Temptation Island, Cheater Fantasy?
Is the Netflix reality show “Temptation Island” a cheater wannabe fantasy? Or is it some sort of endurance pick me dance for couples?
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Dear Chump Lady
I was wondering if you would weigh in Temptation Island generally and this Netflix season in particular. Women taking proven cheaters back. Arrrg. Thank you.
Olga
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Dear Olga,
Chump Lady lives under a rock and was completely unaware that there have been NINE seasons of Temptation Island. Netflix picked up the 9th season, because I guess tying viewers to cliffs and having vultures peck out their spleens wasn’t an option.
The premise:
Temptation Island features four unmarried couples who travel to a tropical island to have their fidelity tested. The couples are separated from one another for two weeks, during which time they must party with a group of singles of the opposite sex whose purpose is to persuade them to cheat.
I wonder why Netflix went with the production costs associated with an island when they could’ve gone to an average sales and marketing conference? Clearly, I lack imagination.
I’m just flummoxed at cheating as entertainment. Or the voyeuristic thrill of the pick me dance. I’d rather be tied to a chair and forced to watch televised golf.
But I guess the idea is if you’re a beautiful young thing in a nebulously “committed” relationship, you’re open to exploring your options. On camera. With millions of viewers.
Obviously Temptation Island is not your average cheater situation.
The cheaters on this blog tend to be ordinary middle-aged fuckwits with double lives. But no one is making a reality TV series about Bob’s pathetic dating profiles, or how he juggles his afternoon parking lot blowjobs. Or Sharon’s Quest for Aliveness with her daughter’s soccer coach. Which isn’t to say it can’t happen. You want reality TV based on reality? Call me, Netflix!
But you want me to comment on Temptation Island contestants. Well, Olga, first off, if you’re in a committed relationship, you’re never a contestant. Knowingly or unknowingly. People who care about you, don’t goad you into humiliating competitions for their affections.
It’s beyond me why these hot women would compete for lunkheads with less IQ than the baby oil slathered on their pecs.
But he’s HER lunkhead!
Which brings me to…
Brion and Shanté
Shanté is the chump in this storyline and she’s shocked, just shocked that her boyfriend Brion would cheat on her. On an island expressly designed for him to cheat on her. Because having Brion as a boyfriend, isn’t punishment enough, she has to be subjected to the audiovisuals of his cheating and have her reaction filmed.
Shanté. My darling child. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS WITH YOUR LIFE?
Brion is unapologetic. Hey, he’s gotta be him!
Last night was a good night. But I didn’t think I’d wake up with any regret or anything. I think I’m still respecting Shanté at the end of the day. I think women respect honesty and being true to yourself. I think a lot of women would rather, you know, have someone there to be real and talk to them and if they’re gonna step out or whatever let them know.
Brion
Could we please raise Aretha Franklin from the dead to hit Brion with a brick to the beat of Respect? R_E_S_P_ (ouch!) E_C_T! FIND OUT WHAT IT MEANS TO ME! (ouch!)
RESPECT!
What exactly is this honesty you’re referring to, Brion? She’s finding out via video, not your frank and candid conversation. But hey, the important thing here is that you’re “true” to yourself.
Shanté, I suggest you leave him to a relationship with himself. His one true love.
Apparently, that’s exactly what she did, after taking him back on the show, she later dumped him. To the relief of viewers everywhere, if the Reddit boards are to be believed.
So, if that’s the takeaway from this schlock, that leaving cheaters is the preferred course of action? I’m all for. Just don’t put yourself in these situations to begin with.
But I guess there’s no ratings in that.
I hadn’t heard of the show either. Now the more I learn, the more depressing the whole thing looks– sort of like Hunger Games with STDs.
The first thing I looked up was whether participants had to get STD testing to participate. Yep. They all had to be tested for cooties like dogs. But because there’s still no reliable test for HPV for men and the cancer causing strains are asymptomatic, there’s still the risk of HPV related cancer.
But it keeps getting worse, The second thing I looked up was whether the singles are actually free to refuse sex with members of a couple. Technically yes but apparently this risks being voted off the island so there’s clearly an element of expectation and coercion involved. And though the show claims that participants are free to act like themselves, producers disallow singles from sleeping with each other and also control and script activities, dictate what clothes participants have to wear, etc.
