From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Thu Jul 27 2000 - 22:17:39 PDT
So, is it just me, or is anybody else here totally enthralled by
Survivor? I generally don't watch much TV (exceptions: Daily Show on
occasion, South Park) but I'm totally hooked. I even spent an absurd
amount of time filling out the application for SII, filming and editing
an audition tape, running around getting everything in order, etc. (My
rationale: hey, it'd be good exposure / alternate funding for
Clickfeed. ;-) This despite my longstanding policy of never, ever being
on a talkshow or gameshow. And I'm, like, the guy who claims that Motel
6 is "really, really roughing it." ;-)
I think the only thing I've ever wanted in my life more than being cast
for that show was for the deal to go through -w- Activerse when it was
looking pretty shaky.
When I first heard about Survivor, I thought it sounded mildly
interesting. When I found out that it was more interpersonal dynamics
and politics than pure survival, I thought "that sucks!" But that's
actually the cool part of the show! It's Lord of the Flies come to
life.
I caught bits and pieces while my girlfriend watched it the first couple
of weeks. The third week, I sat through the whole thing. And that was
it: totally hooked. ;-)
As a sign of how far gone I am with this thing: a buddy and I spent
about 4 hours over beers while I was on vacation trying to analyze the
show from a combinatoric / game theoretic perspective, to handicap the
possible outcomes. Geez, that's twisted, huh? We did this at an
Appleby's restaurant in Santa Fe, NM, after driving 2 hours out of the
remote valley we were in fishing --- all that way just to catch Survivor
in realtime last week, had to bribe the manager to tune in the TV in the
bar, too.
But I completely understand why it's captivated so many people. In our
increasingly hassled, accelerated, and artificially stressed-out lives,
Survivor plays to our ultimate fantasies: it's the ultimate escapism,
yet ironically a sort of brutal and absolutely basic way to reconnect
with the fundamentally grungy and very physical world outside our
abstractions.
Anybody out there interested in a Survivor recovery / support group? ;-)
jb
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 22:34:03 PDT