Love Island UK S12 E47 is a totally new kind of Greek myth

or artform, idk the difference at this point

warning: contains monsters

(you don’t need to watch the show to read this)

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Last Friday night’s Love Island featured an in-house award ceremony called the Grafties. For each award (fakest person, best kiss, whatever), there were three nominees, accompanied by clips of moments from the big brother-style villa over the past few weeks. The public voted for a winner of each, who then had to go up beside the big screen to receive their award.

I quickly lost track of which award was which, because what it turned into was a barrage of incriminating evidence that one of the season’s main contestants, Harry, was telling every girl what they wanted to hear while continuing to flirt with each of them behind their backs.

Harry is funny, charming, charismatic, confident, very attractive. So the opportunity to do what he did was natural, but it was still his choice to act it out. Out of the 4ish girls he was flirting with at the same time, there are only two you really need to understand:

• Shakira: this is the first girl Harry was with, who left him after having her suspicions severely raised that he was way more interested in…

• Helena: this is the second girl Harry was with, who after forgiving his ongoing misbehaviour since stealing him from Shakira, eventually became exclusive with him. This was until the Grafties clips showed her that he never really cared about her, and actually was still way more interested in Shakira.

The nail in the coffin clip featured a private conversation with Shakira, which was clearly days after he was already exclusive with Helena. At this point he knows Shakira is upset because she still isn’t over him, and he is bizarrely suggesting they go on a date after the show. She tries to brush him off, he tries to keep it going.

All the non-involved contestants wince watching. Conor, Shakira’s next partner after Harry, is furious because Harry had lied to him about what he was up to with Shakira. Shakira seems deflated. And Helena is distraught and embarrassed, watching her partner pine for someone else. Harry’s closest friends Meg and Dejon are angry he’d treat Helena like that.

Yet the obvious reaction for the camera to pan to, is Harry. Clip after clip after clip of his behaviour that is just not adding up. Who does he actually want? Why is he treating people like this? What has he been up to the whole time?

Everyone turns to him begging for some kind of answer and … he has nothing. He barely speaks. Stares straight ahead, and you’re not sure if he’s emotionless or has an inner tsunami pouring in.

The frustrating truth is that there is no reason for his behaviour. He doesn’t need to speak to let you know that. As a semi-useful rule, someone’s behaviour and actions are the best way to tell what they actually want and believe in. Even yourself. I know you say you believe in X cause, but other people can see that nothing you’ve tried has helped it, and you’re telling me that you haven’t noticed that as well?

So when none of Harry’s actions add up (e.g. if he wanted Shakira why did he leave her, why ask Helena to be exclusive if you don’t seem to like her romantically), and you try to work out what he wants, the answer is nothing. This is a man who believes in nothing at all. He’s turned his head to Shakira again, because, well, she’s there. And it would offer good TV. If he doesn’t know how to be happy at least he’s entertaining someone else.

The funny thing is that he even acknowledges this in his own psychology. There’s a moment in the series where Harrison, which is a good name for a guy who’s kind of a Diet Harry in behaviour, is starting to question if he’s messing the girls around too much, and says it’s start to weigh on him. Harry jokes, “you just need to get on my level mate”, which I suppose he actually does mean. I suspect there was a time in Harry’s life where he did feel bad, before going all in on this path. Level up.

So this becomes the new question, maybe not for the islanders, but definitely for us the viewers: Why does Harry believe in nothing? And why does he not care about other people?

This is not to absolve him of individual guilt for any of his crimes, but it is worth examining exactly why Harry is the natural endpoint of a collective culture. Our biggest issue as a culture is also one of our key strengths, i.e. the death of God. We’ve got a lot done, but the same scientific method that was supposed to reveal truth instead revealed that there's no ultimate foundation for meaning. This leaves you in a tricky position: you have the fundamental freedom to choose exactly who you are, you choose every second of your life, which gives you ultimate responsibility for the consequences of your actions. If you aren’t a net positive on the world then that is your fault. This is a terrifying truth to deal with, so the default becomes a retreat.

On an individual level, media and the ultra-modern need for the approval of strangers incentivises narcissism as that retreat, which applies on steroids if you are the type of person strangers naturally like. This works, in a sense, because other people only feeling like side characters in your story means that their emotions and experiences don’t matter, or don’t exist to the same depth. And also, pleasing strangers getting reinforced sort of naturally leads to the telling everybody what they want to hear habit which Harry exhibits, because he simply doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to be doing. Telling people what they don’t want to hear is actually hard, and requires you to have to some guiding principle for your own actions, which Harry does not have.