Basically producers are pimps. Then I had a question about how producers get around the appearance of prostitution so I looked up whether participants are paid a salary. It turns out they may only get a stipend of a few hundred dollars a week and compensation is mostly the “paid vacation” and potential future sponsorship deals, fame, etc. But the Supreme Court in France decided that participants in the French version of the show are, in fact, employees and subordinate to producers. So the whole thing is really akin to “sugaring”– still prostitution but with bits of plausible deniability.
Another creepy detail is that producers are cagey about participants’ backgrounds and some appear to have mysterious or nonexistent employment histories which suggests many work in the sex industry.
“…Hunger Games with STD’s…” 😂
I don’t feel the slightest sympathy/empathy with any of the ‘contestants’ though. What you’ve got here is a bunch of vapid bints of both sexes hungering for a few minutes of ‘fame’ and what they think is the kudos of being on telly. The fact that the premise is ‘testing’ whether contestants will stay faithful is neither here nor there, since it’s clearly set up so they will, and they knew that when they entered. Stupid is as stupid does.
Agree- it’s all carefully curated bullshit.
Maybe I’m a cold fish because I can recognize the cultural and interpersonal forces influencing people’s behavior and choices and recognize how pathetic and miserable these individuals are but still not exonerate the harm they do. Once someone does gratuitous harm, I find myself unable care about them even if I understand things about their backgrounds that seem to “humanize” them. But it really only humanizes the children they once were, not who they’ve became. Understanding what drives people to do ugly things isn’t about amnesty but about prevention– preventing future generations from being turned into creeps and abusers or about predicting what creeps and abusers will do next the better to stop them and protect victims, etc.
Anyway, I think shows like this really embody those malevolent “cultural forces” that both arise from destruction of culture and capitalize on human ruin, stupidity, corruption and weakness. They basically look like corporate capitalism End Times and collapse of empire in the same way that sociologist and author Gail Dines compares the influence of porn to Caligula’s Rome. From an interview with journalist Chris Hedges (https://www.truthdig.com/articles/pornography-is-what-the-end-of-the-world-looks-like/):
The porn industry has hijacked the sexuality of an entire culture and is laying waste to a whole generation of boys,” she warned. “And when you lay waste to a generation of boys, you lay waste to a generation of girls.”
“When you fight porn you fight global capitalism,” she said. “The venture capitalists, the banks, the credit card companies are all in this feeding chain. This is why you never see anti-porn stories. The media is implicated. It is financially in bed with these companies. Porn is part of this. Porn tells us we have nothing left as human beings — boundaries, integrity, desire, creativity and authenticity…
Never heard of this show before. Never particularly want to hear of it again.
Everyone going into it after the first season aired would know what they’re getting into. Gotta wonder if the cheaters intended to cheat and then watch their partners’ humiliation broadcast on TV.
They’re also broadcasting their infidelity. Who would want any relationship, personal or employment, with someone so stupid?
What’s next? Cheating your employer? Robbing the vulnerable? Kicking kittens for fun?
How right you are. I would add that no one sane or healthy would want a relationship with anyone participating in things like this on any level.
For instance, I once attended some charity dinner on a first date with a young producer who, with another producer, discussed ideas for awful, exploitative reality TV shows. The wife of the other producer, who spoke in that classic bored/jaded/monotone private school drawl, kept drily interjecting with ideas exactly like the ones you’re suggesting. To top off her parody list, one of the shows she suggested was “Abortion Clinic!” featuring clashes between pro-choicers and right to lifers.
I would have laughed at the sniping except I was too distracted pondering what this woman’s life was like being married to one of the cultural ciphers responsible for the disintegration of western society or whatever.
As I was being driven home from the dinner (in a requisite brand new black Range Rover like in Altman’s The Player), my date nervously spilled the fact that his producer pal was cheating on his wife. I kind of liked the fact this guy was an emotional blurter and sensed he was genuinely upset about it but apparently not enough to shun the pal nor tell his wife and consequently not enough for me to agree to a second date.
