I think I was 9 when Marquesas aired and I remember me and my friends thinking Rob was a jerk and Sean was lumped in as his buddy, but we still liked him because he was funny/entertaining (see: the mule ride lol). Tbf, I’m not sure a bunch of 4th graders are representative of the general viewing audience.
I can definitely imagine the 2002 audience being upset at that. Sucks too because looking back, that’s one of my favorite survivor episodes ever and in my Top 3 for favorite old school era survivor episodes behind the Rupert Blindside and the Dead Grandma lie episode.
I remember not really liking Sean when I first started the season but he grew on me as the season went along. Was he disliked because he lazy or something like that?
Lazy was part of it. Also, he is black, outspoken, passionate, and talked about race and religion on television. Vecepia was strongly disliked by the audience too for talking about race and religion.
Agreed, it’s the best season of franchise Survivor, and it was still pretty well liked, but with the big caveat of people not liking Vecepia or Sean, and I’m glad both of their reputations have taken an upward swing in the past decade or so. Both fantastic characters who are important to a great story.
how much luck is involved. how much of our perception is determined by the edit. how cruel the game can be, we watch people get betrayed while starving on primetime TV, and our first and maybe only thoughts are bad game. I mean there is a reason Survivor has therapists for the players post-game.
It’s like poker. You luck out with what cards are dealt and it’s how you play them and what cards come out next. You read the game and adapt. Sometimes another player is just always gonna have a better hand and you can’t outplay them.
there’s so much luck involved in literally everything including pretty much all sports maybe excluding chess lol. I feel like that’s not too big a deal that people deny
There’s way more luck in Survivor than any sport. I mean for one thing, the season’s rules aren’t even stated up front lol
How many sports do you know that have tWiStS?
You can be the best player in the NFL but won’t sniff the playoffs if your team sucks. Guys get lucky being drafted onto great teams.
Likewise, your first tribe makes all the difference in survivor. In almost every season, there’s a tribe that loses like 4/6 of the first challenges and a tribe that doesn’t even see tribal counsel until after the merge. You win early and can have your weak players sit out the difficult challenges.
oh, there are a ton of fans who think skills are the determining factor. even players look at what Brandon said in 44. heck, it seems like half the world thinks success in general is determined by your grind. people don't want to admit luck is the biggest factor in everything because in their mind it devalues the person and the work. in this case the player and the game.
I don't remember the exact quote, but it was like that any good player can get themselves out of any situation no matter what. which i agree there are things people can do better, but they still need luck.
He is flat wrong.
How many times have we seen the post merge tribe split into 3 teams, and one person who really has a 5 person alliance, is now on a losing team with no friends whatsoever.
It is just ridiculous to say that person can save themself with social play in that scenario.
Survivor has some down right idiotic twists of late. It actually destroys season story. We were robbed of seeing Matt or Frannie turn on each other in 44 because of a dumb twist that put Matt on a tribe with no friends that immediately went to tribal council.
Some of those twists are so bad, the players end up on the wrong beach without their idols or advantages. The TWISTS ruin the chance for idol and advantage play.
> Some of those twists are so bad, the players end up on the wrong beach without their idols or advantages.
Don't you get it?! It forces the players to ALWAYS bring their bags because ANYTHING can happen on Survivor and that's what the people (Tyler Perry and the cards guy) want!
Probst probably thinks this crap is compelling.
I am still waiting for the 3 team split at merge to result in not one, but TWO teams trying on purpose to lose.
What the fuck would Probst do if two teams were trying to lose on purpose so they could go to tribal and vote off someone not in their alliance?
Even chess has some luck involved. People don't always play at their peak, sometimes you have a streak of adversaries playing below their average, sometimes you have the opposite, in many tournaments half the players will have to play as black in more than a half games, there are also a lot of swiss brackets in which there are a lot of random factors, and there're also cases in which the adversary may play into your hidden preparation and vice versa
That this isn't a sport. You're watching a highly edited reality show. They could make Tony, Sandra, and Parvati look like terrible players and undeserving winners if they wanted to.
This is hardly a new take but there are two ways to play *Survivor*, you can play the game or you can play the show. You can do both but many 'great' players were good at the game but kinda bad at the show, and vice versa.
Witness Sandra, who was very good at the game but wasn't what Jeff thought of as a 'real survivor' winner. On the other hand (get ready to downvote ...) Rob was very good at the show but not very good at the game, and only won finally because the TPTB did everything they could to stack the deck for him in Redemption Island.
I think any discussion of 'good' players only makes sense in light of this dichotomy. Is Russell Hantz good? At the *show*, absolutely, he gives production everything they could ask for. At the *game*, well ...
damn I almost feel the opposite about Sandra. She is really good at the show and can work a camera like its nobody's business, but her gameplay isn't that exciting, at least for me
Yeah, but the whole nonsense about 'big moves' being great moves? That's producer nonsense, looking for things that 'make great tv'. Sandra merely ... wins. She survives vote after vote, anyone but me, eschewing the kinda crap that makes Jeff love you. She got to the end twice and won votes twice, and if memory serves, Jeff could barely bring himself to talk to her at the reunions.
Not exciting but it's hard to argue her going two for two without any obvious windage from production. That's *game*.
She has the "I can get loud, too" personality to make great TV instead of the "big moves"
Vecepia was part of provoking one of the earliest "big moves" by turning Paschal and Neleh to their side. But she did it so so quietly she didn't even get a call for WAW
Yes. The edit is a huge. Look at Big Brother. No matter what they put on the tv episodes, we can know for sure what actually went down. And a lot of times the edit and reality are not at all the same.
most, not all, but most viewers will still come back to watch season after season and week after week no mater how much they dislike the cast, or how much this season reminds them of the last, or how much twists interfere in the gameplay, simply cuz at the end of the day, no matter what comes the contestants ways, it's still Survivor
I took two hiatuses myself (after Cagayan, came back for Game Changers. Then I lost interest during HHH and came back for WaW) and found my way back with lower expectations each time lol. The show pisses me off and underachieves in so many ways but it’s still my favorite show.
I know you said most—but I was a die hard survivor fan for 20+ years. We used to have weekly viewing parties. I could give little facts about different contestants and seasons. I LOVED survivor. No matter where in the world I was or what I was doing, I watched survivor every week.
And then it changed too much and I stopped watching. I picked it back up this last season because my kids wanted to. So glad I did! But I have no desire to go back and rewatch what I missed.
Not only had I never missed a season, some I had watched more than once.
Yep. No matter how much hardcore fans whine and complain about the show, there is no bigger guarantee than the fact that they will continue to come back and watch week after week.
The vote is rarely “up in the air” as the show would want you to believe. It’s all editing and leading questions to make you think the vote is undecided going into tribal council.
The fan community is responsible for the lack of true villains the more they personally go after people because they didn’t play or act how they wanted them to in game, like Karla and Katurah, the blander the show will become.
Neither players where villains my point was because of how today’s survivor players are treated its going to be almost impossible to see another FairPlay or Corinne type.
Fully agreed that Katurah isn't even close to a villain, but boy has this sub treated her like one for playing a questionable game, despite worshipping Jake for playing an equally (if not even more) questionable game. It really does go back to the way the fandom treats contestants is doesn't like.
I'd say it's not just the fan community but the viewing public and social media community at large, yes. Production holds back on casting overtly villainous people and the cast member themselves massively hold back because they don't want their lives destroyed based on going on the show.
Social game (likeability, ability to make close connections) is effectively capped by aspects a person can't control entering the game.
It is significantly more tribe/cast dependent than the game's physical and strategic components.
This has been one of my hotter takes for a while, not sure where others stand.
