A few weeks ago I flew back with my older brother from a four-day trip into the Maine wilderness to play a live reality game based on the CBS TV show Survivor. It followed the structure of the show to a T: two tribes, tribal councils, making shelter, tending to a fire, cooking rice, a tribal swap, a merge, hidden idols and advantages, voting players out and back in, and immunity challenges copied right from the show. Also like the show we were also met with extreme weather conditions as we battled a daylong torrential downpour and flood warning. It was one of the most unique experiences of my entire life. My mind continues to race weeks later and this blog is my attempt to empty out my head.
There’s a community called “Live Reality Games” (LRG) and it’s very close-knit and widespread. It’s like an alumni network across the country of people who love starving themselves, sleeping outside, and blindsiding each other. You become someone’s friend and then they lie straight to your face and stab you in the back and then somehow you become even closer friends and fly across the country to be in their wedding. Some of the challenges are pure torture. “Go hike up and down this hill seven times and we’ll give you flint to start a fire to cook some rice. Oh, there’s a flood warning and all of the wood is wet? Deal with it.” And people go wild for the experience, leaving behind their jobs, friends, and families to compete. For God’s sake, we had a guy fresh out of surgery with a knee brace and crutches and he still made the merge!
The brand of game we were playing was called Can You Survive, or CYS, which started as an online reality game that morphed into one of the most respected games in the LRG network. Each member of the game raises money for a charity. My brother and I were playing for the American Red Cross to raise awareness for CPR and AED training. This was an important cause for us because our Dad sadly passed away due to a spontaneous cardiac arrest last year.
The amount of organization that leads up to the production of CYS is amazing; it actually felt like I was on a well-produced television show. The theme of this season was “Blood Vs. Water” which meant that 8 of us were playing against and then along with our loved ones. The social dynamics that unfolded were unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I was assigned to the light blue tribe, Medomak.
The Tribe
My tribe consisted of Joel, a fun-loving human being with an infectious spirit. We bonded over pharmacology and our lives as healthcare students. Joel was so humble that he still rooted for our tribe after we sadly voted him out. His best friend Jon was on the other tribe. Jon and I actually spoke and connected quite a bit and I was sad when he left. Then there was Emma, sweet, kind, and a wonderful challenge companion; her elimination stung, although her husband on the other tribe was a returning player and a fierce opponent. Melanie was an LRG veteran and a close ally member; almost like a caretaker of the tribe that pulled out our personal stories and bonded us together. She taught me a lot about the game of Survivor. Kc was my first ally; a mysterious outdoorsman with an undying passion for the game that eventually led to his victory. His sister Veronica was his greatest cheerleader. Connor was a clear athlete and challenge beast. He was friendly and kept up our morale and was one of my favorite tribal teammates. His charm took him all the way to the final two. Jeanna was new to the game like I was, and fought harder than anyone at challenges. Despite being new, she was playing with her daughter Frances who was secretly the most connected to the CYS game and surprised me by making it so far. I sat next to her on my flight in, unknowingly. I kept the window open for her so she should work on her crossword puzzles. She quickly tucked her puzzles away when she realized that Kc and Veronica were also on the flight as she did not want to come across as a puzzle-solving threat! Then there was Ethan, the youngest player in the game with a heart of gold. His laugh and smile were infectious and a stark contrast to the environment we were in. He faced and managed the elements better than anyone. His sister Caitlin was a wily game-changer and my jury companion. Finally, there was me, new to the game and eager to play alongside my brother who was on the other tribe.
I loved everything about my tribe and was heartbroken with every vote out. We had some wonderful victories and I embraced my teammates like they were lifelong friends despite just meeting them hours ago. The camaraderie, brotherhood, and sisterhood of this game was something truly special. I’ve never excelled at sports growing up, so being able to be a part of a team victory was a new and invigorating feeling for me. Once we had reached the merge, I felt a longing feeling for the team dynamic that had now turned into an individual game. Being alone is much less fun.
The Game
The first night I spent wide awake in a clearing, staring up at the overcast, starless, Maine sky. I had never slept outside without a tent before and I didn’t sleep a wink that first night. A cacophony of snores and coyotes, an inability to find a comfortable sleeping position, and anxiety about the next day’s tribal councils were not conducive to sleep.
My brother and I were fortunate enough to have immunity during our first two tribal councils since we had raised the most money for our charity. Thank you to everyone who donated! For me, having immunity was like playing the game with training wheels which I was fortunate for. Once my safety was lifted, the anxiety and paranoia crept in.
I learned that every action of the game has consequences. Where I slept, whether to actually force myself to stay awake or get some rest, who I took walks with, who was watching me as I took my 100th pee break to make sure I wasn’t looking for hidden advantages. One time, I was genuinely searching for raspberries to eat since I was starving and I was mistaken for searching for an idol. You learn to exaggerate certain aspects of your personal life and completely hide others. Am I talking too much? Not enough? Have I tried to make genuine personal connections with everyone?
