Survivor has been around quite literally as long as I have been alive. I turned 25 this past week. And on May 26, 2025, we will also be celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the premiere of the show that forever changed the face of television. So many shows have come and gone since Survivor debuted in the summer of 2000, so how is it possible that this Clinton-era reality show has not only stayed alive, but maintained such a devoted fanbase after a quarter century on the air?
The answer lies in the simplicity and the humanity of the show's format. Despite the occasional adjustment, the core idea of Survivor has largely remained unchanged. You force 16-20 strangers to work together to create a new society, all while you play a game of social strategy where each round a player is eliminated. At the end of the game, the eliminated players have the final say in who of the 2-3 remaining players wins.
And while the meta-game has changed and certain approaches to the game of Survivor have become somewhat standardized, this format and its simplicity allows the players to essentially control the "rules" of the game, and this quality is what makes Survivor unique.
Three-time Survivor loser Russell Hantz argued at the Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains reunion show that there is a flaw in the game of Survivor itself if he could make it to the end of the game twice and not be able to win either time. And far too often in online discourse about this show, I'm amazed at fans who seem to agree with him.
How many times have you seen "Player X played an OBJECTIVELY better game than Player Y, so how did Player Y win?" or something else of that nature? Hantz, and those who appear to agree that there's a flaw in the game design don't seem to understand that there is no objective criteria to win Survivor... and that's the point! There is no scoring system. There is no exact science on how to play this game. Every season, the players on the island decide what the criteria is to win their particular season, and whoever is left at the end to plead their case have to convince the jury that they've won based on that criteria.
People have won Survivor by being intelligent and strategically minded. People have won by being so darn charming that everyone just handed them the win. People have won by simply being less hated than the other people left at the end of the game.
At the same time, people have lost Survivor because of anything from being deemed too big a threat to win, to being in the wrong alliance, to simply being so annoying that no one wants them around anymore. The ways people win and lose this game aren't determined by scores or rules, they're determined by humans, with human hearts, and human flaws. It's this humanity that has created some of the greatest moments of television of the 21st century.
Richard Hatch, winner of Survivor's first season, made the case in a video for his Youtube Channel that Survivor shouldn't be called a "reality show." He claims a more apt description would be to call Survivor an "unscripted drama." And perhaps when you think in those terms, Survivor is the perfect medium to create unique dramatic stories.
Survivor is not about the game being played, it's not about the immunity idols, or the strategy, or even the person who wins a million dollars at the end. Survivor is a show about people, who have differing philosophies, differing skills, different advantages and disadvantages they use in life. And when these unique people come together to play a game, they create tension and release, drama and resolution, heroes and villains, and most of all they create a story that makes us think and feel. All the principles of good storytelling can be found on just about every season of Survivor.
No two seasons of Survivor are alike. Because in a game about humanity, humans can't be controlled. And neither production, nor viewers, nor twitter trolls, nor Jeff Probst himself can change that. Survivor will continue to show us something new about ourselves every time the game is played from now until the end of time. And as long as that is the case, I will still be watching!