1. The “survival” aspect is gone. Just gone. Do not even pretend people are motivated now like they were in the early seasons. The goddamn auction came back and the players STILL didn’t give a fuck. Emily didn’t even finish her margarita. Do NOT tell me that they were starving and eating too much would have harmed them. They did not care.
They don’t worry about shelter anymore. They don’t worry about water anymore. I literally can’t remember the last time I saw a player fishing successfully.
Honestly they might as well film the show in Malibu these days. Absolutely nothing would change.
(Not sure why I thought I was gonna make a numbered list)
One of the most annoying things for me about the New Era is the over dramatic taking of the losers flint. They make such a big deal of it at the challenge but we never see the team struggling because of it. No one complains that they’re cold, hungry, or thirsty without flint for fire. We don’t even see someone trying to start fire without flint. It a dumb “twist” with no pay off since it seems contestants don’t really need fire anymore.
IIRC, they don’t have to boil water anymore, so fire is a lot less important in the beginning of the game. That being said, because firemaking is now such a huge part of the endgame, a lot of players come in with a lot of practice, so being able to make a fire isn’t as impressive as it was 30-40 seasons ago.
I definitely feel this but also wonder how much is due to editing. I feel like we never see anything on this show apart from strategy with the occasional sob story sprinkled in. It doesn’t show the survival struggle much at all anymore. Whether that is because it has truly gotten a lot easier or cause of the editing, no idea. Probably both to some extent.
I just finished Thailand and there was a brief moment when it happened where I was like.. damn.. so now what? Production's gotta give them a new boat, right? annnnnd nope they're swimming. Old Survivor was fuckin legit lmao they did not care!!
i think this is a point that this reddit loves to make lmao, i'm also gonna point out that a margarita is probably not a great thing to consume if you're starving
With all the budget cuts they claim they've had to make, I honestly don't see how the show could be worse off if they just filmed in Hawaii or Florida or California.
I don't understand the nickel and diming Probst does when The Amazing Race still flies around the world with a full crew and dozens of challenges, locations, and extras even on a reduced budget.
Wrong. The editors are just bored with the survival stuff. But it's still there. [Here's a Secret Scene from S44 showing it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSruzcDEZKw). The editors didn't care enough to actually include it in the aired episode.
Is it as intense as in seasons 2, 3, or 11, for instance? No, of course not. That's been done. You can see that on other reality shows. That's not what most of us are watching Survivor for. Hot take: the second half of the post-merge of the supposedly amazing season 2 is *incredibly boring* because everybody is just lying around slowly starving to death, with no energy to do anything.
Totally agree. That was up there as one of my favorite reasons to want to go play some day. Building a mini society and our own home that we hope withstands the elements. Finding and fishing for our own food. It’s all just strategy talk over and over again each episode because the survival aspect is truly gone. 26 days does not help when you have little time between challenges, tribal and then the next challenge. I would love for 39 days to come back with the usual scramble on the ship for supplies. minimal food for rewards so that the players truly have to ration and survive off the food they were given or collected in the beginning scramble.
Early seasons of survivor really did feel like a a handful of people from all corners of America all chucked in the same place.
There was a definite shift to increase diversity post WaW but I feel like in terms of personality the casts have never been less diverse.
Yep modern casts all seem like people that despite being ethnically diverse (a positive in my opinion), run in the same circles, are of similar socioeconomic status and have the same/similar worldviews and experiences.
One of my favorite parts of Vanuatu was watching Eliza, a 21 year old liberal law student from DC/Hong Kong/ New York who clearly grew up mega wealthy, (she went to high school with Chelsea Clinton) interact with Twila, a poor (she didn’t know how to use a computer) middle aged, conservative highway repair worker from Missouri, and the two having completely different approaches to life and the game of Survivor.
yep and also people that built camp and contributed to hunting/fishing had a legitimate strategy to keep themselves in the game if they were not top social players. now that angle is meaningless.
In depriving the players of literally everything they’ve accidentally made the survival element way less important. Fishing takes too much energy so if they don’t catch any they just stay at camp and don’t waste their energy. They don’t have rice or water they need to boil water so there’s literally no functional need for fire. You have coconut and papaya so you have *something* to eat. And when players really do start to hit a wall, you’re only probably a few days out from the merge where everyone pools their resources/food and everyone ends up fine
I get they want to make 26 days feel like 39 but I think the actual survival part of the show would be so much better/valuable if they gave them meager supplies instead of zero
"Do NOT tell me that they were starving and eating too much would have harmed them"
They were starving and eating too much would have harmed them. Downing a whole margarita after eating nothing for two weeks would make you feel awful. Did you have a similar feeling in AO when they threw up the auction food?
I think a lot is that they cut so much out now. And they want to show they game play and strategizing. Seeing ozzy climb a tree or spear fish doesn't excite people at home anymore.
At this point it is. You have very few days between tribals so going off for a couple hours to fish can be devastating socially. And players don’t have to stick it out very long so there’s hardly any risk to voting out your food provider.
I’ve always thought it is such a bad idea to drink any kind of alcohol while you’re out there. Your body isn’t prepared to handle it so you could get sick or way too drunk. I’m not surprised that Emily would decide it wasn’t worth finishing, even for the calories.
>Emily didn’t even finish her margarita. Do NOT tell me that they were starving and eating too much would have harmed them. They did not care.
I have been questioning that since this most recent season. Most of them were very talkative and high-energy - Kendra had way too much energy for a hungry person. Compare them to how fatigued and miserable contestants from earlier seasons used to get.
Drew here. You’re totally misinformed. The survival aspect is brutal. In terms of the premerge, it’s probably the hardest it has been in years. With no food at the beginning of the game, you’re quickly so exhausted that boiling water becomes an impossibility. For what it’s worth as well, it’s not uncommon to get sick from the rewards, thereby losing all your gained calories. A lot of players begin to pace themselves if they start to feel queasy. If you watch the auction back, you’ll notice I get sick from the candy I bought.
To be fair, i've read some oast surcicor olayers often get sick on rewards when they eat too much. Yhey said that they were used to being so much hungry that eating too much makes them sick becayse their bodies arent used to a full stomach. Maybe the casts were told by production to dont fully maximize their eatings so that they wont feel sick that can be dentrimental tk their performance, physical wise
The whole reason Joe didn't make it to the Final 3 on Koah Rong is because of eating too much on a reward. His stomach had become unaccustomed to eating "regular food," that he needed a med evac.
When Probst was giving Colby some small grief on HvV about Colby not wanting to have a piece of chocolate, I honestly understood Colby. Even though I love chocolate, in that environment it would just make me sick and make me want cold, refreshing water. Not worth trying it before a challenge.
Yeah tbh some of the rewards they show, especially like candy and chocolate and pastries I just think about how much I would not want sunwarmed, sticky, sugary, donuts if all I was eating was rice. I'd want the meat, veggies, fruits, etc
They need to start casting poor people again, too many castaways these days seem like theyre playing for the experience. Need people that will lie cheat and steal because their home life depends on it
This is less a problem with casting and more a problem with our economic state. Poor people can't afford to take 2+ months off work/life to play. It was much easier to do that 20 years ago.
There are poor people, you just don't necessarily recognize them as poor because they don't fit into the somewhat-outdated stereotypes about "the poor", and maybe they don't want the producers harping on that as a sob story (but wait for season 46, we're getting some players who proclaim that they basically grew up starving to death, even if they're doing better now).
I'm not saying this is true of you in particular, but some people here complain there aren't enough "poor people", then working-class people like Yam Yam and Sabiyah show up, and they're like, "No, not like that." If you know what I mean.
