After refusing to take part in summer, instead opting to stay indoors to binge Mad Men by day and Love Island by night, I’ve observed a surprisingly striking parallel between the two shows: they both illustrate the way society reacts to the things that are very bad for it.
Mad Men reminds how, in the 1950s and 60s, cigarettes were advertised relentlessly. The manufacturers said to the consumers, without reprimand or regulation: “These things are great. Consume them.” Today – after many decades of fashionably lighting up – the evils of cigarettes are finally accepted and frowned upon, with new bans put into place. Love Island is on that very same, long trajectory.
The (leftwing) media is peppered with hot takes surrounding the moral disgrace that is Love Island. With each new season, the public concern gets slightly louder – but despite hearing the echoes, we can’t quite kick this nightly habit. We have a feeling, deep down, that it’s bad – but we “love to hate it”; we are “just so addicted”.
We talk ourselves in circles that lead us nowhere – feeling guilty for consuming it, then watching again and adoring every second, then realising something this hypnotically addictive can’t be good for us – but it’s on every night, and there’s no real reason to stop, is there?
How many people, back in the 50s, behaved similarly whenever they craved a cigarette? How many had a sneaky feeling it was wrong, but then looked up and saw a massive cigarette advert – “More Doctors Smoke Camels than any other cigarette!” – plastered to one of those rickety Routemaster buses? Just today, I saw a lit-from-behind ITV advert in the train station, next to the ones for the banks and the phone companies, which said: “WE OWN LOVE.”
Then there’s the added factor of social media; closing in on the people we think have acted wrongly, like flies swarming around a bin. It makes sense. The ability to call out behaviour we see as unacceptable, even triggering a wider conversation about it in the process, is one of the few plus points of Twitter and Instagram. We are holding one another accountable for our actions, and why not? Why not desperately wrangle this reality TV show into the reluctant position of “exemplary moral compass”? “Be kind,” we say, but also, “Jacques should rot for ever in hell for the way he’s treated Paige”. We send the tweet, ignoring the most sinister fact that some people who have been on the show went on to end their own lives.
The obsession lingers all day. We hit the mid-afternoon procrastination slump, open a new tab, and read a piece about how the show’s organised misogyny is increasing at an exponential and societally harmful rate. There are clear signs of group female-targeted bullying in the villa this year, says the internet, and the producers really should rectify it. We lean back in our ergonomic chairs, gaze into the jungle-esque vista of houseplants we have created for ourselves and think, “You know, that’s actually so true.”
That night, though, we obviously watch it again. You’re telling me Davide and Ekin-Su are still arguing? This is huge. I must fold myself on to the sofa like a shrimp this instant, and watch the dispute unfold in its entirety. When we’re watching Love Island, its myriad issues fade into the background for the hour. It soothes us; it itches a part of our brain we didn’t know needed scratching.
Knowing that it’s bad for humanity isn’t enough to make us stop – because we do know that it’s bad. At best, it is brain-rotting; at a medium, it can negatively affect the societal code of acceptable behaviour; and at worst, it is lethal. We’ve seen this before, though, an infinite number of times – cigarettes, opium, freak shows, whole swathes of human vices we U-turned on – and we know that time is the only solution.
Right now, an act of human will, even a collective one, is not enough to compete with the powers making money from reality TV. It’s just too good, and not properly bad enough, for any significant group of people to stop consuming it. We must, it seems, push these things to their most harmful limit, stretching as much profit out of them as we possibly can, before as a society we backtrack on ourselves, stub it out and go, “Wait, actually … no. Enough.”
• Iona David’s book, Is This Love or Dopamine? (Harper Collins, £14.99) is out now. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