Nothing is more depressing than watching people in the process of committing spiritual suicide, especially if they had a sliver of a soul to begin with. That night I had one of my really blatant, allegorical dreams. In it, my date had removed one of those plastic burn plates, revealing that all the skin had melted off his chest and neck. He looked so sad in the dream and wanted me to touch the gory scars but I recoiled and woke up in a sweat. I realized the other producer’s wife was probably very smart and wondered if she had to sedate herself to stand it but had the feeling she was born in that world and couldn’t smell the burning flesh or brimstone anymore.
Bleah. Still I never regretted getting these icky anthropological tours behind the scenes in the “halls of power” so I never had any illusions. It’s my idea of hell– a combination of tacky, dumb, dangerous and gloomy and no one comes away unscathed.
Your descriptions of the media world are so vivid. These guys remind me of the banking/urban planning/social investment bros with whom I once got my own anthropological visit. They referred to certain groups and organizations of people who tried to do good in the world as having “moral capital.” When speculating on the various kinds of power and influence the players in their worlds could exercise, they had to include “moral capital” as a eye-roll-worthy-but-dollar-influencing x to plug into their calculations.
Yes– shriek– exactly like that. Different playing field, same functional psychopathy.
Plus, to the extent that committing evil tends to dehumanize people, these types are the absolute essence of conformity and entirely unoriginal so if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all.
A close friend talked about this a lot after she divorced her monster ex who was a lawyer for a firm that’s so epically evil that it could have been the inspiration for the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil.
I remember asking this friend before meeting this guy if she was bothered by the firm he worked for. At the time she was convinced that this was separate from who he was, just a stepping stone job on the way to doing good, whatever. It’s not because she’s stupid or morally relativistic. This guy really went the extra mile in masking who he was but, in the end, all the “moral capital” he grubbed with charitable good deeds was cashed in on every manner of personal and professional fuckery you can imagine. To quote Jean Paul “FW” Sartre, “Everything is permitted the hero.”
Obviously this friend has a much different perspective these days. She remarked that her ex could never have survived in his position much less risen in rank if he wasn’t a clinical psycho precisely because companies like this have their hands in so much global skullduggery that they develop strategies for screening out potential whistleblowers. In that particular arena, sociopathy is a job requirement.
If there were a video camera picking up on both my cheating husbands, my life would have been minus long term abuse, ghost pick- me -dancing( when I didn’t know what was happening). Minus STIs and the brain damage of disrespect, verbal put downs, living in chaos for years..Minus actually one daughter conceived during a lul in the affair. Well my Life would have been altogether healthier( except for daughtervwho prefers cheater dad– but i love her anyway as she is mini me..pick me dancing for dads affection….anyway…… I would call this Fantasy island reality show a good way to entertain and an excellent way to lose a turd into the punch bowl of life. Whatever it takes…..that’s my opinion. I don’t watch it anyway. Who needs more pain?Bring on the gladiators!!!!!!
The couples joining the show (or at least the men) have internalized the cheating as normal. I have no other explanation for why they would have it out there on camera. One of the cheaters has a daughter and I can’t wrap my head around how he is ok with this footage being out there for her to find. It is also sad that the couples who parted ways on the show all tried to reconcile after the cameras stopped rolling. Another thing is that you can see the weakness of character, shallowness, lack of accountability and inability to be alone for two weeks (!) in addition to the cheating. There’s a serious clash between how these men perceive themselves and how they really are.
I think you’re right and the really sick thing is how producers and distributors are exploiting behavior that is typically grounded in childhood abuse and domestic violence. I was curious about that too so poked around to find backstories on participants who cheated and the first thing that cropped up was the history of participant Evan Smith and how his own film producer father, Gavin Smith, was brutally murdered by the chumped husband of married Gavin Smith’s married affair partner. https://people.com/crime/evan-smith-temptation-island-opens-up-fathers-murder/
But– go figure– despite the apparent trauma caused to Evan Smith’s family by his father’s adultery, how Evan Smith reportedly stopped talking to his father because of it and then the trauma of his father’s adultery-related murder, he was among the more egregious cheaters on the show. Then the show reportedly featured some sadistic Roman circus antics when Evan Smith’s partner of ten years had a breakdown over being betrayed and abandoned. Then, in another hint of the kind of environment he was raised in, after Evan Smith ran off with one of the “singles” in the show, this relationship reportedly ended following allegations that he was abusive.
