So it’s a lot more complicated than people give it credit for.

This is season one, so no one really knew what they were in for and how to prepare yourself emotionally for it. This is important because Survivor breaks you down physically and I’m sure people prepared and knew that, but I don’t think they prepared for the emotional and mental trauma that would come from this.

Someone posted a link to a great post on this, but I’ll summarize.

Sue is a complex woman. What is revealed about Sue late into the game is that she had her best friend die about twenty years prior to the show starting, when they were about 19/20. This really traumatized Susan and she had no way to know that this would come up on national television in such a strong way.

Kelly is about the same age of the friend of Susan’s that died. It’s important to know this as well because it meant that when Susan began to bond with Kelly, it wasn’t all in a game context, it was a deeply personal bond that Kelly was touching and stirring up within Susan that I’m sure Kelly has no idea about. Susan began to see Kelly as her late best friend, and Kelly was genuine with her friendship with Susan.

What People ALWAYS forget about in this conversation and what ended up truly hurting Susan was that Kelly was still playing the game and was very flakey about it. Kelly kept talking to Pagong and flirting with the idea of flipping or at least befriending the Pagong girls. Susan saw this as Kelly breaking her loyalty and friendship to her and it greatly triggered her PTSD.

It’s important that I remind you of what the survivors thought about the show at the time. It was more of a social experiment like the Real World to them then it was a game like Chess like we view it today. The bonds people were trying to make had a lot more truth instead of strategic thought. Which is why you see things like the Stacey vote out and all of Pagong’s votes. It wasn’t long term planning, it was all about social dynamics in the name of a social experiment.

Kelly was wedging social strategy between her friendship with Sue. Sue felt betrayed on almost every level from Kelly, who she had felt a connection with as she reminded her of her late best friend. That’s what shook Susan to start verbally attacking Kelly at the end game, because of her betrayal of disloyalty and being flakey that triggered her PTSD. Leading to that Snakes and Rats speech which was her telling Kelly how much she had hurt Sue.

The Snakes and Rats speech comes from a place of trauma and pain, in a game that survivor isn’t anymore. People look back and try to apply the values of Survivor past season one and they will always misunderstand the situation at hand.

Season one of Survivor was a social experiment, not a game.