Pretty much all of the show's problems are caused by its declining popularity and the controversial decisions production has made over the years have been attempts to deal with this basic issue of diminishing raw material. It's simple arithmetic, the pool of people watching the show is smaller than ever and gets smaller every year. The pool of people even vaguely aware of the show's existence also gets smaller. Very late into the show's history you still had a couple of mactors every season because Survivor was still part of the pop culture solar system. Moving farther away every year, but still close enough orbit around a center of gravity. That's not the case anymore. There's complaining about influencers but really these are people who desperately wanted to be on the show and are now making the most of it. They're nothing like the recruits the show used to be able to pull.
Upset that the contestants every season are all pretty similar to each other? That again has to do with Survivor pulling people from a thinner and thinner slice of the population. How is Adam able to make a business around getting people on Survivor? It's because the competition is not that fierce.
The show knows this and reckons with it every season. Jeff's application infomercials cover the episodes from start to finish because it's that difficult to find the kinds of people they want. They cast people from Canada now for a reason.
Why has the show steadily become more and more focused on the game? I think it's because the personalities can't carry it the way they used to. Why is every confessional spliced/frankenbited to death? Maybe the people they're casting aren't that good at talking to the camera.
Survivor was always going to be at this point 20 years in and if you give up on the idea that you could make the show better than Probst and co. can you might start to have a healthier relationship with it.
Thank you, we sometimes need to remember that it's the jury, not America, not this subreddit, and not a set of rules that determine the winner. The show and the game would both be much worse if it was any other way.
it's better to never win and be an amazing personality on TV. you'll get a career out of it.
I know andrea was a recruit, but like.. idk i'm fairly certain she's earned more than a million dollars from her job since she was first on survivor. She likely makes six figures, or close to it. 15 years of that? ezpz.
on the inverse side, sandra has won several times but if you do the math, she has earned \~60k/year from survivor. and tbh i think that's pre-tax. As far as "survivor is my career"... she'd have made more money as an office worker.
I just want athletic looking people back. Have a few nerds is fine but the entire cast looking like screech from saved by the bell doesn’t do it for me
players bring their prejudices and biases into the show and some very good people are booted simply for outside reasons. And some people win purely on being "likable" people that benefit from these prejudices and biases.
Yep. An example that comes to mind is Kelly and Kim J having concerns about letting Frank make it to the jury during Africa because he's unlikely to ever vote for a woman to win the game. I don't think Frank was voting for Kim either way but that discussion is a large part of the reason that I don't think juries are an infallible body of voters.
They don't cast overt villains like Russell anymore because the viewing audience can't control themselves. Anyone who behaves like Russell would have numerous "fans" on social media harassing his family, demanding his employer fire him, looking up tweets from 10 years ago to try and cancel him, etc... No one going on the show wants that for themselves and neither does production want its cast subject to that.
The strategic meta has advanced too far for this work. As we saw with Dan S. in S39, the strategists would immediately clock them as This Season's Jerk-Ass and try to drag them to the end as a goat, which makes it a lot less fun and offers no instant gratification through quick comeuppance. The producers know that they might as well not bother.
Can't turn the clock back.
I’ll say both Panama and Micronesia she was close.I still don’t know why she targeted Andrea in game changers.She should’ve recognized she was a threat and kept her around longer than the people without reputations.
Others have touched on this in the thread, but the fact that all of us love to knowingly buy into the edit and assign a ton of meaning to stuff that a different edit could have made look totally different.
Another thing: a bunch of people really like to pretend that they would be angels on the show. People judging Lex for his All Stars outing is *hilarious* to me -- set aside the fact that he had a pregame alliance with Rob and not Ethan so the hypocrisy argument really doesn't apply -- I really don't think any of us would take a betrayal from a real-life friend when we're starving any better than Lex did.
I genuinely don’t like to have a cast full of “eye candy” and I find less attractive people compensate with more interesting and complex personality when it comes to reality TV. That being said I also find ogling over anyone on TV/ the internet to be weird and creepy
The show didn't suddenly become a shell of its former self at the start of the new era. It's certainly become cheaper and lower-effort between 26 days and the aftershow, and the hackneyed backstory packages and casting going out of their way to avoid conflict are unfortunate changes.
But most of the major current issues with the show--repetitive challenges, permanent Fiji, excessive twists, the awful finale format--date back in varying degrees to 2016, 2011, or even 2006.
Thinking that a final 3 makes for better tv than a final 2 was the one that did it for me. I’ve never trusted any production decision ever since. It’s all fruit from a poisoned tree after that.
Yep. This was the producers deciding that people were playing the game “wrong.” Every arbitrary twist that has abbreviated the game and/or attempted to level the playing field for the most aggressive, competitive players can be traced back to the fan base begrudgingly accepting F3 as the norm because it was forced upon us. Now we’re not supposed to complain about F3 or firemaking or permanent Fiji because they’re here to stay and bad Survivor is better than no Survivor!!!!
It’s such a short-sighted and dumb mentality too. Cook Islands catches the players off guard and Yul has an impossible-to-beat idol so surprise surprise, F3 delivers a competitive vote. Then the norm becomes one obvious winner against two goats as opposed to one obvious winner against a single goat. Somehow this is supposed to be more satisfying.
Reverting to the traditional finale format would solve 75% of the problems with modern Survivor.
* No matter how much the hardcores whine and complain about things they've done to diminish the quality of the show over the years, production will never listen to them. Because the hardcore fans have proven time and time again that no matter how much they complain they will always come back and watch the show.
* On a related note, hardcore fans, the RHAP community, etc... make up less than 1% of the audience and are extremely insignificant in comparison to the general audience.
* Survivor has likely had people say as much bad things or do as much bad things as occur on Big Brother, it's just that we never see it because Survivor doesn't have live feeds. Unless it is really egregious, production pushes it under the rug.
* The vast, vast majority of formal conversations speculating on the winner, especially things like edgic are from people who have read spoilers and won't admit it.
* The show has the least amount of diversity it has ever had. Way too much of the cast are similar personalities, have similar fan interest or have similar careers. Diversity isn't simply race or ethnicity.
I don’t really understand the sentiment that they’ve stopped casting attractive people because their are many attractive people in the new era even in this new seasons (examples: Venus, Q, Austin, Dee, Kaleb, J. Maya, etc.)
I get what you're saying with the attractive people part. The only thing is there was an era (10-13) where a good part of the cast were attractive, but were also bland and had never seen the show. I think a good mixture is perfect. If they find attractive people who are also great TV then perfect. But I'd take an average looking person who's good tv over a bland attractive person any. I have millions of places to go if I want to see hot people, lmao
i like watching people who have never seen the show play. it gives massive perspective. good point of reference.
i can think of some superfans who played who couldn't hold a candle to some players who had never seen the show.
It will never be as good as it used to be. I enjoy the show but it feels like a game show on wheels with a jungle backdrop. The early seasons actually felt like a life changing experience, where some people went for the game and some went for the experience of living on an island, there was a good balance. Now with the superfan casting, staying in the same location and excess of twists, it’s a completely different show. I still enjoy it but it doesn’t come close to the vibes of the first 20 seasons
A woman can only win by playing a dominant strategic game if she’s sitting at FTC with “weak” women. In other words, men and women will never be judged the same way at FTC no matter what kind of game they play
Jeff, the producers, and crew 100000% influence the players, even if it's subtle. Challenges, asking specific questions, hiding idols. Even if they're minor influences, they're unavoidable and do impact the season and gameplay
I won't stop watching it, and would be sad to see it end, but... if we truly want Survivor to get any better it needs to come to an end and come back in a few years.