My first mistake in the game was pushing to vote out Louie. A fellow Italian and family man, I was inspired, however intimidated by his presence. He was personable, making great connections, and strong at challenges, exactly the person you don’t want sitting next to you in a final tribal council. It was way too early to target him but as a new player I didn’t know that. It hurt when he left and I felt regretful; especially since it hurt his partner Connor who was an alliance member; Connor found a new alliance which took him to the final two! Louie’s elimination was actually an accident. Me and my brother’s powerplay to vote him out had fallen apart and I went from feeling in control to feeling helpless and vulnerable. A sort of “live” tribal council unfolded as my alliance members started whispering to seemingly everyone but me. I grew extremely paranoid and anxious and had to communicate a change of plan to my brother from across the entire tribal council, while he was eating a reward that he earned, while our host Kelsey was asking the tribe questions, while the smoke of the fire blew in our faces. It was wild. I had switched my vote to Caitlin, who was voting along with her brother Ethan; they were still voting for Louie. And then, just before the votes were read, Caitlin pulled out a cursed immunity idol which she had found seconds before at the voting booth, nullified eight votes for herself, and Louie went home. My jaw was on the floor. I didn’t vote for Louie, but the plan backfired and my brother and I became huge targets. Oops!
Surviving
As the game continued onto its third day, I was growing physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted. My most glaring mistake was aligning myself with Andi, Melanie’s mother and the oldest and wisest player in the game. Andi had regaled us with the adventures of her lifetime of scuba diving, exploring caves, and climbing mountains. She was truly a wonderful human being to get to know and has inspired me to do more with my life. She had an unconventional playstyle that led to my demise. We were stuck in a 4-4 vote-lock between me and Connor. Had the second round of votes also been a tie, everyone but myself and Connor would be vulnerable, minus two players who had immunity. The game is a lot of quick math you need to calculate, which is tough to do on the fly when you’re exhausted. I remember sitting there and every biological process in my body was saying “Dude, you need to eat and sleep and rest your brain, get the heck out of here.” I think from an actual survival perspective, my body was persuading me to stop fighting. Connor made a plea to Andi to stay, but I was too exhausted to plead my case. Andi ended up switching her vote to me and I became the second member of the jury, taking 8th place. I was disappointed but pretty relieved at that moment. I knew my brother had a better chance to win and I felt like we both couldn’t continue through the game anyway.
When you’re out in the wilderness, disconnected from your phone and social media, your mind has nothing else to do but ponder the intricacies of the game and explore your innermost primal emotions. You lie awake at night, counting numbers for future votes on your fingers. You forget about all of the problems and worries of your normal life; it’s actually kind of nice. Besides, you have enough worries in the game to keep your brain buzzing. I don’t think I’ve ever exercised my mind to the mental capacity required for Survivor, and I took a semester of accelerated organic chemistry! Who am I voting for? Why am I voting this way? What do I say when my target asks me who is going home? How do I tell a lie by speaking the truth? How do I persuade a conversation toward a target by not saying their name? How do I manage my constant anxiety and paranoia? How do I think ten steps ahead and run multiple scenarios through my head at once in real time, all the while running on no sleep, little food, and pure exhaustion?
I learned about fear and my own insecurities. I compared my own abilities to my competitors and let my fear misguide my decision-making. I learned that keeping and surrounding myself with those that were seemingly better than me was not only a great Survivor strategy, but also a great strategy for life and the workplace. I learned that I should put my fear aside in the future; I don’t need to be a challenge beast to succeed at the game and I’m better at challenges than I thought! I learned that I underestimate people. Some tribemates that I thought were struggling were actually veteran masterminds of the game. The term “threat” can be applied using about 100 different criteria when you’re out there.
A secret gift of the game is you feel insulated from the chaos of the outside world. The sounds of the nearby roads are just a reminder that there’s life on the outside. I find myself in the days after longing to return to the wilderness because it was a pure escape from reality; it should be called an Alternate Reality Game.
The most difficult challenge of Survivor is separating human beings from their existence in the game to their existence in real life. You get to know people by their out of game existence; their hobbies, traumas, families, occupations, hopes, dreams, and their similarities and differences, but you are judging and evaluating them by their in-game actions. I myself am an introvert and found the constant conversation of the game tiring but I had to push myself to stay social so I wasn’t isolated as the quiet one. That was tough for me. I’ve struggled to make friends my entire life but I’ve now bonded and befriended a wonderful group of people and I’ll treasure those connections forever.
