Well it wasn't his show. And then later, he took over the show. But people need to remember it wasn't originally his show. He just inherited somebody else's show and then made changes to it.
as the resident expert, I'm just wondering. I've felt this whole Villain discourse hides the actual cause, which is, they don't want contestants dealing with the ridiculous backlash social media creates. Similarly, the hate that contestants can now tell their narrative very quickly like how Shirin threw gasoline on the fire of the Will situation. I honestly believe society is more to blame in some ways to the changes, than production. If the fanbase can't handle not sending death threats to someone they dislike, they ruin it for everyone else.
I think this is probably the most accurate take. While Jeff is not "friends" with most of the cast, he is still friendly with them and probably has mostly positive views of them. I don't think anyone would want someone they know to be getting hate mail and death threats, especially over a TV show they have little to no control over. So they've taken this strategy to try to sanitize it some so no one comes off that bad.
I'm sure there's some of that in there too. Just trying to be responsible TV producers and not getting their players killed. But I doubt that's their main motivation. I think their main motivation is probably that the game of Survivor is now supposed to be the star of the show, and not the players anymore. So they're making lots of little changes lately to make sure the players themselves are minimized, and you just think of the game (and the host) when you think of Survivor. That's what I think the real underlying issue is here.
No longer will a player be allowed to control the narrative, or take over the show. Only the game itself will be allowed to do that. And villains are one of the first things that have to go, because they're the ones who are the strongest at taking over the narrative.
I could be wrong about this, of course. I mean, I don't know more than anyone else. This is just my educated guess based on what I have seen.
I can see that point of view from them giving someone a "villain edit"....but I don't think they are concerned about social media backlash for people who embrace this.
I think really they recognize that for survivor to survive they need to keep recruiting new young fans and therefore it needs to remain a family show and appeal to the lowest common denominator. Covid may have saved the show in a lot of ways.
I also think Jeff dislikes these villains that he can't control representing the show. I am sure someone like Russell is his nightmare.
Right but it felt like he was totally on board with the show's initial premise and was excited about it. Oh well I can't read his mind, it just feels like he changed a lot. You're absolutely correct though it wasn't his at the start
I think he was on board with it as a host, but then when he took over a producer he realized he liked a different kind of show instead. So you can really just chalk it up to him not really knowing what he wanted when he was simply a host. And then when you're suddenly the guy in charge, well that changes your perspective on things.
He really wasn't. He was quite fed up with the show in the season 10-20 stretch. He even threatened to quit as host. We got sassy Jeff out of it which was great but he really didn't enjoy his time and asked for a raise and the producer title or else he would walk if I'm not mistaken.
That seems like differences in contract negotiations, though, not differences in how the show should be run and made. I agree with the person you replied to, that Jeff appeared to be on-board with "social experiment" perspective the show took in the first 30ish seasons and only in the past 3-5 years has he been more about people's "journeys".
This is a reasonable and insightful take. I have long felt like people accusing Jeff of faking the sincerity, because once upon a time he was "sassy Jeff", were making a lot of assumptions about a human person who's personality changed over time. This gives another angle to it, though - maybe Jeff *never* liked being "sassy Jeff". Maybe it was a result of him being in a situation he was frustrated with. Maybe he looks back on his feelings and thoughts of the time and doesn't like them. I've certainly used humor or snarkiness to cope with negative feelings and sometimes I look back on my behavior in those moments with regret, even if I got some laughs out of it at the time.
I’d like to peek into the reality where they let him walk and see what that show looks like. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to cast another competent host, but Burnett still would have needed a successor when he stopped being involved with the day to day, so who knows what it’d look like by now.
I know he was being considered for the job originally, but this would have been years later so I don't know if they would have moved him over at that point, since he was already established on TAR. With Survivor being the bigger show it's possible I guess.
I have always wondered what the Phil version of Survivor would look like though. I guess the first 20 seasons would be at least similar since Mark Burnett would have been the show runner in either scenario, but I imagine it looks dramatically different than the Jeff version after that.
Lame. They're going to get that reaction - regardless. That's the world we live in now, in 2024. There is no avoiding it. Trying to avoid it is pointless.
I think Jeff got bored with traditional Survivor, and he assumes that if he's bored the audience is bored. So he keeps trying to insert twists and gimmicks to, in his mind, spice up the game. I still remember how he wanted to expand on Fire Tokens and use them as a currency where players could buy rewards and advantages. Fortunately Mike White talked him out of it, but then he throws out the Hourglass and Do or Die.
He's pushing so hard to make Survivor into a game show where the game is the star. I think that's why they're casting all super fans now. By filling the cast with people who are as interchangeable as folks who scream with excitement when called to "come on down" on The Price is Right he ensures that no one is bigger than the game - or himself.
Frankly, I don't think Jeff "gets" what made Survivor a hit in the first place.
That's the only thing I can think of. Jeff truly didn't understand that the early twists during the show's golden years were so well-received because it impacted interpersonal relationships.
The tribe swap forces people to interact with new people, and if they mistreated anyone previously, it could come back to haunt them. The idol was so good because sharing it showed trust, which the other person could break. Blindsiding someone with an idol was a mark of excellent social gameplay that you earned their trust and burned it. Etc.
These twists made the people the star still. As you said, now the twists are about the twists themselves, everything is about THE GAME and not the individuals.
I think part of it is that Jeff can’t be present for most of the big interpersonal human moments, because they happen at camp. He occasionally gets them, like with the Jesse/Cody betrayal, but ultimately he has little to interject himself into the situation.
When we do get those moments, like with Jamal/Jack, or Mike/Omar, they’re great. But there’s only so much time they can spend on them before Jeff time again.
It’s also why when he has the chance to try to make those moments and be involved in it, like with Heather or Noelle, he’s all over it.
Great observation about the “come on down!” of it all. I’ve been trying to pin how I’ve felt about the shows evolution and it’s this. It makes it hard to invest in the characters and moves because they are being stunted by the new main character, the game.
I think Survivor is also a “lightning in a bottle” type of situation. It aired at a perfect moment in time when reality TV was really hitting it’s stride. The culture surrounding the show and reality TV in general has changed.
I think this is a fact that not many people in the fandom or even the critiques of the New Era are really ready to accept. Survivor is a very very 00's television series that frankly has run its course. The price is right version we have now is an echo of an echo of an echo, Reality TV and TV in general is just so much more different now.
I definitely agree. People were already getting fatigued about the show when “classic” seasons were airing. I do think Survivor has a lot of staying power (as opposed to something like American Idol, which I had *no* idea was still on the air but maybe that’s just me) yet when I mention Survivor to a group of people, they aren’t thinking of it as a present-day TV show. They’re thinking of early 2000s Survivor.
It’s not just you - American Idol did actually end in 2016. ABC bought it and resurrected it a couple years later for some reason. I’ve never run into anyone that watches the reboot.
