As a proud Reddit lurker, the discourse surrounding season 8 of Love Island USA was inescapable—but, at the same time, I didn't really want to escape it. For six weeks straight, we all watched as men displayed toxic behaviors like narcissism, inflated egos, entitlement, lying, and hostility towards women in real time, and, despite it being difficult to watch, we kept tuning in for more and then critiquing their behaviors on the internet or amongst friends. For me, reality TV swings back and forth between a comfort show I use to unwind and a social experiment designed to reflect social nature and dynamics back at us. In comfort mode, I often forget that I'm watching real people mistreat other very real people. I watch it like I watch scripted drama: with disdain in my heart for the villainous characters, but also gratitude for their existence because no story is good without conflict. In social experiment mode, I watch with my thinking cap on. In the case of Love Island in particular, I remind myself that these people are disconnected from the world in a pressure cooker environment. With this juxtaposition in mind, I still couldn't help but ask myself over and over again: why do men have the audacity to behave terribly when they know they're being filmed? And why do we really keep tuning in?

"Toxic behavior gives us something to react to immediately. It pulls us into questions of who is right, who is wrong, who is lying, and whether someone is going to face consequences," licensed clinical psychologist and expert psychologist on reality TV show Married At First Sight Dr. Joseph Cilona says. "There is also something satisfying about having someone to judge. Real relationships are complicated, but on reality TV, someone behaving badly can make things feel very simple very quickly. We know who we are angry at, whose side we are on, and how differently we believe we would behave." This summer, it was incredibly easy for us all to critique a woman for staying with a man who was treating her poorly—it's easier to judge someone else's relationship than our own.

Reality TV gives us the room, for better and for worse, to judge people, feel superior and, at our worst, be fascinated by their humiliation. We watch on due to fascination—not out of admiration or because we're rooting for the person causing harm, but because, as viewers, we're convinced that we would never behave in certain ways or put up with toxicity, and because we're waiting on the edge of our seats to see the villain be brought to justice. "When a toxic or narcissistic man has been using women or lying to his partner, we watch obsessively because we know that eventually this person's behavior will catch up with them," Clinical psychologist who often critiques reality TV Lauren Napolitano says. "We hope their partner breaks up with them. We hope the women he's used band together and turn on him."

Due to narcissistic tendencies, the interference of producers, and fragility of egos, the toxic behavior continues despite the men being very aware of the fact that they're on camera—so the entertainment and cycle of judgment is never ending. "Men with narcissistic traits have a sense of superiority over others. They usually have a track record of being able to charm their way out of situations, so they know they will use this skill in any situation," Dr. Napolitano says. "Producers can influence emotion much more aggressively through extremely long interviews, revisiting the same emotional material repeatedly, continuing when someone is exhausted or already highly emotional, and learning which questions or subjects are likely to provoke a particular response," Dr. Cilona adds. "The emotion that eventually comes out may be completely genuine, but what the audience does not see is everything that happened before that moment."

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Just when I thought that my parasocial relationship with toxic men on reality TV was over once Love Island USA wrapped back in July, I moved on to season 4 of The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On where narcissism, sexual humiliation, misogyny, controlling tactics, and deception were jam-packed into ten episodes. I had chalked the men on Love Island USA up to poor casting and immaturity (most of them were in their early 20s) and called it a day for the sake of preserving hope, but watching men in their 30s behave very similarly had me wondering if this was a larger, more widespread issue—and about how bleak that is, if so. "There are some troubling signs that specific misogynistic attitudes and behaviors are increasing in certain groups, particularly among younger men and boys, while the larger culture is also giving some of those behaviors more visibility and permission," Dr. Cilona says. "Think about the conditions reality TV creates: romantic and sexual competition, rejection, jealousy, status, constant comparison, and the knowledge that millions of people may eventually be watching. Reality TV does not have to create misogyny, entitlement, or aggression from scratch. It can take something that is already there and intensify it."

While watching these two shows back to back, more questions that circulated in my mind included: where did they find these people? And with mandatory psych tests and all, why would production expose these men to women and platform them on TV? "What casting is really looking for is story potential. They need people whose personalities, relationships, vulnerabilities, conflicts, and choices give producers and editors enough material to build a compelling story," Dr. Cilona says. "That does not mean they are consciously looking for abusive or dangerous people. But the qualities that make someone interesting on television can overlap with qualities that become problematic under pressure. Someone can be charismatic, impulsive, jealous, competitive, emotionally volatile, or highly reactive and also be very castable because those traits create unpredictability and story."

Amongst the cycles of toxicity that entertain us to an extent, the occasional nice, soft, and emotionally mature man offers balance—and hope. "I definitely think that the men on reality TV reflect the spectrum of men in real life. There are kind, lovely men on these shows and these men exist in real life," Dr. Napolitano says. "And there are truly selfish, malignantly narcissistic men in real life, and these men are accurately depicted on these shows."

Despite what we might want to think of ourselves and what we find entertaining , dominance, possessiveness, sexual double standards, humiliation, aggression, and treating vulnerability as weakness are all provocative and interesting to watch unfold because they involve sex, power, status, and conflict at the same time. At the end of the day, hate watching is still watching, outrage is still entertainment, and we can dislike someone, but still be invested in watching their story unfold. Sometimes, perhaps, the person you hate the most is also the one you can't wait to see on your screen again.