Chalk it up to the “vampire infection” of generational cycles of abuse which I think shows like this perpetuate by capitalizing on them
This show started when I was in the 6th grade. Me and my friends thought it was stupid back then.
It’s alarming how many of my friends and coworkers actually watch it now. Kinda wild when 12 year olds have more sense than grown adults.
“Oh wow! My boyfriend cheated on me on a show specifically designed to get him to cheat on me? How could he do this?!”
Girl really?
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if Brion’s dumbshit comment about being true to himself was scripted, and they were scripted to get back together. These shows are never truly “reality.” Which is a pretty bad indictment on what we call entertainment as a society these days…
It does remind me of a dude I briefly dated many years ago who blew off a weekend we had planned so he could go bang his ex. Which he confessed the next day and said he was “being open and honest.” No my dude, being honest is being upfront about your feelings and intentions from the start. It is not cheating and then fessing up later.
The mind boggles and the stomach churns…
Things like this are helping me build my Fuckwit to Human Being Dictionary and Phrasebook(Lonely Planet will write back any day now…anyyyyyyyyyy day….)
“At the end of the day, I still respect…” = “well, these bills aren’t going to pay themselves. ________ is my house partner!”
I don’t really watch TV. I remember hearing about the show aeons ago and was not aware that Netflix picked it up. I was sort of hoping this whole YouTube/Livestreamer boom was going to be the bullet in the back of the head of reality TV.
I don’t know how people don’t reject the premise of this show outright-you are basically forcing somebody to watch their partner cheat (they wouldn’t have one of us on their show, I’ll tell you that for free) and then peer pressure them into taking them back. It’s like those videos of bad parents shaming their children for their Tik Tok.
Sure would be nice if we stopped normalizing abuse and romanticizing betrayal.
Speaking of normalizing abuse, there’s at least one prior contestant from around 2020 who belongs in prison for assault. I never watched the show but just went down a rabbit hole on the progression of contestant Evan Smith from coercive controller and all around hobosexual to his former girlfriend and fellow contested to what sounds like stalking and attempted murder of the woman he hooked up with on the show. I think the takeaway here is that denying the correlation between cheating and domestic abuse is bloody dangerous. It’s only a matter of time before creators of shows end up with blood on their hands.
Both women describe their respective experiences with Smith:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fV88xxS3EM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1_h5y0STI0
“…..is my house partner!”
That made me laugh, fuckwit insisted on his FDR, and to me, to my solicitor, and to the Court, that the rat faced whore was just his ‘lodger’ and helped with the bills…. They really are all the same.
I had never seen this show, my oldest wanted to watch this season, we watched an episode togeher, then she bailed because she has better sense than her mother, I could not look away.I watched the entire season, often enraged, often feeling so sorry for the chumps.
Everything about it was terrible. But it might help a couple of future Chumps. Hear me out, the cheaters are so transparent and awful that maybe it will give some perspective to someone who hasn’t been chumped yet? Obviously that is not the intent of the show, but it could be a side effect.
It’s an odd premise, no couple that is doing great would enter this “contest”.
The guy CL mentions? Brion? The story with him is that he had a wild sex life prior to meeting Shante and she’s perfect for him “except” for the fact that she is not that wild. Wild to him seems to be an obsession with threesomes. I think he wanted her to do threesomes and that is not her thing. That was the subtext I was getting. And all I could think was, “Shante, get out of there. He’s a loser and you are awesome. You can do so much better” Nothing wroing with threesomes if everyone wants to be there. But it seeemed likethat was way out ouf her confort zone and he didn’t seem capable of living without them. He needs to find a gf that is into that and leave her alone. But god forbid he do that and lose all the qualities she has that are great.
So what does he do? Has a threesome as soon as he can arrange it. Shante then gets to watch the footage. while she is on tv.