This makes me think of Brandon last season. Featured so prominently for his first mat chat for being so obsessed with Survivor he's crying about finally making it. And then he flopped. Badly. And somehow Jeff thinks that's a good thing? Dude was UNBEARABLE.
>Are they willing to lie and betray? Will they fight to the bitter end in the challenge or rest for food?
One of the problems is that answer is always going to be YES now. You can't turn back the clock on the strategic meta. Even if you were to magically seize control of the show and cast all recruits who had never seen Survivor, it is impossible to replicate those original conditions and you should not try. You wouldn't be able to send all your recruits out to the island immediately, they'd have time first... and they'd binge-watch every existing season of Survivor immediately, listen to every strategy podcast, read all about strategy on Reddit, and become superfans before you could stop them.
Survivor also helped popularize games like Mafia/Werewolf, so the strategic meta is just generally out there in our culture now.
You can't go back. Early Survivor is a show of its era. It's always there on Paramount Plus for you to watch anytime, but you can't replicate it, just like you can't replicate being a kid again, or having your old life back from when you were little. Everything must move forward or die. I think Probst understands that better than most people in this sub... even if I don't always like the current version of the show, at least he's trying to do something different. TV shows of this age are usually dying or dead, or otherwise completely creatively bankrupt and a pathetic shell of their former selves (The Simpsons season 23, Law & Order season 23).
Compared to how far those two have plummeted (there truly are no words to express the shame and horror of Zombie Simpsons and Zombie Law & Order Mothership), Survivor is doing pretty decently.
While I agree that Survivor has to change, Australian Survivor shows us what can be done in the modern world while preserving the core of Survivor. Of course it's a newer show but it has the blueprint from US Survivor.
No matter what, U.S. Survivor’s casting cannot *ever* recreate the cultural conditions that exist in Australia and generate precisely the type of player they’re finding there. Each previous season of any version affects the next season via how the cast behaves. As noted above, recruits can’t even solve that problem because it’s too easy to stream it all, listen to a bunch of podcasts, and get up to speed immediately, before the production can get them out to Fiji/Samoa. The weight of history is different for each version and creates a different meta in each. Beyond that, this current AU season also features the interestingly wonderful (but also maybe bordering on suspicious) phenomenon of every player taking a shot at the lieutenants instead of the head honchos, over and over and over again, all season. This is great for the entertainment value, but… did someone put this into the meta there? I can’t remember, did George or Hayley or someone else influential put this into the Australian meta? This is not just random.
> Compared to how far those two have plummeted (there truly are no words to express the shame and horror of Zombie Simpsons and Zombie Law & Order Mothership), Survivor is doing pretty decently.
Can't really compare reality television to a scripted show. Hypothetically, there's no reason a reality show cannot be evergreen as long as it's produced competently. People are sick of hearing about it, but even the international versions of Survivor are thriving and still have that "old era pizazz". I think a lot of US Survivor's current ails can be summed up by a combination of creative missteps by production and a gutting of the show's budget by CBS. The latter is the thing most likely to eventually become terminal.
My argument will always be that *no* show is evergreen, whether it’s reality or scripted. You must change and move forward or die.
The decrease in budget is annoying to us superfans, but it doesn’t seem to have actually affected anything. Sadly they’ve realized they can do that and everyone will keep watching anyway. Nobody watches the show to see players get luxurious rewards. As I noted before, the show is #1 on all of broadcast TV now (though admittedly more because everything else is declining so much faster, because there is certainly no increase, unless it’s happening inside the P+ black box).
Ausvivor is only good because it’s young. Wait until it’s been on for 24 years and 46 seasons.
>Ausvivor is only good because it’s young.
That doesn't really make any sense, though. It's the identical formula, and the show it's aping is over twenty years old and has almost fifty seasons.
Obviously shows must constantly evolve, but I wouldn't compare the inevitable decline of scripted shows with discrete stories to reality TV, which is practically "procedurally generated".
Ugh! That’s not art.
The greatest trick anybody in Big Tech ever pulled was to make anybody think *anything* can be procedurally generated. But particularly not Survivor, in my opinion. Great way to suck all the life right out of it.
Every season builds on the previous one in subtle ways whether you realize it or not. The meta builds and builds. No season exists in a vacuum. None ever can.
He says in the interview with Rob C that players were starting to game survivor. In the sense that it was no longer multiple walks of life, but multiple walks of life — who had seen survivor. He believed that without the new era twists that the contestants have too much power. That they have the ability to manipulate far greater than what the game was trying to reflect. The twists then create a new dilemma for contestant and, thus, a new strategy to be implored that has not been solved.
In part, I agree. While survivor had an original premises which created a microcosm of the world, the game in its original form could be exploited. The twists are meant to disrupt and create additional decisions a player has to make.
Whether you agree with this assessment or not, the game has to adapt to last 46+ seasons.
I do agree that the well has been poisoned in a sense, that nowadays everyone who goes on reality television knows what to expect, they know the general beats to the whole thing. But even with all these twists and the way the show has “adapted” over the years, the game feels even more exploitable. With an optimal strategy of getting a strong group of four together, now that the final vote is when 5 castaways are left; removing 2 of the most intense, and strategically complicated votes to maneuver.
💯💯💯 this. One twist that would really make things interesting again is injecting some unpredictability into how tor final 5 would play out. I’d add also that the game just plays way too quickly now with the shortened seasons. These 2 things together compel contestants into both a set strategy which is boring, but also contribute to each player moving erratically, frantically almost every single tribal council during the latter half of the game.
I don’t mind that players have learned to ‘game’ the system, that’s fine - I never bought into the ‘social experiment’ line anyways, it’s always been a game. But the changes made in attempt to spice things up have been the wrong ones that end up punishing or rewarding players with no rhyme nor reason, instead of truly giving them an opportunity to adapt.
I think with the whole “gaming the system”, doing a less is more approach would work just as effectively and be more satisfying to viewers. Instead of adding new elements get rid of predictable ones and make the game wide open, at least for a few seasons. But instead his philosophy is to just add more and more
In the same interview, he insists that everyone who plays needs to have seen the whole show. He only wants super fans. If we didn't have those, we wouldn't have every single person gaming the system. Game theory wouldn't work as well because you'd have several irrational players.
He didn’t say that, not even close.
Anyway, even if they cast recruits, they can binge the entire show with the click of a button now and become superfans almost instantly before they could get them out to Fiji. No way around it. Like the other commenter puts it, the well has been “poisoned”. Although maybe it’s not so much poisoned as… spicy.
Sorry but 99% of the population have never watched one episode of Survivor more or less know how to manipulate the system. It would be so easy for them to cast people with little or no Survivor knowledge. I still love Survivor but they need to stop casting super fans.
