The dark side of being on a TV show

So a stat flying around the internet this week was that more people applied to go on Love Island than Oxford University. I'm pretty much in agreement with all the bants on Twitter which summarises that Love Island, despite seeming to only recruit slender and beautiful people, allows more diversity than an institution like Oxford. Also it is literally two separate points pitted against each other to create an argument. More people open a car door than buy oranges. Let's debate.




Whilst I actually think Love Island is a load of crap and the Love Island vs Oxford argument moot, it got me thinking about the stigma associated with such shows. The intelligence and ambition of people who want to be on "these types of shows" are called into question. And I feel especially defensive about this because once upon a time I was on a dating show called Take Me Out.

This post isn't to discuss if people are looking for shortcuts to fame. This post is about my concern about the strength of contestants mental health when being on this type of show, based on my experience. Because with everything that has been happening in the news recently, mental health has never been more important.

The reason why I think this is an issue of mental health is because the type of people who apply for shows where your attractiveness is a criteria may have an ego that's not fully prepared for extreme negativity in an extremely short period of time.

"These types of people have massive egos" they say "why else would they think they could go on a show like this?". Well yes we have a certain level of confidence but at the same time, we also have a certain level of vulnerability. Deep down (though I would never have said this out loud), beyond the doing it for the experience there will be an ego inside that wants to be fed with compliments, attention and positivity.

The process beforehand is quite positive. To be chosen to go on the show does boost your ego. You believe you're quite entertaining and you must be considered reasonably attractive (although attractiveness is a more ambiguous metric to put yourself on because Take Me Out are notorious for having a "variety" of girls and you never really know what part of the scale you sit on) and this is important because we generally like having attention on us. Being happy to have attention on you is, of course, pretty important when being filmed and we had to be comfortable doing this in front of an audience of about 500 people each night.

Once we're at the studio, we're having interviews with OK magazine. There are professional hair and make up stylists who will make you look the best you will ever look. You are surrounded by the best runners and producers who treat you like royalty.

Then the show airs and the trolls come out.

I had tweets spanning from being told I was the ugliest person ever let alone on the show, racist ones, offensive ones telling me I should be performing a ping pong show in Thailand (you know what I mean), that I looked like a man, my face looked like it had been hit flat with a frying pan, I had bad teeth, my voice was so bad that if they had to wake up next to me and heard me speak they'd kill themselves (seriously), that I was the most desperate person on TV. It goes on. I didn't get 1 or 2 like these: I had loads.

People believe that they can maliciously judge us because we are "asking for it" by going on TV...especially a dating one.

I was so shocked. I wasn't much of a tweeter before I went on the show so I didn't truly know the capacity of people to say the most vile things. We were told to expect some mean tweets but I was nowhere near ready for how awful they would be. Bants relating to stupid stuff I said I expected but all the other things was totally uncalled for. My friend thought they were so bad I should report it to the police. I wasn't the only one; the other girls also had some horrible ones. I spoke to a girl from a previous series who had to shut down her account because she couldn't deal with the abuse she was getting. And because I appeared in 4 episodes and they're aired weekly, this was about 1 month of abuse. Mainly when the show aired but then also during the week as people watched on catch-up TV.

Whilst I did laugh off most of these people's tweets, I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect me. Deeply personal comments about myself regarding things I was already feeling vulnerable about was essentially put onto a platform with the aim of making me feel bad about myself. And what started off as a super fun thing to do as a once-in-a-lifetime experience at times felt like a nightmare and we were just expected to deal with it.

And I suppose I was able to "deal with it" based on a variety of things. I was 28 years old at that time and the average age of the other girls were about early 20s. Generally, the things that seemed like a massive deal when you're 20 years old doesn't quite feel the same level when you're approaching 30. Also I hold myself in high regard (haha); I know I have a great life full of fun and adventures and it is 100% better than the ones writing those tweets (I was hardly hating my life when I was partying at all the cool clubs in Mayfair after the show). I accepted that I will never be able to find every single person who called me desperate and tell them that I just wanted to see what Fernandos was like, or every person who called me ugly and say...well actually I don't know what I'd want to say to them and I rode the waves until the show was over, being in constant gratitude to friends and family who I was able to talk to about this. I remember my bestie sending me a message telling me how awesome I am and attaching a tweet she saw from a girl who said something really lovely about me. Because with the bad I also had great support from people I didn't know who said I was pretty and bubbly and positive and were rooting for me to find a match. 

But if I wasn't as old and (slightly) wise as I was, if I was more susceptible to these vicious messages then it might have been much worse. To a certain extent, the fact that I can still remember some of these tweets which were posted about 5 years ago suggests some things have lasting impact.

While social media exists, this will continue to be an issue and this is my concern about people who go on shows like this. Do I think TV shows have a duty of care? I suppose in some respects it's understandable that some sort of support structure would be difficult to implement but in order to attract the kind of people who would make the best kind of TV, it is generally people who would be more vulnerable to malicious comments and may struggle to not be affected by them so I believe there is some duty. Maybe I'm over-worrying about this, maybe those on Love Island are only crying about broken hearts and not online trolls but still unfortunately we are living in a society where people aren't properly prepared for coping with online abuse. I feel like it's a two-prong approach to resolve this; prepare ourselves and our mental health better but shut down on the trolls and not make this an acceptable part of society anymore. I mean this is already pretty good.

Or we could set some bees on them...?

NHS mental health helpline