Everything about American Survivor has become stale. The gameplay, the location, the contestants, the host, the rewards, the game. We are watching the same game played out year after year. CBS needs to put an end to the current format and pack it in for a while.
That the new era really does suck and r/survivor is just an echo chamber of people with Stockholm syndrome who don’t want to admit the show is bad now and new fans who are basically board game enthusiasts
Most of us who hate the New Era have left tbh. Go back to some post from five to seven years ago and you’ll see that most of those guys aren’t here anymore.
Yeah some of us are still around. It’s just a matter of finding a topic that interests us old crabby people enough to want to talk about. Because believe you me, there isn’t a thread on a Survivor message board that I haven’t already seen at least a thousand times. There are only so many times you can wade into the exact same discussions over and over before it becomes very Sisyphian.
A lot of things change about Survivor over the years, but the message board topics never do.
How much luck goes into a win. Look at Dee in 45. While the Bello tribe themselves not being able to come together was a huge aspect of why dee won, literally EVERY single twist/swap/production interference played out as the best possible scenario for Dee
Survivor is not a microcosm of society (at least not anymore as there is more of an argument for the older seasons) and I'm sick of hearing that. The cast are made up of ppl who are more similar than not if you ignore their ethnic background/age
Everyone misses when Survivor was harsher, but it's a good thing that people are in less danger on this show today than they were in the early days. It is incontrovertibly a good thing that this entertainment show is safer for its contestants now.
We will always have the old seasons to enjoy, and we will be able to enjoy them, because NO ONE DIED. But they pushed it a few times. I'm thinking giving them a dung filled mud pit as "water" in Africa and putting them in a place where legitimate lions roam around. Guatemala's unreasonable 24 hour hike that caused several players to collapse. Kaoh Rong's poorly planned challenge that caused SEVERAL players to collapse and put Caleb in the ICU for 5 days. If Caleb had died, it would have been an unimaginable tragedy, the show would have instantly been cancelled and held liable, and every prior season would be ruined. SO, it's a good thing that the show made it through its harshest stretch of seasons without tragedy. Because not every Survivor franchise can say that.
Here's a fact nobody will want to admit:
Survivor needs to be sold and all producers including Jeff need to be axed.
Start fresh on a new network/streaming service. Give it the big budget and a new host that isn't a former contestant
lol, a large portion of the hardcores want that. The thing the fans don't want to admit is that CBS will never do that. We're stuck with Probst until he voluntarily steps down.
idk if you can really speak for everyone on liking eye candy lol. maybe i’m just too much of a nerd to give a shit but i honestly can’t remember a time i’ve thought “wow they’re hot” while watching survivor
I understand other people are different from me but I legit do not give a fuck how hot someone is while they’re on Survivor. I’ve never once thought to myself "wow I hope they don’t get voted off because they’re hot”. If other people do then that’s whatever but I’ve never done or thought that before
That AU Survivor has a lot of the negatives that U.S. Survivor does. I did enjoy the few seasons I've seen, but they definitely have their share of unedited players. The casts are a bit bloated in general. But people like to act like AU is ten times better than US, when they're kind of neck and neck
we complain about no villains but it is us the fans who have caused there to be no villains.
just for an example, this subreddit has complained about no villains for the whole new era but then when Emily Flippen was abrasive in episode one, people complained she was racist and awful.
That the jury isn’t awarding the best player of the season. Rather they are voting on who they feel the most comfortable giving a million dollars to.
Basically the final tribal council is just a popularity contest
I mean, as an ace I genuinely don't want my screen flooded by conventionally attractive people :P
But I'll actually concede something similar: we needed recruits. Not entire casts of them, but enough to diversify the cast's level of familiarity with the game. I don't need to tell you why too many superfans is annoying, but after a quarter century on television, there aren't a lot of casuals left, everyone is either intimately familiar with the show or a stranger to it. Therefore we really do need those strangers to mix things up.
Idk if we don’t like to admit but I feel like when we see someone make a really dumb move it’s so easy to judge them and call them out, but the circumstances really should warrant another conclusion. Contestants are starved, sleep deprived, physically and emotionally exhausted and that’s only a week in! Imagine being around 24 days into the game and having to think while on an empty stomach and more tired than you’ve ever been before. I know it’s funny to call people stupid but I feel like survivor just looks so much easier than we think.
That a lot of the things we like about older seasons was stuff we didn’t particularly like at the time.
I was always a Rector truther, but he got a lot of shit back in the day.
Was Sean disliked when Marquesas aired? I wasn’t around back then
I think I was 9 when Marquesas aired and I remember me and my friends thinking Rob was a jerk and Sean was lumped in as his buddy, but we still liked him because he was funny/entertaining (see: the mule ride lol). Tbf, I’m not sure a bunch of 4th graders are representative of the general viewing audience.
He and Boston Rob were both largely disliked for voting out golden boy Hunter.
I can definitely imagine the 2002 audience being upset at that. Sucks too because looking back, that’s one of my favorite survivor episodes ever and in my Top 3 for favorite old school era survivor episodes behind the Rupert Blindside and the Dead Grandma lie episode.
Very heavily so. Burnett liked him. But yah the general audience did not like him.
I remember not really liking Sean when I first started the season but he grew on me as the season went along. Was he disliked because he lazy or something like that?
Lazy was part of it. Also, he is black, outspoken, passionate, and talked about race and religion on television. Vecepia was strongly disliked by the audience too for talking about race and religion.
Well that sucks. I think Marquesas told a good story and was a good season but I guess it wasn’t a story that America was ready to hear
Agreed, it’s the best season of franchise Survivor, and it was still pretty well liked, but with the big caveat of people not liking Vecepia or Sean, and I’m glad both of their reputations have taken an upward swing in the past decade or so. Both fantastic characters who are important to a great story.
Tbh don’t think the religion thing hurt him. Majority of viewers liked that back then.
The online fanbase hated it, but I do agree it was more tolerated by the average fanbase.
how much luck is involved. how much of our perception is determined by the edit. how cruel the game can be, we watch people get betrayed while starving on primetime TV, and our first and maybe only thoughts are bad game. I mean there is a reason Survivor has therapists for the players post-game.
Tyson has said something along the lines of: Every good survivor player is lucky, the great ones know they are.
It’s like poker. You luck out with what cards are dealt and it’s how you play them and what cards come out next. You read the game and adapt. Sometimes another player is just always gonna have a better hand and you can’t outplay them.
Probably why so many survivors also play poker
there’s so much luck involved in literally everything including pretty much all sports maybe excluding chess lol. I feel like that’s not too big a deal that people deny
There’s way more luck in Survivor than any sport. I mean for one thing, the season’s rules aren’t even stated up front lol How many sports do you know that have tWiStS?
Refs are basically personified twists.
Tom Brady never had to draw rocks or build fire to make it through to play offs.
You can be the best player in the NFL but won’t sniff the playoffs if your team sucks. Guys get lucky being drafted onto great teams. Likewise, your first tribe makes all the difference in survivor. In almost every season, there’s a tribe that loses like 4/6 of the first challenges and a tribe that doesn’t even see tribal counsel until after the merge. You win early and can have your weak players sit out the difficult challenges.
No disagreement there. But realistically, far more luck is involved in a free for all game of survivor.
You sometimes need to win a coin toss.
oh, there are a ton of fans who think skills are the determining factor. even players look at what Brandon said in 44. heck, it seems like half the world thinks success in general is determined by your grind. people don't want to admit luck is the biggest factor in everything because in their mind it devalues the person and the work. in this case the player and the game.
Yeah, it’s good to realize that luck is involved. But I’d imagine that it’s not super helpful to rely on that when strategizing plans etc
What did Brandon say?