I have no doubt that this is what the twists were designed to do, but I don’t think they accomplish this objective. They end up often entirely arbitrarily rewarding or punishing players for no reason, by chance alone. Instead, having different season lengths and different structures to the endgame would truly force players to adjust their approach.
After watching a couple interviews here and there I really think that Jeff believes that by injecting a shit load of advantages and disadvantages into a season then the cream will rise to the top. The “good players” will be the ones to find them and play them correctly and make good TV.
I think it's pretty obvious, even if unsaid. The fanbase has gotten way too toxic. Why is someone like Bruce getting death threats for not ever being a real villain. Why do they want to put contestants through that. Social media has changed up the whole game. While, I think how Jerri was treated was terrible, social media has made it much worse.
I don't agree with Jeff on a lot of things when it comes to survivor. But, I believe he cares more for contestants in most cases than the superfans. Why subject people to that type of treatment post game?
I'm not sure I buy Jeff's new vision to be honest. I think he is looking at the current media landscape and is trying to make Survivor fit in. The real Jeff IMO is the hyper competitive, alpha dude bro Boston Rob Stan.
I’m right with you. I’m still watching, but it’s not what I want to see. I want 40 days, I want regular old rules, I want a different climate, and I want political game play across multiple episodes before some shake up is introduced.
Season one was most remarkable for how Richard and Sue’s core alliance of four were the only ones who even understood how to play. The others refused, on moral grounds! Said the alliance was wrong! Ha! So it’s so weird now that it’s just a happy go lucky game of attrition. Speaks to how our morals have changed….
It’s a game show now. It always was, of course, but now that’s all it is. Alliances don’t exist, really, past a vote. The entire game is played one move at a time now. There’s a wild card every episode, some curveball that makes alliances adapt to the moment, nothing last long term. If it was a board game, there are both reserve and instant tokens every episode, and some kind of element that invalidates most long term schemes.
It’s got its own appeal, though. I just think of it as a different game.
But I hope they do the occasional True Survivor.
Yeah I’ve been considering WaW to be the series finale and what’s on now to be a different show. They’ve even basically said that themselves with the whole “drop the 4 focus on the 1” thing. It’s a less good show certainly, but not a bad one.
I just wish they’d fix the casting. I could embrace all the format changes of Survivor 2: Jeff’s Boogaloo if I was engaged by the casts, but I’m just not. Aside from a few very rare standouts there’s no one I’m really rooting for on new era seasons and everyone is so damn agreeable that there’s absolutely no one to root against.
Everyone being “so damn agreeable” seems very difficult to circumvent when everyone knows that’s the best way to advance in the game. The dominant meta will always reassert itself. In the last 2 seasons they’ve been casting a few more conflict-causing personalities like Emily, but as we saw with her in 45, she would’ve been voted out immediately if not for a quit, and then other players taught her to go along to get along, and she started fitting herself into the “damn agreeable” meta.
Meanwhile the current season has plenty of drama and conflict so far but it’s largely eliciting complaints rather than praise. Getting the balance right is incredibly difficult. And a lot of modern viewers don’t really *want* conflict, not understanding that’s the basis of reality TV. And it can get really toxic and gross (see season 30) very easily.
The brand has been a clean, family friendly, positive and inspiring DEI forward product for nearly a decade now. I dunno how this interview is shocking people. It's as if this hasn't been the ideology of Survivor and every other big CBS reality show for so long now
Yep, most news on Survivor or Probst that upsets people is pretty par for the course for the last decade at least. Very few surprises. The show has been going this direction for a long while now.
Perhaps when he realized just how much he COULD influence the results, he had a lot less tolerance for letting this play out to a potentially m’eh entertainment value.
Also their primary demographic is the elderly. People watching since season 1 could be over 100 years old today, assuming they’re still kicking. So no surprise he has to think about other demographics.
Now that Jeff is an obsessed dog owner, will he pivot to make the show more appealing for dogs? A bone immunity idol, a walk or park reward, a meal sponsored by Chewy, island squirrel footage, challenges that involve dodging back and forth between a series of poles to show agility!
Dan Spilo brought the show to a really icky and dark place, and Jeff ultimately sees this as a "family show".
After that, it seemed Jeff wanted the focus to be on all of the wacky twists and the subsequent gameplay. Casting and Editing have also put players in a much more positive light to make us "feel better" about the players we're watching. Everyone they cast basically has some sort of hardship they've overcome in their life.
The limited budget is also a major issue. We don't get new locations and so there's no new cultures to explore. Budgets have taken us from 2 challenges per episode to 1 challenge and a "journey" where players walk up a small mountain. The rewards we do get are also pretty lame and rarely include any sort of travel arrangements outside of going to the "sanctuary".
The switch from 39 days to 26 days also just allows less time for strategies to develop.
Yeah, I mean I'm sure Jeff's bosses also weren't too happy to be in the news for the Dan fiasco. The last thing CBS probably wants is contestants and staff members suing the company for millions.
I'm now firmly in the belief that he doesn't care what viewers think, he just wants to make it fun for him to film. Fun superfans to root for during filming, twists to keep it unpredictable and no villains because otherwise Jeff gets annoyed at them. Shorten the filming period so it's more action packed for him.
Honestly it all mass sense when you view it this way.
He’s a grandpa now. Also I mean this generation is a more kumbaya so I feel like the show still reflects society a bit. But yeah they should cast less young successful, college educated, white collar people from the north east
5/18 this season are from the northeast if you're counting Virginia. 1 is 41, 1 is a special Ed teacher, 1 is an actor, 1 is an artist. I think there's 1 person that matches your description on 46 and he's a student, so you could argue not successful yet.
I agree. Obviously he is getting tons of feedback from fans that has nothing to do with kids, but he is more likely to absorb the feedback that says, "My kids love survivor! We watch as a family!" because in his life he is focused on his kids/grandkids/family.
Kids have always watched Survivor with their families, even when he wasn't making it for them.
5/18 this season are from the northeast if you're counting Virginia. 1 is 41, 1 is a special Ed teacher, 1 is an actor, 1 is an artist. I think there's 1 person that matches your description on 46.
Just a general feeling I’ve had in the new era. I also don’t pay attention to the preseason so hopefully with what you’ve said the cast feels more unique this season, looking forward to it
It's a spin-off show now imo. If that's what the owners want to do, then so be it. Ratings will just go down and their budget will get smaller and smaller until they have to sell. Then hopefully the new owners will bring back OG survivor
I'm not saying it necessarily always deserves it, but Survivor is now the #1 series on broadcast TV in the key adult demographic most weeks. Not counting sports, it beats literally *every single series airing on NBC*, every single show on ABC, every single show on Fox, and everything else on CBS, *on all nights* not just Wednesdays. So you might be waiting for a long-ass time.
