Survivor and the internet

I was talking with Stephanie Berger recently, and she said, “Have you ever thought about the fact that the most offline experience of your life, which was those 25 days in Fiji, is somehow the foundation for the most online experience of your life?” There is a really fascinating intersection between Survivor and the internet. As much as I like to think of myself as a student of the game, the Survivor subculture has been an equally interesting realm to me, prior, during and post playing.  As season 48 is on the cusp of the merge, a critical halfway point where the arena of public opinion gets bloodier, I feel compelled to dig into the surreal, unusual, fleeting and extremely specific type of visibility that going on Survivor provides. 

Part of me wanted to do a quasi Buzzfeed-esque listicle or personality quiz about this. Something like, “Which Type of Survivor-Player-Lurking-Online Are You?” - because there are types. There’s a Genevieve, who voluntarily had the least amount of follower growth, who doesn’t have a Twitter or reddit account or any interest in making one. When we were on Lavo beach, Genevieve told me she would much rather play Survivor if it were unfilmed, and I called bullshit, until I realized she really never was going to take her Instagram off private. I probably represent the other extreme, that is to say incessantly refreshing the #Survivor47 hashtag during episodes, typing my own name into the live discussion on reddit and listening to about eight podcasts a week of people talking about the season.

I like to imagine this as sort of Kinsey Scale-adjacent. As your season is airing you fall somewhere between a Genevieve (less than bare minimum online investment) and a Teeny (absolute maximum). It won’t come as a shock that identifying in the middle, as a bi-online consumer of yourself, is probably the best of both worlds. Given that it’s been a few months since my whirlwind, I feel like I have a clearer perspective and so I wanted to form a guide. These are some of the healthy ways to enjoy the rare experience of being on your favorite show, and how to avoid some of the harmful sides of the Sur-cyberspace.

HEALTHY: Claiming or Reclaiming the Narrative with a Joke

Production has a ton of rules about contestant output during the airing. You can’t tag your castmate, you can’t explain why you voted X instead of Z, you can’t go on a podcast, and on and on. There’s no part of the fine print that says you can’t clown on yourself, and I’ve found that to be the most endearing, real, and funny posting from other reality alumni. It was also the most cathartic for me, especially during a moment of catching heat. There’s so much variance among the types of fans commenting on a show like Survivor. Much like the game itself, the fanbase is composed of humans with entirely different backgrounds, preferences, biases, and game knowledge. Trying to appeal to this pool of casuals and hardcores and gay high school stans and Barstool employees and NPCs is virtually impossible, and I’m not even talking about in the game or the edited product. I’m talking about online. There’s one universal language between the fanbase and it’s … here comes the corny crux of my point… laughter. Making fun, making light, making sure everyone including yourself knows that this whole situation and whatever people are responding to, for good or for bad, is all a little ridiculous in the grand scheme of life. 

I don’t mean to devalue the importance of processing the very serious experience that is Survivor, but there’s a time and place for that — and it isn’t sandwiched between these nameless and faceless commentaries on X dot com.

Having no control over the edit or the reaction it causes can feel alienating and scary, and it’s important to remember you fully do not have to play the victim to either of those things. You can demonstrate a deep sense of self-awareness and humor in the face of large-scale public embarrassment; there’s something powerful, confident, and complex in that. There is an opportunity for a beautiful juxtaposition of humiliation and humility that paints a much more dynamic picture than that of most character arcs on a season of Survivor. It’s something I’ve always admired and tried to emulate. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.

HARMFUL: R SLASH SURVIVOR

Survivor reddit is a lot like weed. It’s hard to keep the relationship in moderation. Either you are waking and baking, subconsciously clicking the app to check the forum for new threads and thinkpieces, seeing if Edgic has come out with the confessional tracker or if whoever “Robot” is spoiled the season... or you’re clean. The attention that comes with being on national television is a drug not unlike any other substance, which means you have to be careful about the frequency with which you consume it and the places and people you’re getting it from. r/survivor is a dangerous dealer. It’s the interface where people with the most vitriol and the least compassion congregate behind usernames like JustSalad-312 or wastedthyme20, and only know how to speak in hyperbole (somehow every season features the most boring player of all time, the best player of the new era, and the least deserving winner). They make immovable decisions about people based on 30-second scenes and become armchair psychologists — diagnosing, psychoanalyzing, prescribing.

In my personal experience, it was wild to witness the outrage over my choice words for Sam. People were so confused, “she hates men but she so clearly wants to be one…” Well, yes, StrategicCoconut42, that’s kinda the whole thing. I remember one time someone said I was playing Candyland while everyone else was playing Catan, and kudos to them because that’s really true and funny. It could be entertaining and even insightful to read people accurately grasping my pitfalls and parts of my personality, and some of it pushed me to get all introspective. But mass amounts of people dunking on me for comments I made while starving just wasn’t essential reading, though it felt like it at the time.

