Why Survivor is Probably Not Scripted

I get tired of hearing and reading all this shit about Survivor being rigged. It’s not. That would be illegal. Just ask the FCC. There might be some moments that are borderline unfair and maybe some cases where you can tell something fishy is going on. But in this blog post, I’m going to mention my reasoning as to why I think that Survivor is not scripted.

Before I get into the whole Survivor thing, I have a much broader scope to cover. There was a time when game shows were scripted. This wasn’t fair, as you can imagine, but it happened. The most well known example of this was the TV show 21. I don’t think that it was the only one, but it was the first and probably helped the other ones decide to rig things. But then when people learned about it from a contestant who was forced to lose, things pretty much fell apart for that show and many others like it. It’s possible that the game show genre could have fallen apart because of this. The fact that it didn’t is a bit of a surprise considering what happened.

Here’s more information about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950s_quiz_show_scandals

Now you’d think that there would be tons of contestants who would have stated that Survivor was rigged if it really was. In fact, there was only just one. Stacey Stillman, a contestant on the first season, sued the show as she believed the producers had convinced people to vote her out instead of a different contestant. I don’t see much truth to this rumor. It seems as if she wasn’t reacting well to being blindsided. You’d think that there would be another contestant like her if stuff like she claimed happened again. But there wasn’t.

If Survivor were rigged, you’d have to wonder about the controversy in the final four immunity challenge in Survivor: Africa. They messed up the challenge and they knew it. They then paid the players negatively affected a settlement. Why would they do that if it were fake? Not only that, but since finding out about this problem, that challenge has never appeared again. It was never officially banned either, but it doesn’t appear anymore.

Here’s more information: http://nypost.com/2002/02/20/survivor-screw-up-costs-cbs-200g/

Speaking of challenges that were banned, sometimes a challenge is declared too physical or there is some problem with it that gets it banned from reappearing on the show. There are at least two challenges that caused serious injuries to players that won’t ever appear on Survivor again. They did end up resulting in someone getting medically evacuated. That’s a good enough reason for the challenge to be banned which is why it was.

Speaking of medically evacuated players, do you think that there would be people agreeing to be medically evacuated if Survivor were fake? Do you think that Survivor would ever get that dangerous in the first place? I don’t.

A lot of people seem to look at any and every coincidence that happens on Survivor and is certain that points to the fakeness they claim is in this show. The final six of Koah Rong, for example, had exactly two players from each of the starting tribes. Some people then say that this is proof that the show is fake. But why would they do anything like this? It would be a completely random thing to do in a scripted show, which is why it probably is just a coincidence.

I’m not sure what else there is to say about why I don’t think that Survivor is scripted, rigged, fake, or anything like that. Of course, there are some hard headed people, Survivor fans and haters alike, who will never be convinced otherwise. But I hope that I made a good point in this blog post. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.