131. Band of Hogs

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, create a new season of Survivor.

Speaker AYou guys are doing a really bad job of keeping me off your show. Jen By Friday, Jen By Friday.

Speaker BAll right, I'm here.

MaxLet's call Merlin.

Speaker ACome on in, guys.

MaxMerlin, I'm sorry we're late. I pleaded with them to call you. I begged them. I said, call Merlin.

Speaker AJesus. Max is eating a breakfast sandwich.

MerlinYeah, it sounds like you went and maybe got some food. How long did that take? I was here. Were you? Okay. I'm really sorry. On their behalf, it's really embarrassing for the program.

MaxWow. I had to get my egg and cheese.

Merlindon't taunt me sir i've already pre-ordered my pho so oh it's back good congratulations oh yeah yeah thank you very much it's uh it's it's been amazing yeah i'll be honest i did not think that

Maxthe dubai friday program would outlast the pho place being closed yes so i know no one's more

Alexsurprised than me that we're still here oh man i mean we outlasted the massage parlor too you're you're going to end up living in a wasteland and just recording out of your barren office. It's probably because you guys get such a steamed guests.

Speaker AKeep the show alive. Wow.

MerlinI was going to make a joke about standing like an idiot in front of the red keep, but Hey, let's welcome our guest.

MaxOkay.

MerlinHang on.

MaxI got to finish chewing. Our guest this week. Oh, for the love of God, what is happening? Our guest this week is cards against community, community manager and cohost of the friend shipping podcast. Jen, Jennifer Bain.

Speaker AJennifer Mary Bain.

AlexJennifer Mary Bain. That's my full name.

MerlinJennifer Bainington.

AlexI've never heard anyone refer to you as Jennifer. I haven't either. My skin, just like, not out of horror, but almost out of just shock.

Speaker ALike, oh, I'm recalling a horror. I routinely forget my name is Jennifer. Right? Whoa. It's like a shock in my chest. Oh, my God.

MerlinActually, it's pronounced Jennifer.

MaxJen was just in the New York Times because they wrote a story. I don't know. I don't understand how these stories get written, but they wrote a whole puff piece about the Joko cruise, the Jonathan Colton cruise.

Speaker AOh, yeah. Friendshipping got a mention.

MaxAnd they not only did they mention the Friendshipping buttons on the cruise, but then they linked to the Friendshipping podcast. Which is very cool. Wow. Times have changed. And I'm not going to say what they said about the buttons because we don't say that word on this podcast, but you should read it.

Speaker AThat is not what they... Okay. Whoa. Okay. Trin and I made buttons that you could wear that say, yes, I'm ready for friendship now, or no, I prefer not to do friendship right now because nerds are very bad at listening to signals. So we like to spell it out. They like to hug a lot. Yeah, nerds love to. Remember the term glomp? Nerds love to do that. I know.

MaxGlomp. Listen, nerds, here's the thing that I think you're trying to say is that they have low access to people's internal states. Some people have like low empathy and they have a hard time telling how other people are feeling. And so it makes them feel comfortable and they know how to act if other people's internal mental states are made explicit. Police are calling it stimming. Like in the famous book, Game of Thrones. Where they literally say, what is so pleasant to read about those books is they literally say everyone's internal mental states.

explicitly they're like Cersei was mad the reason she was mad was because this thing happened and as a reader I'm like I relate to that read a book Max the books the book is good I like the books but one of the tricks of those books is because they have that whole shifting perspective thing and and just the way it's written is like they he explicitly states like the internal you never have to guess how anyone is feeling a game of thrones

Alexyeah that is a great narrative and exciting to read

Speaker Aanyone got anything to say about the starbucks cup

Merlinyeah what about the starbucks cup you guys what about the cgi wolf the dog who didn't get pet pats what's the starbucks cup what did you get it

Speaker Aoh my god

MerlinI thought you were going to pop off buddy

Speaker Athis is your chance

Maxgo on a tear the starbucks cup in game of thrones I see okay I'm sorry it was filled with kvaffee got him I don't the only thing I was going to say was Todd friend of the show Todd made a good tweet

and he was like you know on the one hand it would be interesting I think his tweet if I'm summarizing it correctly is like on the one hand it would be interesting to sort of leave the cup in there and be like here's an acknowledgement of all the people who made this show and it's made by people and there's mistakes and on the other hand just go ahead and remove it and like they did remove it um it's already if you go stream the episode the cup is gone so it's it's it's been expunged from history i don't know like they'll kill anybody on that show all it got me and i know why they did it which is like they're not they're gonna be like what did we spend like

a hundred million dollars on this to have a coffee cup in it like that's the correct well i mean i