For a good week after the Operation Italy episode came out, I couldn’t escape the internet's hatred of my antagonist foil to the scheme. It was unlike anything I’d ever lived through before, and I turned to some folks whom I know faced similar levels of backlash, all of whom advised me to get off of reddit. I will admit that I was stubborn about this, insisting that my relationship with the forums wasn’t unhealthy or even affecting my ego. But, you know when you know. The later into the season, there are fewer players on screen to analyze, and the discussions become narrower. I deleted the app with a few episodes left of my season and never once did I miss it. Stepping away from reddit accelerated my process of being able to zoom out and realize that everything was okay. I had a loving girlfriend supporting me, friends in real life who were not on these web pages, a long line of people who came before me who SURVIVED both the game and the airing and the fans, and a cast who rotated our turns in the hot seat, but more importantly were people I got to play Survivor with. That is what matters, what lingers, what means the most. Not these threads that are buried under new ones every season. It passed for me, and it will pass for you, and it’ll pass faster the sooner you delete the app.

HEALTHY: Engage with the nice and normal fans

Yes, there are nice and normal fans. Your DM request inbox will probably be flooded, especially on your boot or finale episode.  I’ve found it quite fulfilling to reply to ones that have left some mark on me. People who really see me, or who tell me their children were rooting for me, or words that surprise me. It is a magical opportunity to resonate with people and let’s be real, we are all going to be on social media for the duration of the season anyway. Why not use some of the screen time to connect with the direct positivity being floated to you? Instead of spending time meandering around different interfaces and being blindsided by StrategicCoconut42 reading you to filth on a random Thursday morning, make Thursday morning roundups for replying back to the people who evoke something from you besides rage.

Okay, as I write this and try to think of other advice, I can feel the soapbox growing out of the ground and I can feel my inner hypocrite coming out of my spine like in The Substance. Truth is, I could tell you not to search your name under the hashtag, or to be selective about which podcasts you listen to; I could tell you not to start beef with your castmates online (but I actually would never tell you that because I love when that happens); I could tell you to make a loved one go through your comments before you, or to lean on your fellow castmates, or to shitpost, or to be super earnest, or to block the fact checker who posts the weekly polls. I could tell you not to quote tweet someone hating on you, or not to spoil your own season in exit press or I could tell you that in six months none of this will be viral anymore as Survivor 49 starts up and Season 50 leaks start to spread. I learned the lessons through living it, but what is undeniable is that so many of the conclusions I came to were all things told to me beforehand. And I suppose it is up to you whether or not to arrive at these universal conclusions on your own, or to accept them as fact and evade the triggers altogether. But there is something beneficial about being prepared, knowing there are simple ways to make this easier on yourself, and that there are outs if the light turns dark.

I lived the entire range of how a fan could feel about me during 47, and retrospectively I enjoy having been this perfectly polarizing figure. After all, every player I have ever loved has been a multidimensional, complex person on the show and has received their fair share of hate as well. Having been in the game long enough to say something that pissed off Middle America only feels right for me. But if I never looked online I never would’ve known that was even the case. When I meet fans and viewers in person, I’m met with nothing but openness and curiosity about the experience, and I am growing out of my habit of trying to qualify or self-deprecate about how I played because more often than not, people don’t even know what I’m talking about. 

There’s definitely no going back to the time when Survivor aired on Thursday night cable and the only place you could discuss it was in the break room or at the dinner table. This online community is here to stay, and for the most part I think that it’s wonderful. Like, don’t get me wrong, I was listening to a 2-hour retrospective of Big Brother 12 in my car earlier today and I have videos online of me breakdancing and pretending to be Julie Chen at the age of 10. I think I’ve listened to Cesternino’s voice to fall asleep more nights than I haven’t. Heck, I’m writing for a reality tv newsletter right now. I love this shit and I am in it deep. 

However, to put it in voting terms, the majority of the millions who watch Survivor aren’t obsessing over message boards or trapped in online echo chambers. Most would just be thrilled to meet someone who played the game they love. Last week, I hired movers, and the boss—probably in his sixties—lit up when he realized who I was. He told me I had to go back on the show. This man, who I might have once assumed looked like the cruelest reddit commentators, instead spent his time hauling my endless bags and praising my game. He probably couldn’t tell you what number season I was on or analyze my jury management, but he did think I was cool enough to ask for a picture.

And maybe that’s the real takeaway. Your Survivor season ends. The debates, the rankings, the reddit threads—those all keep spinning for the next group, but life moves on. Outside the bubble, no one is keeping track of the amount of times you voted correctly or challenge wins. They just see a person who did something so cool once. Those moments put my feet on the ground. That is reality.

-Teeny

Teeny was a contestant on Survivor 47 and writes about all things culture, gender and life on teeny.substack.com

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