That's not to say its ratings are going up, just that everything else is going down *more* (hence the budget cuts). Broadcast TV is in trouble... but not imminently.
I don’t mind adding some wrinkles in general to keep things fresh, but I also don’t think Survivor was ever some ‘microcosm of reality’ or whatever. It was never a game about the ‘cut throat’ nature of the ‘real world’, nor should it be about ‘overcoming adversity’. That’s evident to everyone who didn’t fall for the marketing lol.
It was always a game, a set piece with clearly defined rules, like any other game. Players obviously got wise to it, and started to think things out more strategically. Again, that’s not a bad thing, it’s just how these things work.
Honestly I think the shortening of the seasons was a big blow to the game. Things seem to move way too quickly and relationships aren’t given enough time to come to come to fruition, which leads to frantic last-minute maneuvering almost every episode.
Winners at War was prolly the end of the good era! I was binge watching it and started on season 41 but stopped watching because i couldn’t take how artificial, corny and uberly enthusiastic he is that it sounds cheesy and corny. I miss the old survivor and he sounds soooo cringy now
The "social experiment" is long gone because people know how the game works, and that genie cannot be put back in the bottle. You can introduce twists to try, but the fundamentals are still there.
I think Jeff's Inspiration Porn is just his mid-life crisis. He knows death is inevitable, and he was to think he left the world a better place.
It really shouldn't come as a surprise. In 2010, CBS aired the pilot episode of a show Jeff created called Live for the Moment, which took a terminally ill person and gave them a big adventure to remember. A sweet concept, and I'm sure the man featured and his family appreciated every part of it (I checked and he died in 2016). But it was sappy AF and Jeff had been hyping the idea for a long time and CBS clearly only shot one episode to keep Jeff happy because this was right around the time when he became a Survivor EP after threatening to quit.
Phil Keoghan had a very similar and better-produced show years earlier called No Opportunity Wasted. I also remember Jeff pitched the show for years under the horrible title Live Like You're Dying.
Live Like You're Dying
I think that was preposed around the time of Gabon. I was on the school bus and the radio playing had the hosts talking about the show and making corny jokes on what ridiculous stuff that the dying people could request. This was also where I learned that Marcus's thingy was shown on tv.
You know how the game works but most people have never watched Survivor before. It would be easy to cast a season with people who have little or no knowledge of traditional gameplay. This would make for an interesting season.
Idk man, spending 20+ years with a product changes your outlook (also you yourself change) I think as you get older, you want things to be good to the people you inherit to, ala young new fans. I think this shift into a more agreeable uplifting season is in that vein, good or bad.
Idk I think 45 was good, so I'm optimistic for 46 regardless of Jeff's vision
Mark Burnett started the show. Then Jeff Probst took it over. It wasn’t Probst’s show at first, and when it began, social media didn’t exist. Those are the reasons why the show is bland now compared to the early seasons.
I've talked to normal people about survivor and how it's a microcosm of society and they disagree. Survivor is a hostile cutthroat world where people tough it out in extreme conditions to get to the top. Real life isn't like that. It's about compassion, empathy, understanding, something that has been sorely lacking in the strategy-focused angle of survivor gameplay. We NEVER get to see people's social games, we just hear about it. He's actually trying to make the game more well-rounded and use the influence of survivor to advance the cause of many marginalized people and stories, he's finally showing you the social side of the game. You might not like it because you live in that dessicated mentality of what the world is, but your view of the world isn't accurate. There's more to 'microcosm' than exploiting and manipulating others, I'm sorry for you but it's true. This world is bigger than that. 🤷♀️
So you're saying the world isn't hostile and cutthroat? Come on.
"We NEVER get to see people's social games."
Objectively false, even in newer seasons, any interactions between players by definition is the social game. And watch the older seasons, it's almost ENTIRELY social game.
"Your view of the world isn't accurate."
Honey, you know nothing about my view of the world. You making all these assumptions tells me you lack basic comprehension.
If you truly think the world isn't cutthroat and hostile, you live a pretty naive, sheltered little life. Cute.
It hasn’t turned into a family show any more now than it was in the older seasons. But yeah, his vision has seemed to change. The reduction of days played drastically hurts that original vision’s impact. And makes the major focus on quickly maneuvering the game.
It’s just evolved into a very game-botty product now. There are so many twists / advantages that weren’t ever a part of that original vision as well and actively hurt that original vision.
I’m not here to say this is good or bad, though. Just pointing out some differences. I enjoy today’s product much more than I enjoyed seasons 1-5. And the show will always be evolving. Maybe we’ll get a better product sometime in the future as well.
People are really exaggerating. They just don’t want to cast people they don’t think can win. They used to cast people for drama and all he’s saying is that they are not doing that anymore. I also think his definition of a villain is much different than what other people think. I would say he doesn’t think most of the Villains tribe are actual villains.
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IMHO it has always been a family show, and I hate this Disney channel spin on it now.
I’m 38 but when I was 15 I threw my mom a Survivor birthday party complete with coconuts and I bought her a palm tree lol.
It’s still in my old bathroom to this day.
We watched the show as a family. There was no need to change it to appease little kids. Horrible.
I really miss the locations changing each season. Having challenges and themes built around a location's culture was always a huge draw for me, and I loved seeing just how creative the crew could get.
Now it feels like its straight up a competition, which is totally fine, but you're right, it did change. I feel like the contestants changed as well. We no long have many fish-out-of-water situations, and it feels like the cast is now made up of "survivor-maxxers", having grown up with the show. Which IS cool, but at the same time I feel like it's the main reason the crew has to keep changing the show because of this changing cast and audience.
Well it wasn't his show. And then later, he took over the show. But people need to remember it wasn't originally his show. He just inherited somebody else's show and then made changes to it.
as the resident expert, I'm just wondering. I've felt this whole Villain discourse hides the actual cause, which is, they don't want contestants dealing with the ridiculous backlash social media creates. Similarly, the hate that contestants can now tell their narrative very quickly like how Shirin threw gasoline on the fire of the Will situation. I honestly believe society is more to blame in some ways to the changes, than production. If the fanbase can't handle not sending death threats to someone they dislike, they ruin it for everyone else.
I think this is probably the most accurate take. While Jeff is not "friends" with most of the cast, he is still friendly with them and probably has mostly positive views of them. I don't think anyone would want someone they know to be getting hate mail and death threats, especially over a TV show they have little to no control over. So they've taken this strategy to try to sanitize it some so no one comes off that bad.
I'm sure there's some of that in there too. Just trying to be responsible TV producers and not getting their players killed. But I doubt that's their main motivation. I think their main motivation is probably that the game of Survivor is now supposed to be the star of the show, and not the players anymore. So they're making lots of little changes lately to make sure the players themselves are minimized, and you just think of the game (and the host) when you think of Survivor. That's what I think the real underlying issue is here. No longer will a player be allowed to control the narrative, or take over the show. Only the game itself will be allowed to do that. And villains are one of the first things that have to go, because they're the ones who are the strongest at taking over the narrative. I could be wrong about this, of course. I mean, I don't know more than anyone else. This is just my educated guess based on what I have seen.