Then the next day in his private interview is when he said that quote, that he was still “respecting Shante”. I wanted to go through the screen and pummel him. But hey, maybe a future chump who sees this will remember how transparently awful these cheaters were, and they will LACGAL the #$% out of dodge at D-Day #1.
Two of the other guys also cheated. And they did so VERY fast. What was interesting about them is they each partnered up with a specific hot single, and stuck with her. (There were 12 hot single women to choose from, and 4 contestants.) Brion seemed to be trying to make his way through as many of them as possible, while these other 2 cheaters picked one and then it was like they were couple for the 2 weeks. What is even the point of that? They already HAD gfs. And clearly didn’t want that.
As far as the 4 women? None cheated per se. Two did pair up with a single guy, but not until after they saw video footage of their men cheating first.
The singles were interesting. Yes, they were all super attractive. How the 2 genders acted was so different.The single women were acting like strippers at a bachelor party, the single men did a little of that, but were more just being supportive and listening to the 4 women talk about their relationship problems.
The 4 women also were super supportive of each other in a way that was nice to see.
Why would you describe Shante as ‘awesome’? A vapid bint greedy for 10 minutes fame and to be on telly, I should think. These ‘reality’ shows are nothing of the kind.
I get the feeling that some of the partnered women on the show are victims of coercive control who were pressured by abusers to participate. At least this seems to be true for a past participant named Kaci Campbell whose descriptions of domestic abuse were verified by the same woman who poached Campbell’s partner on the show and later paid the price for it by being nearly strangled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fV88xxS3EM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1_h5y0STI0
This isn’t reality TV so much as a forensic crime study with clinical descriptions of systematic abuse. Consequently, I think the real problem here is the current media campaign of denial that cheating strongly correlates to domestic violence. It’s almost easier for people over 35 to understand this because at least many of us grew up hearing strong condemnations of adultery. But it seems like millennials and gen Z all came of age during this media blitz of cheating apologism. Victims may not be dumber or less moral but simply more intensely misled.
That’s harsh. No one deserves to be cheated on, even reality TV stars.
The point I was making is that these people *chose* to go on a reality show, and they knew perfectly well the premise of the show. Which was to test the fidelity of their partner in order to provide entertainment for a television audience. They’re adults, not naive children. So I don’t think I’m being harsh. Adults have to take responsibility for their choices, and where those choices lead them, surely?
Well, she certainly presented as someone that deserved better than the loser she was with. Aside from falling for all his crap, she presented as inteligent and kind.
I think some of these “contestants” actually think that this show will help them. The idea that was likely sold to her was that if they did this experiment and Brion didn’t cheat, then she could have put her doubts behind her. In a “if he wasn’tcheatig then, in real life he reallywon’t be tempted”— which being a Chump, I am not so sure about at all. But I believe that was how it gets sold to these people.
I felt the same way about the Bachelor. If you require me to compete with your other suitors for your attention, they can have you. Boy, bye.
I’m glad Shanté came to her senses.
I just can’t with any of these modern day coliseum like public humiliation programmes.
This, Love Island, Married at First Sight….bleh!
All terrible and designed for maximum drama and humiliation.
I’ve seen the forms people fill out when applying for these and yes, it’s obvious what the producers want- they even ask what skeletons are in your own horror closet. 😆
The sort of people who apply to these things deserve what they get. Morons.
Did you ever see the film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Yes, I did, and I don’t think your correlation holds water. This isn’t the Depression. There is no imperative for people to do this sort of thing in 2025, except for the desire to be on TV and gain a fleeting fame or notoriety.
Have you been watching the news lately?
Are you suggesting these people are starving, and that’s why they’re choosing to do it? Because if you are, I think that’s nonsense.
Certainly we’re in a different century and there’s a different grade of terror brewing, particularly among people under 40 which is one of the reasons the birth rate is plummeting across the globe.
Shakespeare didn’t have the bomb and the Great Depression didn’t have climate change. Imminent starvation isn’t the only terrifying specter that erodes hope and sows chaos and nihilism. There’s also student loan debt slavery, erosion of democracy, civil rights, due process and freedom of the press.
