Another day, another female contestant from Love Island being unnecessarily victimised online. A tweet calling 23-year-old model Ella Thomas ‘bad vibes’ has received almost 4,000 likes after being posted 15 minutes into last night’s episode. The full tweet reads: ‘Ella’s giving me bad vibes, dunno what it is yet but I’m not a fan…’.
One huge red flag – for this tweet’s message, not Ella herself – is the lack of knowledge as to why someone is ‘bad vibes’. So it’s fair game to criticise someone for absolutely zero reason, just because they happen to be on your TV screen of an evening?
Others weighed in in agreement with the tweet: ‘She looks like an evil villain anyway’ one replied, while another tweeted that Ella ‘just always has something to say’. Heaven forbid a woman speaks her mind.
Some have rightly taken issue with this seriously reductive, and unnecessary, judgment on a woman who has really done nothing to warrant bad vibes. Except exist? Except put herself out there on TV? Does, and should, entering a reality TV series like Love Island immediately subject you to random, cruel and completely unjustified hate?
Because let's be clear, Ella has barely had a chance to even show her personality yet, let alone be dubbed 'bad vibes' after a few conversations. She's certainly not come across as 'bad vibes' to us, but even if she had, have we not learned anything from the countless contestants who have spoken out about the 'villain edit' contestants often receive in reality TV? Producers need a storyline, and an audience needs entertaining, hence the existence of the 'villain edit' - hell, Ella hasn't even got the 'villain edit' yet and people are still judging her.
One Ella defender agreed, responding to the original tweet: ‘What? girl hasn't got a storyline yet’.
This reaction is part of a larger issue that the Internet, social media specifically, and our internalised obsession with beauty standards has a lot to answer for. We’re four days into Love Island’s latest season and Ella has also been subjected to criticism for her ‘cheek filler’. One critic tweeted: ‘Ella would be pretty without the cheek filler .. she looks a little scary’.
The access that we are given to young women through shows like Love Island seems to create the illusion that we can say what we like about them, criticising them for no reason. Even when people know there’s no rational reason for this hate, they post anyway, because they can. Women like Ella can’t win.
She deserves better, and so do all the others who are torn down online for – *checks notes* – doing nothing but existing.