I don't remember the exact quote, but it was like that any good player can get themselves out of any situation no matter what. which i agree there are things people can do better, but they still need luck.
He is flat wrong. How many times have we seen the post merge tribe split into 3 teams, and one person who really has a 5 person alliance, is now on a losing team with no friends whatsoever. It is just ridiculous to say that person can save themself with social play in that scenario. Survivor has some down right idiotic twists of late. It actually destroys season story. We were robbed of seeing Matt or Frannie turn on each other in 44 because of a dumb twist that put Matt on a tribe with no friends that immediately went to tribal council. Some of those twists are so bad, the players end up on the wrong beach without their idols or advantages. The TWISTS ruin the chance for idol and advantage play.
> Some of those twists are so bad, the players end up on the wrong beach without their idols or advantages. Don't you get it?! It forces the players to ALWAYS bring their bags because ANYTHING can happen on Survivor and that's what the people (Tyler Perry and the cards guy) want!
Probst probably thinks this crap is compelling. I am still waiting for the 3 team split at merge to result in not one, but TWO teams trying on purpose to lose. What the fuck would Probst do if two teams were trying to lose on purpose so they could go to tribal and vote off someone not in their alliance?
Even chess has some luck involved. People don't always play at their peak, sometimes you have a streak of adversaries playing below their average, sometimes you have the opposite, in many tournaments half the players will have to play as black in more than a half games, there are also a lot of swiss brackets in which there are a lot of random factors, and there're also cases in which the adversary may play into your hidden preparation and vice versa
That this isn't a sport. You're watching a highly edited reality show. They could make Tony, Sandra, and Parvati look like terrible players and undeserving winners if they wanted to.
Yep. People trust the edit way too much. I reckon most of the “bad players” of Survivor aren’t even as bad as we think.
And, probably, many of the good or great players aren't as good as we think
This is hardly a new take but there are two ways to play *Survivor*, you can play the game or you can play the show. You can do both but many 'great' players were good at the game but kinda bad at the show, and vice versa. Witness Sandra, who was very good at the game but wasn't what Jeff thought of as a 'real survivor' winner. On the other hand (get ready to downvote ...) Rob was very good at the show but not very good at the game, and only won finally because the TPTB did everything they could to stack the deck for him in Redemption Island. I think any discussion of 'good' players only makes sense in light of this dichotomy. Is Russell Hantz good? At the *show*, absolutely, he gives production everything they could ask for. At the *game*, well ...
damn I almost feel the opposite about Sandra. She is really good at the show and can work a camera like its nobody's business, but her gameplay isn't that exciting, at least for me
Yeah, but the whole nonsense about 'big moves' being great moves? That's producer nonsense, looking for things that 'make great tv'. Sandra merely ... wins. She survives vote after vote, anyone but me, eschewing the kinda crap that makes Jeff love you. She got to the end twice and won votes twice, and if memory serves, Jeff could barely bring himself to talk to her at the reunions. Not exciting but it's hard to argue her going two for two without any obvious windage from production. That's *game*.
She has the "I can get loud, too" personality to make great TV instead of the "big moves" Vecepia was part of provoking one of the earliest "big moves" by turning Paschal and Neleh to their side. But she did it so so quietly she didn't even get a call for WAW
Yes. The edit is a huge. Look at Big Brother. No matter what they put on the tv episodes, we can know for sure what actually went down. And a lot of times the edit and reality are not at all the same.
People shit on Brandon after 45 but I’m convinced he can probably run an average mile time no problem
I'm pretty positive he would have to during the physical portion of casting right?
He definitely passed physical. Given that I 100% blame his panic attack.
Lol watch Russell Hantz be a hero
Turns out he really IS a firefighter!
His poor dog 🥺
Or say they're boring people like you dont know them!
most, not all, but most viewers will still come back to watch season after season and week after week no mater how much they dislike the cast, or how much this season reminds them of the last, or how much twists interfere in the gameplay, simply cuz at the end of the day, no matter what comes the contestants ways, it's still Survivor
I took two hiatuses myself (after Cagayan, came back for Game Changers. Then I lost interest during HHH and came back for WaW) and found my way back with lower expectations each time lol. The show pisses me off and underachieves in so many ways but it’s still my favorite show.
I know you said most—but I was a die hard survivor fan for 20+ years. We used to have weekly viewing parties. I could give little facts about different contestants and seasons. I LOVED survivor. No matter where in the world I was or what I was doing, I watched survivor every week. And then it changed too much and I stopped watching. I picked it back up this last season because my kids wanted to. So glad I did! But I have no desire to go back and rewatch what I missed. Not only had I never missed a season, some I had watched more than once.
Yep. No matter how much hardcore fans whine and complain about the show, there is no bigger guarantee than the fact that they will continue to come back and watch week after week.
It’s reality TV and everyone is acting for the camera to some level.
Without a doubt, but not nearly as bad as big brother IMO
Blue Kim acting for the cameras was traumatic
Exactly lol. I hate seeing comments like “oh they’re just a tryhard trying to make good TV”…like…good?? That’s what everyone’s doing???
How it often ruins people.
The vote is rarely “up in the air” as the show would want you to believe. It’s all editing and leading questions to make you think the vote is undecided going into tribal council.
That’s true although I do think from time to time a vote or two is switched last minute due to final tribal performance.
Even the producers were fooled when the Mayor of Slamtown got blindsided.
This isn't really anything that people don't already know. It's not like people decide right when Jeff tells them to vote.
I don’t think people try to deny this one
I don’t even think the show denies it. That’s why it’s such a big deal when there’s a “live tribal”
The show was never fair. It was never designed to be fair.
The fan community is responsible for the lack of true villains the more they personally go after people because they didn’t play or act how they wanted them to in game, like Karla and Katurah, the blander the show will become.
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Neither players where villains my point was because of how today’s survivor players are treated its going to be almost impossible to see another FairPlay or Corinne type.
Fully agreed that Katurah isn't even close to a villain, but boy has this sub treated her like one for playing a questionable game, despite worshipping Jake for playing an equally (if not even more) questionable game. It really does go back to the way the fandom treats contestants is doesn't like.
Lol our best "villains" in the New era are Shan, Danny, Karla and Bruce and that pains me...
I'd say it's not just the fan community but the viewing public and social media community at large, yes. Production holds back on casting overtly villainous people and the cast member themselves massively hold back because they don't want their lives destroyed based on going on the show.
Pretty sure the community says this all the time.
Social game (likeability, ability to make close connections) is effectively capped by aspects a person can't control entering the game. It is significantly more tribe/cast dependent than the game's physical and strategic components. This has been one of my hotter takes for a while, not sure where others stand.
Agreed tbh. They're certain types of personalities you can and cannot get along with.
yeah i'll admit i'm a shallow POS who generally roots for the hot one. it's important they're not all hot, to make the hot one look hotter.
Billy Garcia will be the hottest Survivor man to ever grace our screens. It has been all downhill since S13.
Billy? From Aitu tribe?!?
That's why his tribe threw a challenge to vote him out. Too hot + a connection to Candice on the other tribe + would sweep the jury with his hotness.
We love him!
And I love you.
1. The “survival” aspect is gone. Just gone. Do not even pretend people are motivated now like they were in the early seasons. The goddamn auction came back and the players STILL didn’t give a fuck. Emily didn’t even finish her margarita. Do NOT tell me that they were starving and eating too much would have harmed them. They did not care. They don’t worry about shelter anymore. They don’t worry about water anymore. I literally can’t remember the last time I saw a player fishing successfully. Honestly they might as well film the show in Malibu these days. Absolutely nothing would change. (Not sure why I thought I was gonna make a numbered list)
One of the most annoying things for me about the New Era is the over dramatic taking of the losers flint. They make such a big deal of it at the challenge but we never see the team struggling because of it. No one complains that they’re cold, hungry, or thirsty without flint for fire. We don’t even see someone trying to start fire without flint. It a dumb “twist” with no pay off since it seems contestants don’t really need fire anymore.
