The most basic structure of Survivor hasn’t changed since the show premiered more than twenty years ago, but anyone who has watched even semi-consistently can tell you it’s evolved to the point of being almost unrecognizable. What was once a show largely about actual survival and populated with people typically looking for grand adventures and/ or money is now a show largely about strategizing and populated almost exclusively by fans who love Survivor. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the more modern and sophisticated gameplay has produced some fantastic seasons, but there is a potential problem with almost exclusively casting superfans and Season 46 is showing it.
To some extent, winning Survivor has always been about impressing the other people playing Survivor. They’re the ones who will ultimately make up the jury and vote for who takes home the money and title of Sole Survivor. For a long time, the perception of how to impress these voters was very complicated. Some would be likely to vote for whoever they had the closest relationship with. Some, it was thought, would be likely to vote for whoever was actually the best at literally surviving. Some would probably vote for who they felt most controlled the game. And on and on it went with a dozen other possible reasons or combinations of reasons. But that’s not the perception anymore.
Now, the almost universally agreed perception of how to get jury votes is to “have the best resume.” It literally comes up constantly on the show. I have to build my resume. This move or that move would do wonders for my resume. In recent weeks, we’ve seen several players get upset in their confessionals about whether they got enough credit for their moves. Let’s pause there for a second. Whatever they wanted to happen, happened. They got out the person they were going for. It worked. But instead of being happy, they were instead worried or upset because they felt it wouldn’t look good enough on this hypothetical resume.
And the stupid part is they might not be wrong. Once upon a time, Survivor was filled with all kinds of people, some of whom loved Survivor, some of whom were casual fans and some of whom had little experience with the show. That’s not the case anymore. Survivor is more diverse in the more obvious ways than ever, but almost everyone going on the show is a self-described superfan. There’s almost no diversity there, and the show is actively leaning into it. We get montages of players practicing puzzles before they arrive in Fiji. Castaways have back-and-forth arguments naming who the second person booted in every season has been. We even got a challenge this season where a player had to line up logos from prior seasons in order to win an advantage.
So, why is that a problem? Well, it’s created this collective obsession with people making the biggest possible move, even if it doesn’t make any sense apart from it being, in and of itself, a big move. Eliminating your closest ally merely to say you eliminated your closest ally isn’t OMG next level thinking, it’s actually pretty stupid on paper until you’re at the very end of the game. But if you’re a superfan who is obsessed with big moves and everyone else you’re playing with is a superfan obsessed with big moves, then that’s the sorta thing people feel they need to do in order to impress each other.
During its worst moments, New Era Survivor can turn into one long game of oneupsmanship and resume building. Tevin engineers a blindside on his ally Soda because it would look great on his resume. Liz, one of his closest allies, then engineers a blindside on him because he’s the new perceived favorite and it would look good on her resume. Liz then gets upset because Q blew up at tribal council and made it all about him, which overshadowed her accomplishment. Kenzie doesn’t think Liz is a threat because she didn’t get any credit for her move so she wants to take out her own closest ally Tiffany because it would look good on her resume, but Maria and Charlie, who want her gone too, are worried about going along with that plan because it might look too good on her resume and not theirs. It’s just an exhausting game of trying to predict whether others will consider you worthy, and it affects how most people play.
And I’m fine with that near the end of the game. Good players should absolutely start thinking about who they can and cannot beat in the finale. They should be thinking about whether they’ve just sat back and coasted or played their own game, but in this new era of exclusively superfans, that obsession with resume-building now starts as soon as mergetory ends. Every week is treated like a chance to make that big move you need, and any vote that isn’t a blindside or a favorite getting eliminated is considered a waste.
But a move that doesn’t make you more likely to make the finale shouldn’t be considered a good move. You shouldn’t get credit for making your own path harder just because you were able to blindside someone. If you have four close allies and three opponents staring you down, blindsiding one of your own allies to create a WTF moment so you can prove you’re playing your own game isn’t actually good gameplay. It’s a dumb risk that puts you at the bottom of a new group of four.
During Season 43 of Survivor, we saw Cody, Karla and Jesse, arguably the three best and most strategic players of the entire season, go home in successive episodes. They all betrayed allies and ultimately lost an episode or two after engineering a big move they thought would build a resume and help them win. Consequently, we ended up with a finale that featured Gabler, Cassidy and Owen.
Tevin, one of the game’s best social players, already made the same mistake this season. How many more are going to repeat it because of this obsession with building a resume? In the real world, the best resume isn't necessarily the one written with the brightest crayon, and modern Survivor players would do well to remember that, whether they're in the game or on the jury.
You can catch new episodes of Survivor 46 on Wednesday nights on CBS or you can watch it via other streaming options.