Socks and Memory
Let’s talk about socks. I’m not an outdoors guy. I enjoy camping but don’t do it often. I foresaw that my footwear choice would be important in this game. I conducted some research and found that a pair of waterproof trail running shoes and a pair of knee-length waterproof socks might keep my feet dry and warm. As the days continued, our shelter became decorated with hanging wet socks and most of my tribemates were now competing and walking in the mud barefoot. I had dry feet the entire time and multiple inquiries into my magic socks.
Let’s talk about memory. On the first night, right as we were all huddled around the fire, production came up and placed a small Bluetooth speaker on the ground. What played through it was a ghost story (the theme of this season was ghosts). A spooky voice began telling a story… filled with numbers. I was familiar with this type of challenge and was ready for it; we would be tested on our recall of the story at a later time, which ended up being 48 hours later, seconds after I was voted out (ugh!). Now, in this little blog of mine, I talk quite a bit about memory. I’ll be in physician assistant school tomorrow and I’ve spent the last year researching and practicing my memory. The technique I use is called a Memory Palace, also known as the Method of Loci, or the Roman Room. As the ghost story continued to mention numbers (July 15, 1867, 13, 17, 26 screams, 9 breaths, 130 paces, 48 whacks), I created mnemonics and stored these numbers in pieces of furniture in my living room. I know that sounds insane, but it works. Those are the actual numbers from a story I heard now over a month ago.
What I had neglected to remember was what the actual numbers coincided with; I had the numbers down, and the exact order in which they appeared but was missing pieces. Over the next day, I pretended that I had remembered nothing and asked around. Through other tribemates, I was able to pull out the remaining information. I repeated this information maybe fifty times over the next 48 hours. I was ready for this challenge which for me, never came. Unbeknownst to me, as I was doing my exit interview, my remaining tribemates competed in the memory challenge. When I found out, I was so disappointed. I still walked away proud of the fact that I was able to employ a memory technique that I had been practicing! I believe my studies of memory helped me with another challenge that required us to copy a series of tiles from one table to another. I completed it with just two glances, and on the live stream you can hear production say they made that round particularly difficult. Woo hoo!
The End
A brightside to me being voted out and a member of the jury was that I got to go behind the scenes of the show. I’m a photographer and hobbyist videographer and have helped produce many events in my career so I love that type of thing. I even got to go to “Ponderosa” where the production team was staying. That’s where I got just a glimpse into the immense amount of thought and work that went into this game.
The final two of the game was between Kc and Connor, two of my original tribemates and alliance members. It was an extremely tough choice for me to vote for one of them. During nearly my entire time on the jury, I was going to vote for Connor. I had actually felt betrayed by Kc because he had written my name down; this wasn’t exactly true because if the rocks plan had gone through, I would have been safe (he explained this during his answer to my jury question). I was still torn, up until Kc made his final speech. He mentioned that he was also an introvert, had some social struggles, and that his younger self would have been proud of him. That hit me right in the heart because it sounded just like me. I ended up voting for Kc and he won the game.
There’s this phenomenon I’ve heard about that is a type of post-Survivor-stress that carries into your normal life. You start being paranoid that people are lying to you. You kick yourself for making mistakes. For me, I have these pangs of regret. Why did I do what I did? Why didn’t I just think to do this? If I had made this decision, I could have won. It’s not a great feeling; it’s awful really. I can’t imagine what the contestants on the CBS show feel. They’re playing for a million dollars! I was photographing a wedding the following week and as the bride was coming down the aisle I had a random intrusive thought: “Damnit, why didn’t I just stick with my original final six!”
My brother loves this game and the LRG community and had many friends on the production team. I felt fortunate to be implanted into his world and discover why he was so obsessed with this community. I felt blessed to not only play the game with him, but to be playing memory of our Dad. Joe and I got to both compete against and alongside each other in the same game, which was a dream come true. I don’t think we’ll ever get the chance to do that again so I’ll treasure that experience forever!
I try to repeat a mantra: “Good thing? Bad thing? Who knows?” Maybe it would have felt worse to be eliminated at 4, or 3, or 2 than 8th. I have no idea. Maybe I would have passed out from exhaustion the following day and been medevaced had I not been eliminated. The question I ask myself is this: Would it have been better for me to not play at all, than to play and makes the successes and mistakes and have the regrets that I do? Heck no. No way. There is my clarity and peace that I have no regrets.
Would I do it again? In an absolute heartbeat. I would need to make sure that mentally and physically I’m in a great spot. You can’t just play an LRG and then return to normal life. You need at least three days to recover your sleep and eating schedule, and then at least a week after that for the mental stress to die down. I’m writing this as a reminder to myself in the future. Looking back, I wish I would have pushed myself into more challenging roles in the challenges. In the end I ended up placing 8th, reaching milestones of the merge and jury. I feel immensely proud of my performance. I’d love to try again and return to the most rewarding, punishing, unique experiences of my entire life. Thank you to everyone who was a part of that experience for me. I’ll never forget it.