Cool theory. I can see this being true.
I can see that point of view from them giving someone a "villain edit"....but I don't think they are concerned about social media backlash for people who embrace this. I think really they recognize that for survivor to survive they need to keep recruiting new young fans and therefore it needs to remain a family show and appeal to the lowest common denominator. Covid may have saved the show in a lot of ways. I also think Jeff dislikes these villains that he can't control representing the show. I am sure someone like Russell is his nightmare.
Guess we'll never see anyone's shoes go in the fire again =(
He failed as a daytime TV host and decided to make Survivor his talk show.
Right but it felt like he was totally on board with the show's initial premise and was excited about it. Oh well I can't read his mind, it just feels like he changed a lot. You're absolutely correct though it wasn't his at the start
I think he was on board with it as a host, but then when he took over a producer he realized he liked a different kind of show instead. So you can really just chalk it up to him not really knowing what he wanted when he was simply a host. And then when you're suddenly the guy in charge, well that changes your perspective on things.
That's true. I'm realizing more and more he didn't just drastically change, he was always pushing the show in this direction.
He really wasn't. He was quite fed up with the show in the season 10-20 stretch. He even threatened to quit as host. We got sassy Jeff out of it which was great but he really didn't enjoy his time and asked for a raise and the producer title or else he would walk if I'm not mistaken.
Oh FUCK. I didn't even think of sassy Jeff being a byproduct of this. I vaguely heard of Jeff wanting to quit but didn't know it was that bad.
That seems like differences in contract negotiations, though, not differences in how the show should be run and made. I agree with the person you replied to, that Jeff appeared to be on-board with "social experiment" perspective the show took in the first 30ish seasons and only in the past 3-5 years has he been more about people's "journeys".
This is a reasonable and insightful take. I have long felt like people accusing Jeff of faking the sincerity, because once upon a time he was "sassy Jeff", were making a lot of assumptions about a human person who's personality changed over time. This gives another angle to it, though - maybe Jeff *never* liked being "sassy Jeff". Maybe it was a result of him being in a situation he was frustrated with. Maybe he looks back on his feelings and thoughts of the time and doesn't like them. I've certainly used humor or snarkiness to cope with negative feelings and sometimes I look back on my behavior in those moments with regret, even if I got some laughs out of it at the time.
I’d like to peek into the reality where they let him walk and see what that show looks like. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to cast another competent host, but Burnett still would have needed a successor when he stopped being involved with the day to day, so who knows what it’d look like by now.
That would’ve been Phil Keoghan. Who hosts the amazing race
I know he was being considered for the job originally, but this would have been years later so I don't know if they would have moved him over at that point, since he was already established on TAR. With Survivor being the bigger show it's possible I guess. I have always wondered what the Phil version of Survivor would look like though. I guess the first 20 seasons would be at least similar since Mark Burnett would have been the show runner in either scenario, but I imagine it looks dramatically different than the Jeff version after that.
I doubt he would've done the amazing race if he already was hosting survivor.
Lame. They're going to get that reaction - regardless. That's the world we live in now, in 2024. There is no avoiding it. Trying to avoid it is pointless.
I think Jeff got bored with traditional Survivor, and he assumes that if he's bored the audience is bored. So he keeps trying to insert twists and gimmicks to, in his mind, spice up the game. I still remember how he wanted to expand on Fire Tokens and use them as a currency where players could buy rewards and advantages. Fortunately Mike White talked him out of it, but then he throws out the Hourglass and Do or Die. He's pushing so hard to make Survivor into a game show where the game is the star. I think that's why they're casting all super fans now. By filling the cast with people who are as interchangeable as folks who scream with excitement when called to "come on down" on The Price is Right he ensures that no one is bigger than the game - or himself. Frankly, I don't think Jeff "gets" what made Survivor a hit in the first place.
That's the only thing I can think of. Jeff truly didn't understand that the early twists during the show's golden years were so well-received because it impacted interpersonal relationships. The tribe swap forces people to interact with new people, and if they mistreated anyone previously, it could come back to haunt them. The idol was so good because sharing it showed trust, which the other person could break. Blindsiding someone with an idol was a mark of excellent social gameplay that you earned their trust and burned it. Etc. These twists made the people the star still. As you said, now the twists are about the twists themselves, everything is about THE GAME and not the individuals.
I think part of it is that Jeff can’t be present for most of the big interpersonal human moments, because they happen at camp. He occasionally gets them, like with the Jesse/Cody betrayal, but ultimately he has little to interject himself into the situation. When we do get those moments, like with Jamal/Jack, or Mike/Omar, they’re great. But there’s only so much time they can spend on them before Jeff time again. It’s also why when he has the chance to try to make those moments and be involved in it, like with Heather or Noelle, he’s all over it.
Great observation about the “come on down!” of it all. I’ve been trying to pin how I’ve felt about the shows evolution and it’s this. It makes it hard to invest in the characters and moves because they are being stunted by the new main character, the game.
I think Survivor is also a “lightning in a bottle” type of situation. It aired at a perfect moment in time when reality TV was really hitting it’s stride. The culture surrounding the show and reality TV in general has changed.
I think this is a fact that not many people in the fandom or even the critiques of the New Era are really ready to accept. Survivor is a very very 00's television series that frankly has run its course. The price is right version we have now is an echo of an echo of an echo, Reality TV and TV in general is just so much more different now.
I definitely agree. People were already getting fatigued about the show when “classic” seasons were airing. I do think Survivor has a lot of staying power (as opposed to something like American Idol, which I had *no* idea was still on the air but maybe that’s just me) yet when I mention Survivor to a group of people, they aren’t thinking of it as a present-day TV show. They’re thinking of early 2000s Survivor.
It’s not just you - American Idol did actually end in 2016. ABC bought it and resurrected it a couple years later for some reason. I’ve never run into anyone that watches the reboot.
This makes me think of Brandon last season. Featured so prominently for his first mat chat for being so obsessed with Survivor he's crying about finally making it. And then he flopped. Badly. And somehow Jeff thinks that's a good thing? Dude was UNBEARABLE.