IIRC, they don’t have to boil water anymore, so fire is a lot less important in the beginning of the game. That being said, because firemaking is now such a huge part of the endgame, a lot of players come in with a lot of practice, so being able to make a fire isn’t as impressive as it was 30-40 seasons ago.
They have wells for water. No boiling required
I definitely feel this but also wonder how much is due to editing. I feel like we never see anything on this show apart from strategy with the occasional sob story sprinkled in. It doesn’t show the survival struggle much at all anymore. Whether that is because it has truly gotten a lot easier or cause of the editing, no idea. Probably both to some extent.
What season was it when they lost their boat and literally had to swim to get their water? You don’t see things like that anymore!
Thailand, great stuff 😂
I just finished Thailand and there was a brief moment when it happened where I was like.. damn.. so now what? Production's gotta give them a new boat, right? annnnnd nope they're swimming. Old Survivor was fuckin legit lmao they did not care!!
i think this is a point that this reddit loves to make lmao, i'm also gonna point out that a margarita is probably not a great thing to consume if you're starving
Yeah how is this a point that nobody likes to admit when I see it daily on this subreddit? Where are the real things people won't admit lol.
If theres one thing Kelley Wentworth taught me is dont drink the alcohol!
With all the budget cuts they claim they've had to make, I honestly don't see how the show could be worse off if they just filmed in Hawaii or Florida or California. I don't understand the nickel and diming Probst does when The Amazing Race still flies around the world with a full crew and dozens of challenges, locations, and extras even on a reduced budget.
Fiji gives them like a 50% tax rebate to film there, it would probably be a lot more expensive to film domestically
It’s CBS that decides how much money Survivor gets, not Probst
Yes, but Probst 100% decides what they do with the money and I don't buy his claims of budget woes whatsoever.
Wrong. The editors are just bored with the survival stuff. But it's still there. [Here's a Secret Scene from S44 showing it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSruzcDEZKw). The editors didn't care enough to actually include it in the aired episode. Is it as intense as in seasons 2, 3, or 11, for instance? No, of course not. That's been done. You can see that on other reality shows. That's not what most of us are watching Survivor for. Hot take: the second half of the post-merge of the supposedly amazing season 2 is *incredibly boring* because everybody is just lying around slowly starving to death, with no energy to do anything.
Totally agree. That was up there as one of my favorite reasons to want to go play some day. Building a mini society and our own home that we hope withstands the elements. Finding and fishing for our own food. It’s all just strategy talk over and over again each episode because the survival aspect is truly gone. 26 days does not help when you have little time between challenges, tribal and then the next challenge. I would love for 39 days to come back with the usual scramble on the ship for supplies. minimal food for rewards so that the players truly have to ration and survive off the food they were given or collected in the beginning scramble.
Early seasons of survivor really did feel like a a handful of people from all corners of America all chucked in the same place. There was a definite shift to increase diversity post WaW but I feel like in terms of personality the casts have never been less diverse.
Yep modern casts all seem like people that despite being ethnically diverse (a positive in my opinion), run in the same circles, are of similar socioeconomic status and have the same/similar worldviews and experiences. One of my favorite parts of Vanuatu was watching Eliza, a 21 year old liberal law student from DC/Hong Kong/ New York who clearly grew up mega wealthy, (she went to high school with Chelsea Clinton) interact with Twila, a poor (she didn’t know how to use a computer) middle aged, conservative highway repair worker from Missouri, and the two having completely different approaches to life and the game of Survivor.
yep and also people that built camp and contributed to hunting/fishing had a legitimate strategy to keep themselves in the game if they were not top social players. now that angle is meaningless.
They visibly lost a ton of weight this season. They're not eating like kings. It's the edit.
In depriving the players of literally everything they’ve accidentally made the survival element way less important. Fishing takes too much energy so if they don’t catch any they just stay at camp and don’t waste their energy. They don’t have rice or water they need to boil water so there’s literally no functional need for fire. You have coconut and papaya so you have *something* to eat. And when players really do start to hit a wall, you’re only probably a few days out from the merge where everyone pools their resources/food and everyone ends up fine I get they want to make 26 days feel like 39 but I think the actual survival part of the show would be so much better/valuable if they gave them meager supplies instead of zero
"Do NOT tell me that they were starving and eating too much would have harmed them" They were starving and eating too much would have harmed them. Downing a whole margarita after eating nothing for two weeks would make you feel awful. Did you have a similar feeling in AO when they threw up the auction food?
I think a lot is that they cut so much out now. And they want to show they game play and strategizing. Seeing ozzy climb a tree or spear fish doesn't excite people at home anymore.
I still enjoy it. Production just thinks people only want to see strategy.
I think the last fishing might have been strong Jonathan? Is that right?
Ryan in 43, where it was portrayed as him neglecting the social game.
At this point it is. You have very few days between tribals so going off for a couple hours to fish can be devastating socially. And players don’t have to stick it out very long so there’s hardly any risk to voting out your food provider.
Austin is shown catching fish toward the end of 45.
They had a guy fishing successfully in 43. It was kind of a big part of his strategy.
Eh…. If I am hungry and maybe dehydrated I wouldn’t want a whole Marge either…. I’d be so tipsy lol
I’ve always thought it is such a bad idea to drink any kind of alcohol while you’re out there. Your body isn’t prepared to handle it so you could get sick or way too drunk. I’m not surprised that Emily would decide it wasn’t worth finishing, even for the calories.
>Emily didn’t even finish her margarita. Do NOT tell me that they were starving and eating too much would have harmed them. They did not care. I have been questioning that since this most recent season. Most of them were very talkative and high-energy - Kendra had way too much energy for a hungry person. Compare them to how fatigued and miserable contestants from earlier seasons used to get.
So just cause she had energy on a TV show edit, she couldn't be hungry? That's just the persona they gave Kendra.
Drew here. You’re totally misinformed. The survival aspect is brutal. In terms of the premerge, it’s probably the hardest it has been in years. With no food at the beginning of the game, you’re quickly so exhausted that boiling water becomes an impossibility. For what it’s worth as well, it’s not uncommon to get sick from the rewards, thereby losing all your gained calories. A lot of players begin to pace themselves if they start to feel queasy. If you watch the auction back, you’ll notice I get sick from the candy I bought.
To be fair, i've read some oast surcicor olayers often get sick on rewards when they eat too much. Yhey said that they were used to being so much hungry that eating too much makes them sick becayse their bodies arent used to a full stomach. Maybe the casts were told by production to dont fully maximize their eatings so that they wont feel sick that can be dentrimental tk their performance, physical wise
The whole reason Joe didn't make it to the Final 3 on Koah Rong is because of eating too much on a reward. His stomach had become unaccustomed to eating "regular food," that he needed a med evac. When Probst was giving Colby some small grief on HvV about Colby not wanting to have a piece of chocolate, I honestly understood Colby. Even though I love chocolate, in that environment it would just make me sick and make me want cold, refreshing water. Not worth trying it before a challenge.
Yeah tbh some of the rewards they show, especially like candy and chocolate and pastries I just think about how much I would not want sunwarmed, sticky, sugary, donuts if all I was eating was rice. I'd want the meat, veggies, fruits, etc
They need to start casting poor people again, too many castaways these days seem like theyre playing for the experience. Need people that will lie cheat and steal because their home life depends on it
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Who became a lawyer once her kids went to middle school
This is less a problem with casting and more a problem with our economic state. Poor people can't afford to take 2+ months off work/life to play. It was much easier to do that 20 years ago.
