What Storytellers Can Learn From the "Love Island USA" Phenomenon
You need to create moments that your audience will make an appointment for.
Our guilty pleasure reality TV show just ended, and beyond stressing over what we’re going to watch next, we’re thinking about the lessons we can take away from “Love Island USA” and apply to our own content creation.
- Cailin and Dillon of Team DSB
1. Viewers Are Willing to Make Appointments For Quality
Season 8 of “Love Island USA” wrapped up this month, ending its seasonal run as the #1 show of the summer. This season raked in 1.8 billion viewing minutes, with Love Island social media accounts garnering 330 million engagements and averaging over 63,000 per post. We’re wondering: what is it that makes Love Island so damn popular, and what could that mean for our own work as creators, organizers, and community builders?
The massive success of “Love Island USA” shows us that appointment viewing isn’t dead — as long as you’ve created something worth making an appointment for. Commitment isn’t for the faint of heart, and that’s especially true when we’re talking about keeping up with a “Love Island USA” season.
The show aired six days a week at 9 pm ET, and massive audiences still tuned in to every episode, proving that frequency and consistency are core strengths that keep people eagerly awaiting the next drop — especially when it holds the promise of something surprising, heartwarming, or vindicating. People love media that makes them feel, and the show’s production team made sure to turn up the feels to the max.
2. The Viewer is the Star
Production also paid close attention to audience reactions to episodes online, making viewers active agents in the show’s events. Through polls on the Love Island app, and comments under Love Island posts, audiences were able to ‘save’ two booted contestants, influence which clips were included in Movie Night, and vote for their favorite couple to win the $100,000 cash prize.
These decisions only further ignited the fire on social media surrounding the series, as viewers were encouraged to manipulate the show’s events through their input. Creating opportunities for viewer participation and making folks feel like they’re active parts of your content is key to retaining audiences and fostering consistent engagement.
3. People Yearn For Community
Apart from Love Island, this summer in pop culture has been dominated by the World Cup, and the NBA Championship. What these three series have in common is the community that folks have created around them — be it through online discourse or in-person watch parties.
This summer in media has been a testament to people's desire to process moments collectively. The search for community drives media engagement, and the same holds for organizing. We’re reminded of this piece by Đanacea Võ, who highlights that real-time sports events create clear goals, center joy, and make participation easy.
Translated to our changemaking work, that means making our communications relatable and accessible, making space for celebration, and breaking down barriers to entry to make newcomers feel welcome.
There’s been a lot to learn from “Love Island USA.” We’re taking all these lessons back to our own work as we continue to tell compelling, engaging, and unapologetically human stories.
Thanks for reading Create for Change, a newsletter curated by Dillon St. Bernard covering the intersection of content creation and activism.