and pandemic lockdowns. Reality TV was notably apolitical amid the chaos. Now, even the most carefully curated fantasy, “Love Island USA” — a raunchy hook-up spectacle filmed on the far-flung island of Fiji — felt more like a mirror of our nation’s fractures. 

If 2020 was a “woke” reckoning, 2025 is MAGA’s attempt to brand the aftermath. By the time “Love Island” crowned its winning couple in early August, the conversation had moved far beyond romance. The show suddenly became a referendum on the state of American consciousness and social accountability.

The program immediately shattered viewership records upon the release of its seventh season at the start of the summer. For the first time since its American launch, “Love Island USA” was ​​Peacock’s most-streamed original show and the first Peacock program to reach the top position on Nielsen’s weekly streaming rankings. Its sun-drenched villa, once seen as a bubble of unreality, immediately reflected the real-world complexities back home. 

From the first episode, early casting misfires signaled that this season would be rocky. As the first couples were still awkwardly linking, tens of millions of people in more than 2,100 cities across the country joined the No Kings protests against Trump’s increasingly authoritarian power grabs. An original cast member was swiftly removed after resurfaced podcast clips revealed her repeated use of the n‑word and vocal support for Trump. The show’s vetting process for cast members again came under scrutiny mid-season when a Change.org petition was circulated to get another contestant removed after she was exposed for posting past anti-Asian slurs on X. She vanished seemingly overnight with no formal reckoning. “Love Island” opted for damage control over open confrontation.

Rapidly, a show that was supposed to be unserious summer fare turned into a battleground of ideologies. With viewers given the power to banish contestants from the villa, an odd ritual of accountability played out live, in primetime, nearly every night. A harmless vote to “send someone home” now carried the weight of cancel culture, racism and performative morality. Far from escapism, it was America on loop. At least in this version, viewers weren’t interested in ignoring racism for the sake of fantasy.

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

“Love Island” isn’t MTV’s “The Real World.” Contestants are isolated without their phones on a remote island. Still, producers were sure to typecast. There was a charismatic gym bro with a questionable alignment with the misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate, along with a Christian who abstained from physical intimacy and frequently used terms lifted straight from online tradwife discourse. 

Social media, meanwhile, didn’t just mirror the show; it mutated it. As the season progressed, Black and brown contestants faced a disproportionate amount of online harassment, including doxxing, trolling and threats. Israel’s war in Gaza even became a flashpoint. 

Reality TV like “Love Island” is meant to lean into distraction. But there was no way for cast members to ignore the world outside their villa. There was no “off” button for politics. No firewall between personal beliefs and public identity. The season became a microcosm of the national mood: The fight over connections, the obsession with ideological purity and the way fandom became factional. The villa reflected America’s broader descent into tribalism. The MAGAification of the country has turned our politics into a fandom war with voting rights.

Like Cracker Barrel’s half-baked attempt at modernization and the fight over Sydney Sweeney’s image, summer’s biggest TV hit played out like surreal echoes of the same battle: What does it mean to be American in 2025? What gets preserved? What gets canceled? Who belongs? 

As Salon’s Ashlie D. Stevens noted this week, controversy is no longer a crisis to manage. It’s content to monetize. And in a country in which everything is content and everyone is accountable, no show is immune.