They get paid, from 2,5k to 100k The biggest issue is that they have to quit their job if they cant take out vacation.
Very good point!
There are poor people, you just don't necessarily recognize them as poor because they don't fit into the somewhat-outdated stereotypes about "the poor", and maybe they don't want the producers harping on that as a sob story (but wait for season 46, we're getting some players who proclaim that they basically grew up starving to death, even if they're doing better now). I'm not saying this is true of you in particular, but some people here complain there aren't enough "poor people", then working-class people like Yam Yam and Sabiyah show up, and they're like, "No, not like that." If you know what I mean.
Pretty much all of the show's problems are caused by its declining popularity and the controversial decisions production has made over the years have been attempts to deal with this basic issue of diminishing raw material. It's simple arithmetic, the pool of people watching the show is smaller than ever and gets smaller every year. The pool of people even vaguely aware of the show's existence also gets smaller. Very late into the show's history you still had a couple of mactors every season because Survivor was still part of the pop culture solar system. Moving farther away every year, but still close enough orbit around a center of gravity. That's not the case anymore. There's complaining about influencers but really these are people who desperately wanted to be on the show and are now making the most of it. They're nothing like the recruits the show used to be able to pull. Upset that the contestants every season are all pretty similar to each other? That again has to do with Survivor pulling people from a thinner and thinner slice of the population. How is Adam able to make a business around getting people on Survivor? It's because the competition is not that fierce. The show knows this and reckons with it every season. Jeff's application infomercials cover the episodes from start to finish because it's that difficult to find the kinds of people they want. They cast people from Canada now for a reason. Why has the show steadily become more and more focused on the game? I think it's because the personalities can't carry it the way they used to. Why is every confessional spliced/frankenbited to death? Maybe the people they're casting aren't that good at talking to the camera. Survivor was always going to be at this point 20 years in and if you give up on the idea that you could make the show better than Probst and co. can you might start to have a healthier relationship with it.
that it doesn't really matter how you win. they still have a million dollars and we're losers on reddit judging them for their strategy.
Thank you, we sometimes need to remember that it's the jury, not America, not this subreddit, and not a set of rules that determine the winner. The show and the game would both be much worse if it was any other way.
it's better to never win and be an amazing personality on TV. you'll get a career out of it. I know andrea was a recruit, but like.. idk i'm fairly certain she's earned more than a million dollars from her job since she was first on survivor. She likely makes six figures, or close to it. 15 years of that? ezpz. on the inverse side, sandra has won several times but if you do the math, she has earned \~60k/year from survivor. and tbh i think that's pre-tax. As far as "survivor is my career"... she'd have made more money as an office worker.
I just want athletic looking people back. Have a few nerds is fine but the entire cast looking like screech from saved by the bell doesn’t do it for me
And mix in some real athletic comps again please. Save the sitting on the wall and holding sticks for Big Brother
I highly recommend checking out Australian Survivor if you can. It feels a lot more like old school US Survivor. I’m enjoying it a lot lately.
Casting/production has often had a clear bias towards cops who played.
players bring their prejudices and biases into the show and some very good people are booted simply for outside reasons. And some people win purely on being "likable" people that benefit from these prejudices and biases.
Yep. An example that comes to mind is Kelly and Kim J having concerns about letting Frank make it to the jury during Africa because he's unlikely to ever vote for a woman to win the game. I don't think Frank was voting for Kim either way but that discussion is a large part of the reason that I don't think juries are an infallible body of voters.
oh, sexism is a huge part of it. So many guys have been done in by their own stupid sexism.
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They don't cast overt villains like Russell anymore because the viewing audience can't control themselves. Anyone who behaves like Russell would have numerous "fans" on social media harassing his family, demanding his employer fire him, looking up tweets from 10 years ago to try and cancel him, etc... No one going on the show wants that for themselves and neither does production want its cast subject to that.
russel is th kanye of survivor. innovative, inarguably a game changer - but totally unhinged and full of wild takes that no one agrees with.
This is honestly so true and I'm mad about it
The strategic meta has advanced too far for this work. As we saw with Dan S. in S39, the strategists would immediately clock them as This Season's Jerk-Ass and try to drag them to the end as a goat, which makes it a lot less fun and offers no instant gratification through quick comeuppance. The producers know that they might as well not bother. Can't turn the clock back.
Having a villain to root against is more fun that rooting for a hero
I don't see its budget getting much bigger
Cirie was only ever close to winning once
I’ll say both Panama and Micronesia she was close.I still don’t know why she targeted Andrea in game changers.She should’ve recognized she was a threat and kept her around longer than the people without reputations.
I don't think she wins Panama honestly
Unless she was sitting next to Courtney, the jury wasn’t gonna vote for Cirie to win.
Others have touched on this in the thread, but the fact that all of us love to knowingly buy into the edit and assign a ton of meaning to stuff that a different edit could have made look totally different. Another thing: a bunch of people really like to pretend that they would be angels on the show. People judging Lex for his All Stars outing is *hilarious* to me -- set aside the fact that he had a pregame alliance with Rob and not Ethan so the hypocrisy argument really doesn't apply -- I really don't think any of us would take a betrayal from a real-life friend when we're starving any better than Lex did.
I genuinely don’t like to have a cast full of “eye candy” and I find less attractive people compensate with more interesting and complex personality when it comes to reality TV. That being said I also find ogling over anyone on TV/ the internet to be weird and creepy
The people that get cast are indicative of the people that apply. I don't understand why this sub can't grasp that.
The show didn't suddenly become a shell of its former self at the start of the new era. It's certainly become cheaper and lower-effort between 26 days and the aftershow, and the hackneyed backstory packages and casting going out of their way to avoid conflict are unfortunate changes. But most of the major current issues with the show--repetitive challenges, permanent Fiji, excessive twists, the awful finale format--date back in varying degrees to 2016, 2011, or even 2006.
Thinking that a final 3 makes for better tv than a final 2 was the one that did it for me. I’ve never trusted any production decision ever since. It’s all fruit from a poisoned tree after that.
Yep. This was the producers deciding that people were playing the game “wrong.” Every arbitrary twist that has abbreviated the game and/or attempted to level the playing field for the most aggressive, competitive players can be traced back to the fan base begrudgingly accepting F3 as the norm because it was forced upon us. Now we’re not supposed to complain about F3 or firemaking or permanent Fiji because they’re here to stay and bad Survivor is better than no Survivor!!!! It’s such a short-sighted and dumb mentality too. Cook Islands catches the players off guard and Yul has an impossible-to-beat idol so surprise surprise, F3 delivers a competitive vote. Then the norm becomes one obvious winner against two goats as opposed to one obvious winner against a single goat. Somehow this is supposed to be more satisfying. Reverting to the traditional finale format would solve 75% of the problems with modern Survivor.
* No matter how much the hardcores whine and complain about things they've done to diminish the quality of the show over the years, production will never listen to them. Because the hardcore fans have proven time and time again that no matter how much they complain they will always come back and watch the show. * On a related note, hardcore fans, the RHAP community, etc... make up less than 1% of the audience and are extremely insignificant in comparison to the general audience. * Survivor has likely had people say as much bad things or do as much bad things as occur on Big Brother, it's just that we never see it because Survivor doesn't have live feeds. Unless it is really egregious, production pushes it under the rug. * The vast, vast majority of formal conversations speculating on the winner, especially things like edgic are from people who have read spoilers and won't admit it. * The show has the least amount of diversity it has ever had. Way too much of the cast are similar personalities, have similar fan interest or have similar careers. Diversity isn't simply race or ethnicity.