This is one place you may actually offer hot people some sympathy, modern life doesn’t give them much choice. Nihilism is their natural endpoint. Not the ‘fml i might as well end it all’ kind, but the ‘i have no guiding principles kind’, because (1) society tells them they can get away with it (2) science hasn’t offered us a new moral framework, and (3) because other people aren’t real.

To further emphasise why it’s true that Harry has no real reason for what he’s doing: the guy isn’t even horny. I would be willing to accept that as a basic explanation for everything, but how come when Helena tempted him away from Shakira through what seemed like sexual tension alone, and they shared a bed for like two weeks, he didn’t even try to have sex with her?

This is likely the situation for everyone who ends up on Love Island. Incentivised into extreme levels of identity maintenance as a useful way to avoid self-confrontation. No one is more easily caught and spat out by the social media system than the Love Islander. Harry’s cast-mate Toni is an example of this.

Toni got quickly attached to Harrison, who just like Harry had a penchant for anyone that happened to be sitting across from him in any given moment. Toni made it clear that she refused to be involved in any love triangles, while voluntarily continuing to be in one. But the thing that was on the nose for the type of incentivised narcissism that Toni embodies was her high point of violent anger. Crucially, it was not that Harrison was interested in other girls and kept treating her badly, and that they seemed to be on the verge of breaking up every episode. It was that around episode 30, after Toni was trying to steal Harrison back from a girl called Lauren, Toni finds out that Harrison actually had sex with Lauren, while Toni was asleep across their communal bedroom, and that everyone else in the villa knew this but her. That is the point she snapped.

This is not to say that isn’t something that would anger you, I’m pointing out why she was angry: Harrison and Lauren having sex, and Toni not even knowing, reveals that other people have their own worlds where she doesn’t matter to them. Toni was never even going to be told without the rumour making its way to her best pals in the villa. This is a big threat to main character syndrome. Think about why the following is true: Toni wouldn’t have been as upset if Harrison had purposely had sex loud enough so that she could hear. Someone purposely upsetting you is nicer than them not considering you at all.

And the reason I bring up this whole dreary thing is because that is when Toni’s identity maintenance went into overdrive. Once Harrison has pivoted back to being with Lauren again, and Toni hears they’re getting it on, she starts trying to rewrite reality in real time, where she’s the one in control. She tells Harrison she’s done with him and refuses to be an option. She says the same thing to her new love interest Cach, and that she’s happy he can see her as the only prize. This is clearly wrong. She was an option, and she wasn’t chosen. In fact, later that same day, Harrison decides he might be interested in her again, and she ditches Cach immediately. And Toni has to get to retcon-ing again.

But the crucial thing to understand is what happens when people question her story. If you question a narcissist's identity, they bite back. Toni has a supremely confident bite back to everything, like she’s in some kind of HBO drama. Which is crucial, because she really is outsourcing herself. This is the weird paradox of cultural narcissism, that one is at once both highly protective of their own identity, yet totally without any sense of self. Toni doesn’t allow herself to interpret her own behaviour with any degree of uncertainty, so she never learns anything about herself either, so when people question her she just clings to anything that vaguely sounds like it makes sense in the moment. And so she’s reduced to one-liners that could be copy and pasted into any reality show, much in the same way teenagers talk in TikTok comment section memes (before bro hopefully grows out of it). If you don’t grow out of it, you remain with no actual guiding principles, and we are back at nihilism again.

Now, this is where things get really interesting. Because by the same logic this is how you’d expect Harry to handle everything collapsing in on him. He might lose the battle, but he’s going to lunge into a verbal fight the second someone comes at him. This is exactly how he’s conducted himself with every other point of tension.

But this time, when the heat is really turned up, he sits there lifeless. The guy who can talk himself into and out of any situation has nothing to say.

I’m pretty sure it has something to do with this, which has to be the most genius production decision I have ever seen on reality TV…

The islanders become the audience too.

The award show was actually just a new layer of TV. We are watching reality stars watch reality stars/themselves. How’s that for metamodern?

And as their show comes to an end, and the big screen goes black, and they return to their version of reality, Harry suddenly has a different version of events to interpret.

People get confused by Freud’s original conception of narcissism, but it is pretty simple (if a bit too simple): everyone has to be a bit narcissistic because you do only see the world through your eyes, so you can only understand stuff in terms of how it relates to you. Which makes it hard to break out of. But now Harry is watching himself in 3rd person, and if he’s talking to someone else, they equally take up half the screen. In a weirdly literal way, Harry is being forced to understand that other people are as real as he is.