MerlinOkay, as somebody who is a huge fan of the third of a book that I've read, I've been reading this up to two chapters a night every night, so I consider myself one of the OG R. Martin fans. I go way back. You know what's concerning to me about this season is like, okay, in another season, it would have taken a whole season for the coffee cup to get there. And now it's just there. Oh, what? Did it arrive on a rave? name did did a maester have it in his big sleeve oh i guess it's a new kind oh maybe melisandra

Maxbrought it with fire for some reason you joke but people did turn the coffee cup into an avatar for their frustrations for the show and they said these fucking incompetent people can't even make a tv show and they left a coffee cup in it and so i get it because because that was the way that it got framed on like on like twitter like they they were like yeah we'll just i let's spare ourselves this and they just took it out. But like, you just got Adam Sirward. The only, the only thing is like, it did get me thinking about like, just like the intense scrutiny that this show is under.

It's probably not creatively helpful for them. Like, no, like it probably makes it really hard for them to be like, let's just do an interesting creative choice. Yeah.

AlexNo, no, all of that. No, all of that is wrong. It was a little, a little goof them up. It got more attention. It got more people to watch the show. And the ending is going, that sees the series finale is going to be the most watched show on television since like what the dick van dyke mash maybe yeah the season finale of that and also the the showrunners did a whole bunch of interviews like leaning into the cup so so hard and yeah you can say that it'll go away eventually and it's sad that we don't have those artifacts from

older movies with the little goofums but who who cares it was a fun thing that we all got to enjoy and we're never going to enjoy it again because TV's going away. Veep is ending.

MaxI know. Oh, wow. I just watched the new episode last night. It was so fucking weird and funny. It was my favorite. And then in the end, they're like, next week on Veep, and they're like, it's the series finale. And I was like, what the fuck? There's only been like six episodes.

AlexI know. I can't imagine a world without Veep.

MaxYeah.

AlexIt's very sad. We are hemorrhaging listeners by the second.

MerlinOh, it's going to get so much worse. Oh, it's going to get so much worse.

MaxI have egg-a-cheese. I have egg and cheese content for you guys. Can I ask you guys about the egg and cheese? Yes. Okay. Here's my – I have a theory about this. Shut up, Siri. I have a theory about this. I think that the egg and cheese biscuit to me is like the platonic breakfast. Like any other breakfast is either better or worse than that. That's the benchmark. And I kind of want the egg and cheese biscuit every morning. This is a McDonald's biscuit with egg and cheese only. Correct. Sometimes I'll do bacon. Okay. Do you put a hash brown on it?

No, I do not. I've tried that, and I thought that it got mushy. I didn't think it added to it.

MerlinMoosh. I think it's – I mean, for me, it's the canonical. Like, what I want every morning is an egg McMuffin with a hash brown on it, and I want at least two of them. That's what my body wants every single morning. Every single morning. You can have that, Merlin. No, I can't. I can't. I'm already – I'm having – can I mention something? I'm sorry. Please continue your content. I have some follow-up on your RoboKiller remark, and it involves my white privilege and food delivery.

Speaker AOh, let's hear it.

MerlinIs it okay? Yes. Because, you know, first of all, yeah, I agree with you. What you said, so you had a toot that we'll put into show notes where you talked about, oh, my gosh, RoboKiller is really good. I'm all in on RoboKiller. If somebody like Marco Arment is willing to give over their phone connection to go to RoboKiller, as I have, because you basically, you do this whole thing where you go, all right, from now on, RoboKiller is my daddy. Like, this is where the calls go. I do all the things, and I do beep, boop, boop, the code happens, and now you've got to get through my RoboKiller if you want to get to me, right? And it's great.

Now, you pointed out something that is hilarious and can be such a great source of fun. Because for most of us, most calls we get, let's be honest, for me, I don't even know what percentage. I mean, I get two legit calls a month, basically. And all the rest are ding-a-lings. And what's great with RoboKiller or awful with RoboKiller is you go in and pick which kind of incredibly obnoxious thing people can hear when the line picks up. I turn most of them off because they're incredible. They're so- Oh, no. You chose the correct one.