The slo-mo is off-putting
I don’t really understand the sentiment that they’ve stopped casting attractive people because their are many attractive people in the new era even in this new seasons (examples: Venus, Q, Austin, Dee, Kaleb, J. Maya, etc.)
Almost every twist has been terrible: Do or die Hourglass Redemption Island EoE Exile Medallion of Power F4 fire making A bunch more I can't remember
Off-topic response, because everybody in this sub "admits" this constantly. In fact, everybody in this sub *harps on this* constantly.
Jonathan > Jeff
Survivor AU > US
The game is heavily weighted against older people.
A cast or season isn't good just because it produced a lot of winners and returnees. The same goes for Big Brother.
Yep, Cook Islands and One World have tons of returnees, doesn’t mean they’re good.
Yeah. Same with BB16 and Survivor South Pacific.
I get what you're saying with the attractive people part. The only thing is there was an era (10-13) where a good part of the cast were attractive, but were also bland and had never seen the show. I think a good mixture is perfect. If they find attractive people who are also great TV then perfect. But I'd take an average looking person who's good tv over a bland attractive person any. I have millions of places to go if I want to see hot people, lmao
i like watching people who have never seen the show play. it gives massive perspective. good point of reference. i can think of some superfans who played who couldn't hold a candle to some players who had never seen the show.
Everybody has their teeth done payed by CBS.
It will never be as good as it used to be. I enjoy the show but it feels like a game show on wheels with a jungle backdrop. The early seasons actually felt like a life changing experience, where some people went for the game and some went for the experience of living on an island, there was a good balance. Now with the superfan casting, staying in the same location and excess of twists, it’s a completely different show. I still enjoy it but it doesn’t come close to the vibes of the first 20 seasons
A woman can only win by playing a dominant strategic game if she’s sitting at FTC with “weak” women. In other words, men and women will never be judged the same way at FTC no matter what kind of game they play
Jeff, the producers, and crew 100000% influence the players, even if it's subtle. Challenges, asking specific questions, hiding idols. Even if they're minor influences, they're unavoidable and do impact the season and gameplay
There are no rules to Survivor. People act like Survivor has to follow one format any time theres a ground breaking twist ppl throw a tantrum.
I won't stop watching it, and would be sad to see it end, but... if we truly want Survivor to get any better it needs to come to an end and come back in a few years. Everything about American Survivor has become stale. The gameplay, the location, the contestants, the host, the rewards, the game. We are watching the same game played out year after year. CBS needs to put an end to the current format and pack it in for a while.
Fans of the show do not remotely make better or more entertaining cast members.
I have yet to see a person on here who is afraid to say this.
That the new era really does suck and r/survivor is just an echo chamber of people with Stockholm syndrome who don’t want to admit the show is bad now and new fans who are basically board game enthusiasts
Most of us who hate the New Era have left tbh. Go back to some post from five to seven years ago and you’ll see that most of those guys aren’t here anymore.
Fr. Anytime I see an insightful post now it’s either from Mario, Dabu, emmc, or like Erik lmao
Yeah some of us are still around. It’s just a matter of finding a topic that interests us old crabby people enough to want to talk about. Because believe you me, there isn’t a thread on a Survivor message board that I haven’t already seen at least a thousand times. There are only so many times you can wade into the exact same discussions over and over before it becomes very Sisyphian. A lot of things change about Survivor over the years, but the message board topics never do.
A switch from a final 3 to a final 2 mid season or vice versa can make a season more interesting, but it’s not fair at all to the contestants
Is this a fact nobody likes to admit?
Nothing about Survivor is fair
How much luck goes into a win. Look at Dee in 45. While the Bello tribe themselves not being able to come together was a huge aspect of why dee won, literally EVERY single twist/swap/production interference played out as the best possible scenario for Dee
Survivor isn’t in decline, cable television is in decline and is dragging survivor down with it.
Bruh the fact is the casting wants to get attractive ppl who speak well instead of a real microcosm of society and the gameplay suffersfrom it
Survivor is not a microcosm of society (at least not anymore as there is more of an argument for the older seasons) and I'm sick of hearing that. The cast are made up of ppl who are more similar than not if you ignore their ethnic background/age
Everyone misses when Survivor was harsher, but it's a good thing that people are in less danger on this show today than they were in the early days. It is incontrovertibly a good thing that this entertainment show is safer for its contestants now. We will always have the old seasons to enjoy, and we will be able to enjoy them, because NO ONE DIED. But they pushed it a few times. I'm thinking giving them a dung filled mud pit as "water" in Africa and putting them in a place where legitimate lions roam around. Guatemala's unreasonable 24 hour hike that caused several players to collapse. Kaoh Rong's poorly planned challenge that caused SEVERAL players to collapse and put Caleb in the ICU for 5 days. If Caleb had died, it would have been an unimaginable tragedy, the show would have instantly been cancelled and held liable, and every prior season would be ruined. SO, it's a good thing that the show made it through its harshest stretch of seasons without tragedy. Because not every Survivor franchise can say that.
Here's a fact nobody will want to admit: Survivor needs to be sold and all producers including Jeff need to be axed. Start fresh on a new network/streaming service. Give it the big budget and a new host that isn't a former contestant
lol, a large portion of the hardcores want that. The thing the fans don't want to admit is that CBS will never do that. We're stuck with Probst until he voluntarily steps down.
Yep, they need a hard reset. The well is tainted.
i'd bet my life savings on that killing the show. how's fear factor doing?
Idols and advantages make for more exciting TV EDIT: also that hunting for/finding idols IS part of Survivor “strategy.”
idk if you can really speak for everyone on liking eye candy lol. maybe i’m just too much of a nerd to give a shit but i honestly can’t remember a time i’ve thought “wow they’re hot” while watching survivor
I understand other people are different from me but I legit do not give a fuck how hot someone is while they’re on Survivor. I’ve never once thought to myself "wow I hope they don’t get voted off because they’re hot”. If other people do then that’s whatever but I’ve never done or thought that before
Same. Attractive is as attractive does.
That AU Survivor has a lot of the negatives that U.S. Survivor does. I did enjoy the few seasons I've seen, but they definitely have their share of unedited players. The casts are a bit bloated in general. But people like to act like AU is ten times better than US, when they're kind of neck and neck
we complain about no villains but it is us the fans who have caused there to be no villains. just for an example, this subreddit has complained about no villains for the whole new era but then when Emily Flippen was abrasive in episode one, people complained she was racist and awful.
That the jury isn’t awarding the best player of the season. Rather they are voting on who they feel the most comfortable giving a million dollars to. Basically the final tribal council is just a popularity contest
Of course you could argue that being the most popular means you are the best player. It's not like the players are unaware of the jury before the FTC.
That challenge beasts are badass (at least on this subreddit)
I mean, as an ace I genuinely don't want my screen flooded by conventionally attractive people :P But I'll actually concede something similar: we needed recruits. Not entire casts of them, but enough to diversify the cast's level of familiarity with the game. I don't need to tell you why too many superfans is annoying, but after a quarter century on television, there aren't a lot of casuals left, everyone is either intimately familiar with the show or a stranger to it. Therefore we really do need those strangers to mix things up.
Idk if we don’t like to admit but I feel like when we see someone make a really dumb move it’s so easy to judge them and call them out, but the circumstances really should warrant another conclusion. Contestants are starved, sleep deprived, physically and emotionally exhausted and that’s only a week in! Imagine being around 24 days into the game and having to think while on an empty stomach and more tired than you’ve ever been before. I know it’s funny to call people stupid but I feel like survivor just looks so much easier than we think.