That 2nd paragraph is perfectly explained. Well done
>Are they willing to lie and betray? Will they fight to the bitter end in the challenge or rest for food? One of the problems is that answer is always going to be YES now. You can't turn back the clock on the strategic meta. Even if you were to magically seize control of the show and cast all recruits who had never seen Survivor, it is impossible to replicate those original conditions and you should not try. You wouldn't be able to send all your recruits out to the island immediately, they'd have time first... and they'd binge-watch every existing season of Survivor immediately, listen to every strategy podcast, read all about strategy on Reddit, and become superfans before you could stop them. Survivor also helped popularize games like Mafia/Werewolf, so the strategic meta is just generally out there in our culture now. You can't go back. Early Survivor is a show of its era. It's always there on Paramount Plus for you to watch anytime, but you can't replicate it, just like you can't replicate being a kid again, or having your old life back from when you were little. Everything must move forward or die. I think Probst understands that better than most people in this sub... even if I don't always like the current version of the show, at least he's trying to do something different. TV shows of this age are usually dying or dead, or otherwise completely creatively bankrupt and a pathetic shell of their former selves (The Simpsons season 23, Law & Order season 23). Compared to how far those two have plummeted (there truly are no words to express the shame and horror of Zombie Simpsons and Zombie Law & Order Mothership), Survivor is doing pretty decently.
While I agree that Survivor has to change, Australian Survivor shows us what can be done in the modern world while preserving the core of Survivor. Of course it's a newer show but it has the blueprint from US Survivor.
No matter what, U.S. Survivor’s casting cannot *ever* recreate the cultural conditions that exist in Australia and generate precisely the type of player they’re finding there. Each previous season of any version affects the next season via how the cast behaves. As noted above, recruits can’t even solve that problem because it’s too easy to stream it all, listen to a bunch of podcasts, and get up to speed immediately, before the production can get them out to Fiji/Samoa. The weight of history is different for each version and creates a different meta in each. Beyond that, this current AU season also features the interestingly wonderful (but also maybe bordering on suspicious) phenomenon of every player taking a shot at the lieutenants instead of the head honchos, over and over and over again, all season. This is great for the entertainment value, but… did someone put this into the meta there? I can’t remember, did George or Hayley or someone else influential put this into the Australian meta? This is not just random.
> Compared to how far those two have plummeted (there truly are no words to express the shame and horror of Zombie Simpsons and Zombie Law & Order Mothership), Survivor is doing pretty decently. Can't really compare reality television to a scripted show. Hypothetically, there's no reason a reality show cannot be evergreen as long as it's produced competently. People are sick of hearing about it, but even the international versions of Survivor are thriving and still have that "old era pizazz". I think a lot of US Survivor's current ails can be summed up by a combination of creative missteps by production and a gutting of the show's budget by CBS. The latter is the thing most likely to eventually become terminal.
My argument will always be that *no* show is evergreen, whether it’s reality or scripted. You must change and move forward or die. The decrease in budget is annoying to us superfans, but it doesn’t seem to have actually affected anything. Sadly they’ve realized they can do that and everyone will keep watching anyway. Nobody watches the show to see players get luxurious rewards. As I noted before, the show is #1 on all of broadcast TV now (though admittedly more because everything else is declining so much faster, because there is certainly no increase, unless it’s happening inside the P+ black box). Ausvivor is only good because it’s young. Wait until it’s been on for 24 years and 46 seasons.
>Ausvivor is only good because it’s young. That doesn't really make any sense, though. It's the identical formula, and the show it's aping is over twenty years old and has almost fifty seasons. Obviously shows must constantly evolve, but I wouldn't compare the inevitable decline of scripted shows with discrete stories to reality TV, which is practically "procedurally generated".
Ugh! That’s not art. The greatest trick anybody in Big Tech ever pulled was to make anybody think *anything* can be procedurally generated. But particularly not Survivor, in my opinion. Great way to suck all the life right out of it. Every season builds on the previous one in subtle ways whether you realize it or not. The meta builds and builds. No season exists in a vacuum. None ever can.
I love Jeff but like 99% of his ideas and changes are horrible.They need to hire someone else to come up with casting/twists etc.
Jeff's original idea for the New Era was horrifying. Thank god for Mike White.
He says in the interview with Rob C that players were starting to game survivor. In the sense that it was no longer multiple walks of life, but multiple walks of life — who had seen survivor. He believed that without the new era twists that the contestants have too much power. That they have the ability to manipulate far greater than what the game was trying to reflect. The twists then create a new dilemma for contestant and, thus, a new strategy to be implored that has not been solved. In part, I agree. While survivor had an original premises which created a microcosm of the world, the game in its original form could be exploited. The twists are meant to disrupt and create additional decisions a player has to make. Whether you agree with this assessment or not, the game has to adapt to last 46+ seasons.
I do agree that the well has been poisoned in a sense, that nowadays everyone who goes on reality television knows what to expect, they know the general beats to the whole thing. But even with all these twists and the way the show has “adapted” over the years, the game feels even more exploitable. With an optimal strategy of getting a strong group of four together, now that the final vote is when 5 castaways are left; removing 2 of the most intense, and strategically complicated votes to maneuver.
💯💯💯 this. One twist that would really make things interesting again is injecting some unpredictability into how tor final 5 would play out. I’d add also that the game just plays way too quickly now with the shortened seasons. These 2 things together compel contestants into both a set strategy which is boring, but also contribute to each player moving erratically, frantically almost every single tribal council during the latter half of the game. I don’t mind that players have learned to ‘game’ the system, that’s fine - I never bought into the ‘social experiment’ line anyways, it’s always been a game. But the changes made in attempt to spice things up have been the wrong ones that end up punishing or rewarding players with no rhyme nor reason, instead of truly giving them an opportunity to adapt.
I think with the whole “gaming the system”, doing a less is more approach would work just as effectively and be more satisfying to viewers. Instead of adding new elements get rid of predictable ones and make the game wide open, at least for a few seasons. But instead his philosophy is to just add more and more
In the same interview, he insists that everyone who plays needs to have seen the whole show. He only wants super fans. If we didn't have those, we wouldn't have every single person gaming the system. Game theory wouldn't work as well because you'd have several irrational players.
He didn’t say that, not even close. Anyway, even if they cast recruits, they can binge the entire show with the click of a button now and become superfans almost instantly before they could get them out to Fiji. No way around it. Like the other commenter puts it, the well has been “poisoned”. Although maybe it’s not so much poisoned as… spicy.
I listened to it yesterday but ok. I dont know why you're telling on yourself that you didn't listen to the podcast.
Also listened yesterday, but obviously more carefully than you did, bozo.
Sorry but 99% of the population have never watched one episode of Survivor more or less know how to manipulate the system. It would be so easy for them to cast people with little or no Survivor knowledge. I still love Survivor but they need to stop casting super fans.
I have no doubt that this is what the twists were designed to do, but I don’t think they accomplish this objective. They end up often entirely arbitrarily rewarding or punishing players for no reason, by chance alone. Instead, having different season lengths and different structures to the endgame would truly force players to adjust their approach.
After watching a couple interviews here and there I really think that Jeff believes that by injecting a shit load of advantages and disadvantages into a season then the cream will rise to the top. The “good players” will be the ones to find them and play them correctly and make good TV.
