Why exactly did Love Island fans, brands, and even Islanders — including Black ones — turn to anti-Blackness this year?

I grew up in a house that had a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. over the dining table and the Dick Gregory cookbook in the kitchen. I remember being seven years old and seeing Malcom X in theaters. The Diary of Malcom X was already on our bookshelves, alongside work from Toni Morrison. Maya Angelou was alive and available to me for 29 of my 41 years, in literature and in media, as a living, breathing person whose appearances and interviews I could watch on the same television that was bringing me, like, Road Rules.

In other words, maybe I was born understanding the message. Information, privilege, advantage, awareness, whatever we want to call it. How infractions — real or imagined — would be magnified, how joy and pride could be seen as a threat, how media had a formula (and a mission) to reinforce stereotypes, how accomplishments would be diminished, words could be twisted, and language could be coded to disguise its intentions. How all skinfolk are not kinfolk. How respectability politics works and how “good Blacks” are used as shields for consequence:

“I can’t be racist, I have a Black friend.”

“I can’t be racist, I adopted a Black child.”

Here, it’s more like, “I can’t be racist, my favorite Islanders this year are Black.”

“I can’t be racist because the racist memes and dogwhistles I’m using toward a Black contestant are in defense of a Black contestant.”

It was white high school teachers.

It was L’Oreal-owned skincare brand Cerave.

(which is expected…)

But, why were Black folks also jumping on the bandwagon?

Lusters, the company behind a very Black hair care range had to issue an apology for their bandwagon post targeting the show’s only Black man.

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Ignorance? Intention? Or, are we at a point where a young Black generation has been convinced to not only believe in, but begin participating in their own subjugation?

Love Island winner Trinity Tatum highkey led a weird campaign against a man she was not in a relationship and who I don’t think she ever had a conversation with. I remember watching her, a young Black girl, be confused by the “Still I Rise” tattooed on KC’s back a few episodes before this infamous moment:

@loveislandusaTrinity will always tell it like it is 😅 #LoveIslandUSA

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Trinity’s white boyfriend loved the joke, KC didn’t correct it, and an audience of fans and influencers already campaigning against KC saw it as a new tool to menace his comment section with.

Bobbi Althoff, a white creator who treats her time around Black people like some sort of social experiment, used it in a now deleted video.

How is it that after nearly 50 years of being able to exist in peace and power, Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” was turned into troll fodder?

(Now me? You’ll never see surfacing my distaste for any man at the expense of Maya Angelou, or her words, whether or not they’re tattooed on his back).

(I’ve come to the realize that Trinity, at 22, might not know who Maya Angelou is at all, or might just be part of the generation of young Black kids who think Harriet Tubman wasn’t a real person. They might be the children of the children of the children who were simply left behind. They might be what my mother and her mother were working so hard to avoid. Still, you don’t get to use Maya Angelou’s words at the expense of anybody Black on my watch).

There’s this idea of defensible space. A halo of wokeness I constantly chose to keep around me. A little fold in one of the wrinkles of my brain that another little fold on the other side of my brain is constantly reminding me to exercise. So that I can kinda enjoy entertainment media and pop culture, and Real Housewives of Atlanta and Black Twitter and a Megan The Stallion song or two, without ever letting them in far enough to replace my actual heroes, leaders, voices, revolutionaries, and ambassadors.

I guess I grew up with an understanding of esteem and reverence. Understanding that I had to operate as a representation of my ancestors. That I had to understand the stereotypes created for me, and for people who look like me. To understand who created them and why they worked so hard to accelerate them. Our town’s first serial killer was being discussed in the news for his handsome looks during his manhunt, arrest, and trial. Compliments that the Black shoplifters and petty criminals they slotted into their breaking news segments never got.

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Earlier this summer, Harper’s Bazaar jumped in to an already exhausted conversation on Love Island’s red pill manosphere-ish-ness and gender wars. I don’t really have a gripe about the actual essay, more so how the publisher chose to promote it on social media.

On Instagram, they chose to put Melanie at the center of the thumbnail. Sincere, this season’s undeniable lead manipulator (of the men, at least) is there at a mostly 3/4 profile. The frame is pulled from a scene where other cast members are in view, which stages the broader conversation on gender wars over a moment of tension from the show.

On Twitter though, that same essay was promoted with a single thumbnail of KC, again the only Black man cast this season. Not a frame from a scene, not him in discussion with his partner, not a still from a similar moment of tension that was afforded to Melanie and Sincere, but KC alone, in a portrait, as the single face assigned to represent the topic.

Harper’s eventually deleted that Tweet, conceding to the day’s backlash, though never addressed or apologized for the connection they were trying to build. Apologizing would mean they’d have to admit they were eavesdropping on already-problematic debates and trawling the low vibrational sewers of the internet for creative ideas. They would have to admit their impatience in waiting for a debate that was already struggling to align on nuance and accountability to be fleshed out.

