Love Island, ITV 2's colossal real-time hit wherein a range of conventionally attractive 20-somethings battle it out to find 'love' in Majorca, is one of televisions only youth-backed juggernauts. This is significant - the Netflix oriented age of streaming has seen young people's TV engagement drop by almost 33% (according to a 2017 Ofcom study). With a young audience, naturally, comes social media, and many fans of the reality show will openly admit that half of the fun of keeping up with the programme is in engaging in each day's Twitter reactions.
Love Island is, arguably, half of its own show, with the remaining 50% of the fun found not on your telly but on your phone. Obviously this means that there are daily viral tweets referencing the show - some of which reach hundreds of thousands of interactions - and while most of these jokes are harmless fun some occasionally feel unkind. On Twitter, Love Island 2019 has led to the rise of the 'Yewande support group', the 'anti-Arabella bad spellers' and a general liking of Maura, but the ongoing narrative around one Islander has left me incredibly uneasy - the suggestions that Curtis is gay.