So his usual defences aren’t going to cut it, he has to sit with the actual consequences. I repeat from earlier: you have the fundamental freedom to choose exactly who you are, you choose every second of your life, which gives you ultimate responsibility for the consequences of your actions. If you aren’t a net positive on the world then that is your fault. This is a terrifying truth to deal with, so the default becomes a retreat.

But now, Harry has nowhere to retreat to.

So the next day becomes a fascinating watch, as a now depressed Harry isn’t even looking for sympathy anymore. It seems he actually is realising just how far gone he is.

It was strangely a pretty sad watch. I say this with some caution, but a little part of me related to the guy. Not in terms of his exact situation. I’m not as hot, charming or tall as Harry, but I did the best what I have, and had a couple of hot boy summers to show for it.

And there was this thing I would always do once I knew I liked someone and wanted them to like me and for things to move further.

When your date’s played out, and they’ve told you various stories of their life, and you’ve heard all about their friends and family, and maybe their exes, and they’ve pieced it all back together to the person they are today, you just let them know that you can see it.

I would say something like ‘wow, it’s actually very cool how much you think about the way you think. like you’re really introspective, and reflect on everything that’s happened to you, and actually understand why you are the way you are’

I would always be telling the truth when I say this. Only because that is true for literally every human ever. Our interior worlds take up a much higher % of our reality than we let on. But no one else lets on either, so we falsely assume we are unique in this regard. And yet no one’s ever noticed it about you, until….

I’m not saying all girls are like this. I’m saying all people are like this. You can call it Fundamental Attribution Error or call it the same benign narcissism that Harry has, I don’t care which, but everyone suspects they are a little more agentic than everyone else. That they have more going on down below.

So it goes without saying that this worked every single time.

But the one grace I will give myself is that when I left them the next morning, I did at least find it fucked up how much easier life was when you stopped treating other people like people. And when you realise how much power you can hold over them as a result. And worst of all, it’s actually very, very easy.

I know it’s a terrible way of looking at things, but it’s true. I find Worst Boyfriend Ever despicable, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to end up in prison, but I must admit he’s skilled at holding a mirror up to a culture. I mean, Hunter S. Thompson did the same thing and people thought he was cool for it. They turned it into a movie, put Johnny Depp behind the wheel, and suddenly nihilism is aspirational again.

But in any case, realising the power you can have over other people is unsettling, if not terrifying. You start to think if I can play with these people like they’re action figures, what else am I capable of. That’s how you know you’ve come to terms with the responsibility of existing, when it stresses you out.

My suspicion is that Harry was just able to bury himself further into this hole, which was effective in managing his own guilt and keeping the terror of freedom quiet. Play the character.

Another classic avoidance tactic would be to fetishise surrendering your power entirely. You don’t want to believe that you could affect other people, so you let yourself play the submissive. In a world where nihilism and narcissism makes it quite easy to mess with other people, submission in the bedroom will just become more popular, and I bet it won’t be long until r/cuckold is a weirdly popular subreddit. Oh wait, that’s alr—

Anyway, back to the plot.

I do not sympathise with Harry, but I’m interested by the way out he might have just been offered, and if he manages to take it. And this is where I struggle for comparison.

Classical tragic heroes fall because of hubris, they believe too much in themselves, in their own power and righteousness. Oedipus thinks he can outsmart fate, Macbeth believes he deserves the crown, Hamlet trusts in his moral certainty. Even Achilles, consumed by rage, is driven by passionate conviction about honour and revenge. But Harry isn't undone by believing too strongly in anything, he's undone by believing in nothing at all. Where Oedipus was blinded by his need to know the truth, Harry can't even be bothered to figure out what he wants. Where Macbeth was tortured by guilt and paranoia after his crimes, Harry jokes about 'getting on his level.' The tragic flaw here isn't excessive passion, it's an absence of exactly that. So maybe Harry does represent the first tragic hero of nihilism: a man who falls not because he reached too high, but because he never tried to reach for anything at all.

So what happens in the last act? I think it depends on whether he allows the story to continue.

Because the one thing Harry could do to avoid coming to terms with himself is to go back to Toni’s strategy from earlier, and rewrite reality. He’s admitted he was trying to pursue Shakira behind Helena’s back, which doesn’t make sense, unless he forces it to. He can tell himself and everyone around him that he did really want to be with Shakira all along, and these feelings were just buried deep inside him, and now it all makes sense to them both again. Which means other people can continue to pay the price for his nihilism.

So in the midst of his breakdown, when all hope is lost, he manages to utter this to her…

I pray he works out that salvation can only come from the former.

Overall, great TV. 10/10.

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Now, this is where things are about to go left.

Luigi Mangione was a very strange time for me.