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The writer of the essay himself is a Black man, a shield Harper’s could’ve hid behind when pushed to acknowledge the racist mechanics of their Twitter thumbnail choices.

I’ve written about the red pill-ness of this season before. Nearly a month before Harper’s did because, you know, we’re on top it. I like to give myself credit, though, for presenting a conversation in balance and introducing a thought that red pill culture is not simply exclusive to men.

The article’s expanded conversation on “gender wars” is proof of that. We’re not in the same men vs. women, Venus vs. Mars debate as the generation before us. We’re so fucking beyond it. If I'm being honest, one of the best showcases of how far the convo has divulged is the anti-Black, misogynoir red pill minstrel standard known as Pop The Balloon.

Let me get back on track.

The proof point of red pill ideology’s success is it being adopted by women. Nearly 27 years after TLC’s “No Scrubs” came out, the ladies of this season didn’t have it in them to provide a counterbalance to any of the red pill terror detailed that Harper’s essay. Instead, they fed into the men of this season at the expense of their self-esteem, sanity, boundaries, and identities.

And they were rewarded for it.

Aniya’s acceptance and demand for struggle love won her fans and defenders. Melanie’s desperation and insecurity manifested in confrontations with other women and not her partner, which somehow won her sympathy. Kenzie fed into Corbin’s weird hunter/prey domination kink (baby voice included), but was dropped the moment he left for Casa Amor. Zach’s endless humping of Bryce has its own roots in red pill homoeroticism, but was written off by most fans as a bit. The men set the bar for return famously low, and the women who accepted it were rewarded with millions of followers and a dead-internet bot army.

Red pill “ideology” and the alt right “pipeline” are not actually ideology or pipelines at all. They’re seeds that were planted an internet generation ago (by the feds), fostered by an anonymity that encourages mass participation without consequence. Flourishing so freely that it’s now become the default cultural undertone for comments on Meta, X, and TikTok. Death threats, slurs, spam campaigns, and mass reporting fly freely without consequence.

Black audiences might not even realize that they’ve been tapping into an arsenal traditionally reserved for the Chud The Builders and the Jake Langs of the world. Because long before Trinity invited Love Island fans to use Angelou’s words as a joke, it was George Floyd’s last words. Long before Love Island fans were photoshopping Tierra Davis as a gorilla, it was Michelle Obama and Serena Williams. All pulled from the same alt right toolbox, all normalized on our feeds for a decade, and now unsurprisingly showing up in this season’s fan culture.

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xo, culturework

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• Will, Uh, A Minstrel “Halloween” Costume Lure Black Customers Back To Target? (TikTok)

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My head (as mentioned above) is on straight, but I was cast down yet again by whatever witch hates @culturework. It kinda feels like someone’s pouring hot lava down into a hole they drilled in the top of my head. Been like that for days. But it’s on straight. Focused. With one eye on all the funny business happening in the cosmos, and the other focused right in front of me. Honestly it’s nothing another cycle of Yellowstone won’t fix.

If you are one of my readers who is not a rich, white man with $10B in capital tucked away somewhere, this message is for you as well. It kinda feels like everyone’s losing it lately, yeah?

xo, culturework

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Two people who I blocked years ago are getting dragged this month on TikTok, so all is not totally lost this week!

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• Ariana Grande To Take “Break” After Public Scrutiny (People)

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Ever since I turned 40, I’ve felt this sense of sisterhood with all the middle-aged women that came before me. It was more than a milestone. It was like a giant invisible door opened. A membership with no card.

I woke up one day and could suddenly raise my eyebrows in a way I couldn’t before. I could suddenly wink without all the straining and coordination that it used to involve. I had a new aspiration to become a minx. To become the kind of woman the ancient nuns in my elementary school warned me about. A middle-aged woman whose bookshelves were filled with smut. The kind of woman that made idols out of Nicolette Sheridan’s Edie Britt, Kim Cattrall’s Samantha, and Diane Lane’s Connie during that Unfaithful ride home on the Metro North.

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@urfavspamer_10Weil warum ist es so HEIẞ its to much please reduce it #paris #tiktokfrance🇨🇵 #fdlm #heatwave

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If you would’ve told me in January, as I was watching all of the trees I just had planted being frost-shocked to death, that I would be here six months later praying for a wind so cold that it would freeze my powerlines and burst the pipes in my walls, I would say you’re crazy.

xo, culturework

1. Is Hunter Biden “Trade”? (@culturework)

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Yesterday, Don Lemon asked Hunter Biden the mo…

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• The End Of The World (Cup) — Spain Beats Argentina (Fox Sports)

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The World Cup could not have come at a more necessary time. Just a few months after I had to let Jacob Elordi go, and right as I realized that, unlike the p…

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By the time the stanwars start brewing and terrible takes from racist art teachers show up, most of us with sense have already started dropping off.