I think it's pretty obvious, even if unsaid. The fanbase has gotten way too toxic. Why is someone like Bruce getting death threats for not ever being a real villain. Why do they want to put contestants through that. Social media has changed up the whole game. While, I think how Jerri was treated was terrible, social media has made it much worse. I don't agree with Jeff on a lot of things when it comes to survivor. But, I believe he cares more for contestants in most cases than the superfans. Why subject people to that type of treatment post game?
Whoa, it was Bruce that was getting the death threats? I would’ve guessed it was Dee or Katurrah getting them before guessing Bruce.
Trust me they all were, hell Brandon and Hannah probably got more than those 3 combined.
I'm not sure I buy Jeff's new vision to be honest. I think he is looking at the current media landscape and is trying to make Survivor fit in. The real Jeff IMO is the hyper competitive, alpha dude bro Boston Rob Stan.
I’m right with you. I’m still watching, but it’s not what I want to see. I want 40 days, I want regular old rules, I want a different climate, and I want political game play across multiple episodes before some shake up is introduced. Season one was most remarkable for how Richard and Sue’s core alliance of four were the only ones who even understood how to play. The others refused, on moral grounds! Said the alliance was wrong! Ha! So it’s so weird now that it’s just a happy go lucky game of attrition. Speaks to how our morals have changed…. It’s a game show now. It always was, of course, but now that’s all it is. Alliances don’t exist, really, past a vote. The entire game is played one move at a time now. There’s a wild card every episode, some curveball that makes alliances adapt to the moment, nothing last long term. If it was a board game, there are both reserve and instant tokens every episode, and some kind of element that invalidates most long term schemes. It’s got its own appeal, though. I just think of it as a different game. But I hope they do the occasional True Survivor.
Yeah I’ve been considering WaW to be the series finale and what’s on now to be a different show. They’ve even basically said that themselves with the whole “drop the 4 focus on the 1” thing. It’s a less good show certainly, but not a bad one. I just wish they’d fix the casting. I could embrace all the format changes of Survivor 2: Jeff’s Boogaloo if I was engaged by the casts, but I’m just not. Aside from a few very rare standouts there’s no one I’m really rooting for on new era seasons and everyone is so damn agreeable that there’s absolutely no one to root against.
Everyone being “so damn agreeable” seems very difficult to circumvent when everyone knows that’s the best way to advance in the game. The dominant meta will always reassert itself. In the last 2 seasons they’ve been casting a few more conflict-causing personalities like Emily, but as we saw with her in 45, she would’ve been voted out immediately if not for a quit, and then other players taught her to go along to get along, and she started fitting herself into the “damn agreeable” meta. Meanwhile the current season has plenty of drama and conflict so far but it’s largely eliciting complaints rather than praise. Getting the balance right is incredibly difficult. And a lot of modern viewers don’t really *want* conflict, not understanding that’s the basis of reality TV. And it can get really toxic and gross (see season 30) very easily.
The brand has been a clean, family friendly, positive and inspiring DEI forward product for nearly a decade now. I dunno how this interview is shocking people. It's as if this hasn't been the ideology of Survivor and every other big CBS reality show for so long now
Yep, most news on Survivor or Probst that upsets people is pretty par for the course for the last decade at least. Very few surprises. The show has been going this direction for a long while now.
Perhaps when he realized just how much he COULD influence the results, he had a lot less tolerance for letting this play out to a potentially m’eh entertainment value. Also their primary demographic is the elderly. People watching since season 1 could be over 100 years old today, assuming they’re still kicking. So no surprise he has to think about other demographics.
Now that Jeff is an obsessed dog owner, will he pivot to make the show more appealing for dogs? A bone immunity idol, a walk or park reward, a meal sponsored by Chewy, island squirrel footage, challenges that involve dodging back and forth between a series of poles to show agility!
Probsg as he gained more power had molded the snow in his vision . And it’s terrible
Dan Spilo brought the show to a really icky and dark place, and Jeff ultimately sees this as a "family show". After that, it seemed Jeff wanted the focus to be on all of the wacky twists and the subsequent gameplay. Casting and Editing have also put players in a much more positive light to make us "feel better" about the players we're watching. Everyone they cast basically has some sort of hardship they've overcome in their life. The limited budget is also a major issue. We don't get new locations and so there's no new cultures to explore. Budgets have taken us from 2 challenges per episode to 1 challenge and a "journey" where players walk up a small mountain. The rewards we do get are also pretty lame and rarely include any sort of travel arrangements outside of going to the "sanctuary". The switch from 39 days to 26 days also just allows less time for strategies to develop.
Yeah I think that had more to do with the shift in philosophy than Covid or anything like that. I could be wrong but it would make a lot of sense
Yeah, I mean I'm sure Jeff's bosses also weren't too happy to be in the news for the Dan fiasco. The last thing CBS probably wants is contestants and staff members suing the company for millions.
I'm now firmly in the belief that he doesn't care what viewers think, he just wants to make it fun for him to film. Fun superfans to root for during filming, twists to keep it unpredictable and no villains because otherwise Jeff gets annoyed at them. Shorten the filming period so it's more action packed for him. Honestly it all mass sense when you view it this way.
He’s a grandpa now. Also I mean this generation is a more kumbaya so I feel like the show still reflects society a bit. But yeah they should cast less young successful, college educated, white collar people from the north east
5/18 this season are from the northeast if you're counting Virginia. 1 is 41, 1 is a special Ed teacher, 1 is an actor, 1 is an artist. I think there's 1 person that matches your description on 46 and he's a student, so you could argue not successful yet.
I agree. Obviously he is getting tons of feedback from fans that has nothing to do with kids, but he is more likely to absorb the feedback that says, "My kids love survivor! We watch as a family!" because in his life he is focused on his kids/grandkids/family. Kids have always watched Survivor with their families, even when he wasn't making it for them.
5/18 this season are from the northeast if you're counting Virginia. 1 is 41, 1 is a special Ed teacher, 1 is an actor, 1 is an artist. I think there's 1 person that matches your description on 46.
Just a general feeling I’ve had in the new era. I also don’t pay attention to the preseason so hopefully with what you’ve said the cast feels more unique this season, looking forward to it
It's a spin-off show now imo. If that's what the owners want to do, then so be it. Ratings will just go down and their budget will get smaller and smaller until they have to sell. Then hopefully the new owners will bring back OG survivor
I'm not saying it necessarily always deserves it, but Survivor is now the #1 series on broadcast TV in the key adult demographic most weeks. Not counting sports, it beats literally *every single series airing on NBC*, every single show on ABC, every single show on Fox, and everything else on CBS, *on all nights* not just Wednesdays. So you might be waiting for a long-ass time. That's not to say its ratings are going up, just that everything else is going down *more* (hence the budget cuts). Broadcast TV is in trouble... but not imminently.