When he killed that really important person, whose name I guarantee you don’t remember, I was obviously taken in by the storm of it all. When his statement got leaked, I was a bit taken aback by how articulate he was. He’s trying to say something, let’s at least see what it is.

His online accounts got found. His goodreads too. Turns out we were admirers of some of the same people. His twitter got found. Turns out we even knew some of the same people. Not just followed, I mean when everyone started sharing their past experiences with him, he had actually messaged and had spoken to people that I’ve spoken to over the years from running in various grey tribe tpot online circles. One blogger told a story about how Luigi paid for his most expensive tier, which included a regular video call.

He said that when he met Luigi, the guy was really perturbed by modern agency. He told a story about how he was in Japan, and saw some paramedics racing to an emergency situation, before stopping on a near empty street because the pedestrian light was red. This had stuck with him.

It stuck with me too, mainly because I was thinking ‘damn that is exactly the kind of thing i would write about’. We really did have quite a bit in common.

I don’t particularly think it makes sense to claim there was a point at which he was ‘radicalised’ per se, as the events that led to the thing count as much as the thing itself, but there was certainly a point where his behaviour shifted. As far as I know, he cut everyone out and got to work. No one knew where he was until he did it.

And this is where the familiarity stops. I personally don’t believe in civilians being able to murder people because they think they are monsters. Because you could be wrong. And even if I do think American healthcare is severely messed up and that guy was a monster, and if alive would have continued to harm countless others, I still oppose it. Civility is hard won and way too easily lost. And when that happens I promise you that your bad back is going to be the least of your problems. (Also your medical insurance premium would actually be higher, but that’s besides the point).

I couldn’t work out what Luigi’s deal was.

Weirdly, I now live really close to a mural of him in East London. It appeared on the side of a railway bridge near the start of the year. No caption, no signature, just his face. It’s huge.

You can’t even tell what his painter was trying to say, which I now think is apt, because no one knew what Luigi was trying to say either. Not even him.

Bluesky, both the actual website and the general physical version that exists among us, still hail him as a sort of martyr. With some vaguely socialist under(over?)tones. Like, yeah, fine. But any kind of critical examination of his stated beliefs show that none of this stuff adds up. This guy is an individualist to the core.

His central obsession was agency, he feared people were becoming NPCS, slaves to stimuli. He followed a mix from Joe Rogan to AOC, read both Elon Musk biographies, Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and the Unabomber's manifesto (which he rated 4 stars), and was interested in rationalism and effective altruism while also believing in inter-generational trauma. He liked Peter Thiel and Jon Haidt. He criticised corporate greed and the healthcare system but was sceptical of "woke" identity politics. His worldview was a contradictory hodgepodge.

Which I will not criticise him for, because realistically that’s true for all of us to some degree. I’m just saying I don’t think he believed what he claimed to when he decided on becoming an assassin. Maybe he had some guiding principles to begin with, but something incentivised him into throwing them away.

Which is where you should now say ‘Hah, gotcha. You said the belief is in the behaviour earlier. He showed you what he really believed when he did it’

Oh yeah, he believes in being locked away for the rest of his life? Is that the action of someone that wants to improve the world?

You can say every revolutionary in history had to kill to make their message heard, and I don’t disagree, but my point is that at least John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald tried to fucking get away with it. I don’t care what your little manifesto said Luigi, if you really believed any of those things than you would have preferred to have been out here fighting for them. I hope they made you watch the CCTV, brother. What a final act of wit to wear that mask to hide your face from yourself. Perhaps that was your last chance at salvation, and you stopped it from happening.

So why did he sacrifice his own ability to impact the world?

By which I mean: you think he didn’t know what would happen? He knew his life was over. He wanted it to be over. He didn’t even try to avoid getting caught. He detailed everything he did before waiting for them in a McDonald’s for God sake. He even kept the murder weapon on him.

"To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience."

How’s that for identity maintenance? Guy wrote the ending of his story in advance.

Why’d he choose this one? We return again:

You have the fundamental freedom to choose exactly who you are, you choose every second of your life, which gives you ultimate responsibility for the consequences of your actions. If you aren’t a net positive on the world then that is your fault. This is a terrifying truth to deal with, so the default becomes a retreat.

Retreat from the power you can hold over other people, retreat from your ability to affect the world, retreat from seeing other people as real people, retreat into the only thing that can stop you from having to confront yourself.

Luigi was very interested in truth. But truth is terrifying. They used to say he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he become one himself. And when Luigi gazed into the abyss, it gazed back harder.

He realised he had to face himself, and wanted out.

As he raised his 3D-printed gun behind the CEO’s back, he may as well have whispered the mythical line.

“I’m either leaving alone, or you’re coming with me.”

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