Even people too dumb to understand what’s happening in the world in a political sense still have an animal grasp of looming threat. And sadly, stress and trauma aren’t always edifying and educational for human beings. Most average Joes and Janes are going to crack under the pressure and behave disappointingly because fucking with people’s basic security doesn’t improve human nature.
This post, especially your final paragraph,is possibly the most profound thing you’ve said on here, out of a choice of hundreds.
I totally agree.
Why thank you. I truly wish we weren’t all getting “profound” inspiration these days in the form of profound fear for the future.
My dad was much older than most fathers when I was born largely because, as a disabled WWII combat vet who lived through the depression, he wasn’t sure he wanted to bring children into this terrifying world. But my mother prevailed and here I am. Now I’m having the same fears for my own children and trying to provide them with the same grade of political and philosophical scaffolding my parents tried to equip me with to ward off or at least manage any natural anxiety, despair or whatever drives people to do mindless, destructive, impotent and escapist things in reaction to realities they don’t understand or don’t want to face.
I can hardly blame people for being avoidant. My take is the current set of looming terrors and horrors might appear to be different than 20th century terrors and horrors but not in terms of what’s driving it all nor the relative powerlessness of the usual scapegoats nor the predictable “first they came for…” spread of it.
That bit never changes. I’m just glad that conveying the basic core of what’s going on to the kids seems to be keeping them clear of all the various so-called “crisis cults” that form when the human herd gets spooked like this. I think it also keeps the kids in sporting spirit since they’re able to call events before they happen “because… duh” as they put it. They have a great time mocking all the many different anesthetizing literal or proverbial cults– the manosphere, online gaming and porn and other addictions, radtrad trends, magical thinking fads, disastrous “sex pozzy” distractions, hate groups and maybe the lust for fame as a subconscious attempt to avoid becoming nameless, faceless. helpless future fodder. They have a great time sleuthing the engineers and profiteers behind the “soma.”
But I’m aware the kids’ plucky foresight and gallows humor will only go so far to protect them if they don’t have the means to get out of the way of whatever’s coming which, for the sake of safety in numbers and not sinking into paralysis and hopelessness, will require being part of the collective that pushes back against it.
The thing is I’m having trouble keeping up with it all myself lately because my anxiety has been through the roof. Even pausing the doom-scrolling wasn’t working because my lizard brain clearly wants me to grapple and form realistic long term safety and action plans in response. If I don’t grapple, my danger radar goes off at 4am.
So I delve, bleah. Like Dorothy Parker put it about the escapism of booze, “I tried to drown my troubles but they learned to swim.” And what a bunch of hideous things are floating around these days.
This is awful, schadenfreude TV.
I hate it because it is so diminishing on so many levels.
It’s built on diminished social values – “hey here’s some entertainment people, let’s goad/lure/tempt people to breach foundational trust and cause some pain.”
It diminishes the viewer because it invites a fascination and delight in the misfortunes of the chump.
It diminishes the concept of the strength of intimate bonds by assuming these bonds can readily crumble, when pitted against counter values such as the desire for fame/celebrity/wealth.
It diminishes the sanctity of a committed relationship by assuming that the pick me dance is an acceptable, baseline start point.
Let the games begin.
This show is built on a cynical, soulless and I would say, even hateful, view of human beings.
Who were the flaming production turds who conceived of this rubbish to begin with?
What’s next? Smash- Battery Reef? Abuse Atol? Coastal C—ts?
The FW here is 💯 bona fide FW – all swagger and talk – but the pain Shante is expressing looks real to me.
She does a few intakes of breath and swallows involuntarily at a couple of points. I don’t think that’s acting. I think it’s humiliation being felt and expressed within an exploitative construct.
Her FW has exploited her trust.
The pop-cultural framework she has misguidedly entered has extracted her dignity for some cheap profit making thrills….
Let’s not judge her for the latter – FW probably assured her there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell that he would cheat on the show- and that by participating, they could set themselves up with a home/family etc.
We all believed our FW’s too…
Ugh, I remember when this show first came out. The previews were enough to make me want to vomit. I never watched it. I didn’t know it was still running.