The thing is, last year when Season 7’s insecure maniac started tanking the show’s vibes, the producers made an emergency mid-season pivot and pumped out a magical Nicolandrian fantasy to keep us from jumping ship.

This year, they didn’t really seem to care about that and bolstered the most insecure, unaware, and draining collectives of women for one of the worst seasons in recent history. Yes, we’ve had many insufferable Islanders, but not this many, not together, and not all operating unison.

So, I turned it off. I don’t keep friends like that, I don’t go to restaurants where I’ll be hearing hear that coming from the table next to me, and I don’t want it pumping out of the speakers and into my living room for six weeks.

Streets are saying I should move on to Big Brother anyway? Thoughts?

xo,

culturework

@cultureworkPrivacy for me but not for three #greenscreen #kyliejenner #fyp

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• Kylie Jenner Reminds White Women Of Their True Surveillance State Potential (@culturework)

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The first person I saw on the carpet was Seth Rogen, and about 0.02 seconds later, I heard Lisa Rinna’s cackle and focused all my worldly energy there. By far, no comparison, the most important woman in the room, the most famous woman on my pop culture earth. Unrelated to Traitors, but that formerly DL man from The Bachelor who took his closeted terror out on his girlfriend was also floating around. My source in the men’s room told me he didn’t wash his hands, and instead opted to run his piss fingers through his hair. We decided to take the next elevator to avoid sharing one with Piss Fingers.

The Invite basically traps the audience in the most terrifying version of hell — a neurotically planned dinner party in the apartment of the worst white couple you know.

Olivia Wilde (who also directed) and Seth Rogen play the formerly cool millennial couple you used to be jealous of back when you were like, 23. A skinny hipster fairy girl and her indie band boyfriend. They got married, quit the bands, left the bars and breweries behind, and now they’re older, and boring, and trapped in a specific type of misery I call “Millennial Apathy,” that can usually be disguised by Instagram, rosé all day, CDMX, whimsy, and sourdough.

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There is, indeed, a very clear gap between the oldest people in the villa and the youngest.

Bryce, the oldest, is usually sane, mostly calm, and fully able to communicate and emote with both clarity and nuance. The two youngest, Trinity and #MyCowboy Caleb are shockingly mature, level headed, and, dare I say, smart enough to stay emotionally guarded and aware of how they’ll be perceived both in the villa and to audiences.

Everyone else in the middle, though, is basically the graduating class of Red Pill University.

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Anyway, I finished Yellowstone. It took me all but 8 days to blow through five seasons. Where do I go after this? Do I just watch it on a loop for the rest of my life? Do I just add every miscellaneous character from the #ranch into my maladaptive daydream universe?

xo, culturework

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The revelation from the first episode shook blonde haired, blue eyed Kenzie into a temporary spiral, as the man who was literally not forced to pair up with her passively let slip that she was not actually his type:

Slowly — slow by TV standards — one of the first duos to form this season unravels. The final game of the night is a recoupling test that asks the couples, who can’t see each other, to stand on a green dot if they want to stay with their current partner, or move to a red one if they want to leave and explore with the night’s new bombshells. To Kenzie’s shock (?), she and Zach are not on the same page.

He’s off to explore with Kayda, a new bombshell so racially ambiguous that the first question he asks her is about her ethnic background:

Her dad’s from Haiti, and her mom’s miscellaneous White (Irish, German).

I basically assume everyone on the island of Hispaniola is a little bit Black, even if they don’t want to admit it (cc: Dominicans), but we have no real clue what Kayda’s dad looks like or what his true ethnic background is.

She’s got light skin, straight hair, a slim frame, and a small angular nose. She could be anything really: Latina, Filipina, or Half Thai, Indian, Viet or any combination from southern Wasia.

The type of “exotic” that every plastic surgeon with a Miss Universe client specializes in:

He makes it clear that she’s exactly is his kind of “dark,” and upon return to the Villa and to the Islanders, make his decision official.

Goodbye, Kenzie. Hello, Kayda.

Pop Quiz: Which woman in the above photo is Black?

That, my friends, is the difference between “dark features” and “Black.”

While we’re on the topic of Black women damn near begging for white spotlight. Let’s try, and fail, at figuring out the psychology of exactly why we (y’all) do that!

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Love Island USA is more than a show — it’s an exercise in discipline! A forceful annual command to have our dinners made, cocktails (or mocktails) poured, skincare routines completed, and ou…

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xo, culturework

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