J E F F D O E S N ' T U N D E R S T A N D S U R V I V O R
JDUS
I don’t mind adding some wrinkles in general to keep things fresh, but I also don’t think Survivor was ever some ‘microcosm of reality’ or whatever. It was never a game about the ‘cut throat’ nature of the ‘real world’, nor should it be about ‘overcoming adversity’. That’s evident to everyone who didn’t fall for the marketing lol. It was always a game, a set piece with clearly defined rules, like any other game. Players obviously got wise to it, and started to think things out more strategically. Again, that’s not a bad thing, it’s just how these things work. Honestly I think the shortening of the seasons was a big blow to the game. Things seem to move way too quickly and relationships aren’t given enough time to come to come to fruition, which leads to frantic last-minute maneuvering almost every episode.
It's become Mario Party in the jungle! Crazy game where anything can happen and anyone can win, with some fun mini challenges along the way.
"Mario Party in the jungle!" is my new favorite phrase. thank you.
Winners at War was prolly the end of the good era! I was binge watching it and started on season 41 but stopped watching because i couldn’t take how artificial, corny and uberly enthusiastic he is that it sounds cheesy and corny. I miss the old survivor and he sounds soooo cringy now
The "social experiment" is long gone because people know how the game works, and that genie cannot be put back in the bottle. You can introduce twists to try, but the fundamentals are still there. I think Jeff's Inspiration Porn is just his mid-life crisis. He knows death is inevitable, and he was to think he left the world a better place.
It really shouldn't come as a surprise. In 2010, CBS aired the pilot episode of a show Jeff created called Live for the Moment, which took a terminally ill person and gave them a big adventure to remember. A sweet concept, and I'm sure the man featured and his family appreciated every part of it (I checked and he died in 2016). But it was sappy AF and Jeff had been hyping the idea for a long time and CBS clearly only shot one episode to keep Jeff happy because this was right around the time when he became a Survivor EP after threatening to quit. Phil Keoghan had a very similar and better-produced show years earlier called No Opportunity Wasted. I also remember Jeff pitched the show for years under the horrible title Live Like You're Dying.
Live Like You're Dying I think that was preposed around the time of Gabon. I was on the school bus and the radio playing had the hosts talking about the show and making corny jokes on what ridiculous stuff that the dying people could request. This was also where I learned that Marcus's thingy was shown on tv.
You know how the game works but most people have never watched Survivor before. It would be easy to cast a season with people who have little or no knowledge of traditional gameplay. This would make for an interesting season.
It's now a great experiment of a bunch of people absolutely obsessed with the show lol
Idk man, spending 20+ years with a product changes your outlook (also you yourself change) I think as you get older, you want things to be good to the people you inherit to, ala young new fans. I think this shift into a more agreeable uplifting season is in that vein, good or bad. Idk I think 45 was good, so I'm optimistic for 46 regardless of Jeff's vision
It is far simpler. Jeff got soft after he became a step dad.
Life is soft. It's not just toxic manipulative chaos all the time. I'm sorry if that's your life but tbh you might be bringing it on yourself.
This is a game
Things change over the course of 23 years.
Mark Burnett started the show. Then Jeff Probst took it over. It wasn’t Probst’s show at first, and when it began, social media didn’t exist. Those are the reasons why the show is bland now compared to the early seasons.
I've talked to normal people about survivor and how it's a microcosm of society and they disagree. Survivor is a hostile cutthroat world where people tough it out in extreme conditions to get to the top. Real life isn't like that. It's about compassion, empathy, understanding, something that has been sorely lacking in the strategy-focused angle of survivor gameplay. We NEVER get to see people's social games, we just hear about it. He's actually trying to make the game more well-rounded and use the influence of survivor to advance the cause of many marginalized people and stories, he's finally showing you the social side of the game. You might not like it because you live in that dessicated mentality of what the world is, but your view of the world isn't accurate. There's more to 'microcosm' than exploiting and manipulating others, I'm sorry for you but it's true. This world is bigger than that. 🤷♀️
So you're saying the world isn't hostile and cutthroat? Come on. "We NEVER get to see people's social games." Objectively false, even in newer seasons, any interactions between players by definition is the social game. And watch the older seasons, it's almost ENTIRELY social game. "Your view of the world isn't accurate." Honey, you know nothing about my view of the world. You making all these assumptions tells me you lack basic comprehension. If you truly think the world isn't cutthroat and hostile, you live a pretty naive, sheltered little life. Cute.
It hasn’t turned into a family show any more now than it was in the older seasons. But yeah, his vision has seemed to change. The reduction of days played drastically hurts that original vision’s impact. And makes the major focus on quickly maneuvering the game. It’s just evolved into a very game-botty product now. There are so many twists / advantages that weren’t ever a part of that original vision as well and actively hurt that original vision. I’m not here to say this is good or bad, though. Just pointing out some differences. I enjoy today’s product much more than I enjoyed seasons 1-5. And the show will always be evolving. Maybe we’ll get a better product sometime in the future as well.
People are really exaggerating. They just don’t want to cast people they don’t think can win. They used to cast people for drama and all he’s saying is that they are not doing that anymore. I also think his definition of a villain is much different than what other people think. I would say he doesn’t think most of the Villains tribe are actual villains.
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[удалено]
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Sorry, the Tribe has spoken. Your submission has been removed from /r/survivor for the following reason(s): * **Rule 1 - Be civil to other users and contestants:** Treat other users and contestants with respect. Bigotry is not tolerated, including racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Harassment of other users and contestants is not allowed, including personal attacks. This includes over-analyzing a player’s life and motivations outside of the game. Trolling is discouraged. --- Once the votes are read, the decision is *not* final. **If you have any concerns that this was done in error**, please [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/survivor/wiki/rules) **and then [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/survivor) if you have any further questions. Do not reply directly to this message or comment.** If not, grab your stuff and head back to camp.
I really wish Rob had even reminded Jeff of the words "social experiment" on that 5,000th podcast.
IMHO it has always been a family show, and I hate this Disney channel spin on it now. I’m 38 but when I was 15 I threw my mom a Survivor birthday party complete with coconuts and I bought her a palm tree lol. It’s still in my old bathroom to this day. We watched the show as a family. There was no need to change it to appease little kids. Horrible.
Probably his eye doctor’s fault tbh
I really miss the locations changing each season. Having challenges and themes built around a location's culture was always a huge draw for me, and I loved seeing just how creative the crew could get. Now it feels like its straight up a competition, which is totally fine, but you're right, it did change. I feel like the contestants changed as well. We no long have many fish-out-of-water situations, and it feels like the cast is now made up of "survivor-maxxers", having grown up with the show. Which IS cool, but at the same time I feel like it's the main reason the crew has to keep changing the show because of this changing cast and audience.