newsletter issue 208

Lately, I’ve been living on a steady diet of reality TV, on screen and on the page. Between the latest season of Love Is Blind (where everyone says “I feel like we have a real connection” before they’ve even seen each other’s noses) and Aisling Rawle’s debut novel, The Compound, my brain has basically been marinating in confessions, betrayals, and ring-light drama.

In The Compound, 20 contestants, 10 men and 10 women, move into a crumbling desert mansion to compete in a show that’s Love Island meets The Hunger Games. The rules are simple and deeply cursed: if you wake up alone, you’re out. To survive, you need to couple up, perform increasingly deranged “tasks” (“Spit in your bedmate’s mouth. Reward: Sun loungers”), and pretend you’re not losing your mind. It’s grotesque, hilarious, and strangely hypnotic, just like any great season of reality TV.

What’s fascinating is how The Compound mirrors our own need for connection and attention. Like Love Is Blind, it’s not really about love, it’s about being seen. Only here, the price of fame isn’t just embarrassment on TikTok; it’s survival itself. And when you think about it, all of this feels eerily dystopian. People are selling their souls for a shot at love, or a brand deal, dating strangers inside pods, or performing humiliating tasks for prizes. It’s The Truman Show and The Hunger Games rolled into one glossy binge. We laugh, we gasp, we judge, and that’s the scariest part. Because beneath the entertainment lies the uncomfortable truth: our capitalist, content-hungry world runs on the gratification of watching other people fall apart. It’s both a mirror and a warning, glittering just enough to keep us watching.