Overview

The Cierra Ortega Racist Posts Controversy refers to backlash towards Love Island USA season 7 contestant Cierra Ortega after a selection of old Instagram posts in which she uses the Asian slur "chink" to describe the appearance of her eyes resurfaced and went viral online. The posts were shared on Reddit in late June 2025 and continued to spread over the following days, inspiring widespread backlash towards Ortega and losing her a reported 120,000 Instagram followers in 24 hours. Notably, this is the second contestant on Love Island USA season 7 to be accused of using slurs in the past, with contestant Yulissa being quietly removed from the show during its second episode after videos of her using the N-word on a podcast resurfaced. On June 6th, 2025, Cierra left the show.

Background

By early July 2025, Cierra Ortega was one of the frontrunners to win Love Island USA season 7, having recently made her relationship with contestant Nic Vansteenberghe official.

On January 19th, 2015, Cierra Ortega, around 15 years old at the time,^[1] purportedly posted a photo of herself on top of a cliff or mountain smiling, captioned, "Still chinkin' even at the top," using an Asian slur to describe the appearance of her eyes. Cierra later included the post in a video comparing her old photos to her new photos on her TikTok^[2] page on June 14th, 2020.

On June 26th, 2025, Redditor u/Significant_Bit_8106 made a post to the /r/LoveIslandITV^[3] subreddit sharing a screenshot of an Instagram Story purportedly made by Cierra on an unknown date sharing a selfie in a botox clinic, writing, "I can also be a little chinky when I laugh/smile so I love getting a mini brow lift to open up my eyes and get that snatched look. This is not me encouraging but moreso sharing <3," garnering over 560 likes in a week.

Developments

Further Spread

The images gained further traction over the following days. On June 26th, 2025, Redditor u/Strong-Character-808 posted them to the /r/LAinfluencersnark^[4] subreddit, garnering over 1,200 upvotes in a week.

On July 1st, a more complete collection of the botox Stories was posted to the /r/LoveIslandITV^[5] subreddit, garnering over 340 upvotes in two days.

That same day, X^[6] user @elainarcheron shared the posts, writing, "something very crazy to me about Cierra using a slur twice and being friends with racists like brooke schofield and then having the audacity to bully other women at her grown adult age on live television.. not only a racist but also a massive loser," garnering over 2,800 likes in two days.

Reports Of Crisis Meeting

On July 3rd, 2025, The Sun^[7] published a report from an anonymous source purportedly close to the Love Island production crew claiming that the Love Island crew was holding a "crisis meeting" about Ortega's racist posts. The source was quoted as saying, “We will hold a meeting to decide what we should do… but it doesn’t look great at all for Cierra as a lot of us want to take her out of the show as soon as possible."

Cierra Leaves Love Island

During the June 6th, 2025 episode of Love Island, it was announced that Cierra left the show to deal with a "personal" matter, with the show not specifying exactly why she left. This left Nic single, although he recoupled with Olandria later in the episode.

That night, Cierra's parents made a post to her Instagram Stories about the situation, asking people to be respectful and not send her so much hate online.

Online Reactions

There were many reactions to Ortega's racist posts as they went viral. On June 26th, 2025, the day the posts went viral, X^[8] user @stormbxrnbaby posted a meme writing, "that random anonymous la influencer who saw cierra’s racist instagram story a few months ago and saved it for the perfect moment, right when she was on the come up…crazy…," garnering over 42,000 likes in a week.

On July 2nd, 2025, X^[9] user @BuzzingPop made a post claiming that Ortega had lost over 120,000 followers in a span of 24 hours, suggesting the loss was due to the resurfaced posts, garnering over 90,000 likes and 3,800 reposts in a day.

On the same day, TikToker^[10] @stephwithdadeets posted a video covering Cierra's racist posts, garnering over 2.8 million views in a day.

Search Interest

External References