This is the most inane, obviously fallible plan we’ve heard yet…
Love Island USA is set to make some “major changes” to their casting protocols after several racist incidents emerged among cast members, most recently with axed Islander Cierra Ortega. Adding more background checks seemed like an obvious next step — but when you hear how they’re running things right now, your jaw is going to be on the f**king floor! It’s really no wonder they’ve run into so many problems!
A casting insider spilled the tea to DailyMail.com this week. The insider complained this whole racist slur scandal with Cierra and Yulissa Escobar has been “frustrating and annoying.” It’s the exact kind of thing production tries to avoid before filming starts. Only… they don’t exactly try that hard!
Related: Cierra’s Grandmother Has A Different Response To Racism Allegations
The insider revealed that there’s not a team of high-tech sleuths combing through the cast members’ social media pages to find any potentially problematic content. Not even a bunch of social media-savvy interns. While the production and casting staff do vet the cast’s social media, they don’t do a very deep dive. They just don’t spend the time. Nope, they leave that work up to… the contestants themselves!
That’s right, the source claims they tell all the potential cast members to police their own accounts, purging them of “anything racist, sexist or homophobic” before going on the show. Seriously?? Apparently! The source detailed:
“We tell them to go through their social media to make sure there isn’t a problem.”
They leave it up to the people who may have already carelessly shared offensive content to decide what needs to come down? THAT’s their plan?! Y’all… If they’re the type of person who doesn’t think twice about posting some idiotic racist nonsense, what makes you think they’re going to be reliable enough to go get rid of it themselves??
The insider admitted that means “sometimes [you] have to trust that [contestants] understand what’s acceptable and what’s not.” Which, you know, tends to backfire in these kinds of scenarios. If they posted it, they likely didn’t realize it wasn’t acceptable, you know? It’s a catch-22. In Cierra’s case, she “would have presumably looked” at her Instagram posts and “not seen it as an issue,” the source speculated:
“I don’t think she thought that it was a big deal, but it’s not OK and she should have known that.”
FWIW, the main post that exposed the 25-year-old was a screenshot of an Instagram Story that was uploaded last year. So, it’s not like she could have guessed that was going to come back and haunt her.
She did have an interaction with one of her followers at the time, though. When she posted a selfie vid using a slur directed at Asians, she was informed it was an inappropriate word and did apologize to the fan. So she knew she’d f**ked up in her past. We guess she could’ve gone ahead and warned production — but why would she willingly own up to something that could’ve gotten her booted off Fiji from the start? This was the girl’s dream! She wasn’t going to out herself if she didn’t have to!
Which of course is the other major problem with this honor code nonsense.
There was another post that emerged that was on her feed from 2015 in which she used the same slur btw, though it’s hard to tell if that was also a screenshot floating around or if it was still on her page. Either way, judging from Cierra’s apology video, she thought this drama was behind her, so it’s no wonder it’s not something that came up in her personal vetting process.
As a result of this sloppy background checking, everyone on the show is upset, the insider concluded:
“Everyone involved in the show is annoyed at her and at the situation right now, but it is what it is.”
Just wild…
Whoever thought this was a good plan was either seriously deluded or lazy AF! Maybe both.
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[Image via Peacock]
The post <i>Love Island USA</i>’s Plan To Weed Out Problematic Contestants Was So Dumb It Needs To Be Studied appeared first on Perez Hilton.