Tell them what your choice is.

MaxWell, first of all, most of them are incredibly basic. They're like Donald Trump voice or whatever. Yeah, right. They're like goofy voices. They're so- Oh, I'm Idris Elba. Stop calling. Yeah. They're like celebrity impersonators. and like, that's not funny. Stop calling, not your phone. That's not funny to have a celebrity impersonator. What is this, 1991? This is former President Barack Obama. Now, let me just say, if you like your rebel calls, you can keep them. I am not a crook.

MerlinSo you tell, describe, so somebody calls you and if Rebel Killer thinks that it's a ding-a-ling, you can choose, the basic one you can do is your call's been identified as garbage and so you've been blocked by a robo-killer. That's the basic one. but you chose the superior one, and that says what?

MaxIt's basically a voice recording of kind of an old man, and he's very confused, and he keeps asking. He's like, hang on, I can't hear you. Can you say that again? And then he just interrupts, and he goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like, can you start this whole thing over? Tell me. I need more information. What's it regarding?

MerlinAnd it just sort of— It works an astonishing amount of time, and RoboKiller tapes it for you so you can listen back.

Speaker AI didn't know that. He starts— I'll play my good one that happened. He's been listening to this a million times, and he starts, hey, what can I do for you? Which just sounds like something an old Midwestern man would say.

MaxYes. Do you have it there, Max? I'm opening it, and I'm tapping, I'm dragging. Sorry.

MerlinSorry, I had coffee. I had coffee. I had coffee. I had coffee. Wow, those pumpkins are really going to get Constitution law hit on him. Hello?

AlexHello?

Speaker BHey, what's going on? What can I do for you?

AlexIs this Mr. Max Tumpkin?

Speaker BOh, great. Thanks.

AlexSo my name is Isabel. I'm having a pretty, pretty good day.

Speaker BReally? Great. I'm glad to hear it. Basically, my name is Isabel, and I'm a student at... So do you need a little more, I don't know, information?

AlexBefore I continue with this call, I just need to update something really quickly that we have in your file.

Speaker BSo do you still have a... Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold it right there. Hold it right there. I have to ask you this. I've got to ask you this one question. So, tell me... So, tell me... Hello? I thought I lost you there for a second. Oh, my God. Can you say something?

Hi, hello? Hello? Oh, my God.

MerlinIt shouldn't work that well.

Speaker BOh, my God. We're at lunch at yahoo.com. Can you please?

Speaker AOkay. It's a pretty, pretty, pretty good day. And in the middle of that, when she goes, yeah, that's the voice of a woman who believes she's about to be hit on.

Speaker BI sense it. I sense it.

MaxDid you see someone tweeted today and they were like, every customer service, everyone who works in customer service should be legally allowed to fight one customer per year. And they posted a picture of a Yelp review. And it's a one star. And it says, as a last minute resort, me and my sister went to this subway to get 63 foot long subs for my grandson's confirmation party. And we had to wait for over an hour for the subs. ridiculously long wait and the lady who took my order seemed really annoyed with me

one star like fight fight fight i had one the other day too that was really sad where it was a i got called by a robot that was doing a an automated sort of sale like pitch or something and my call call spam blocker thing robot caught it and then they just argued with each other and And it was like the Zizek thing of like he wants to have sex with someone where he brings his fleshlight and she brings her vibrator and they just like make them battle each other and then they can have a conversation.

What? Yeah, it was like a Zizek thing that was going around. It was very funny. But that's how I felt. I was like, we both brought our robots and let them fight.

AlexOh, my God. Metalbots phone edition.

MerlinSo in this segment of White Privilege Corner, I get food delivery. I'm getting food delivery today. And one of the people, a dude who delivers the food sometimes through a service, is unbelievable. He's just really, frankly, amazing. And so I had calls from, well, let's get to this. I have a thing in my thing that says, you know what? Hey, no need to call or text. Just come up and press the doorbell and we'll calm down and get it.

MaxGod, what a, that is, this is one of my. this must stop the calling must stop it's one of my biggest pet peeves i i mean i hate i know i well this that's why it's white privilege corner let it rip i know it's so white privilege corner but i really it just just ring the why are you calling me ring the bell i know ring the bell especially at the office like people call and they're like i'm circling the block what do i

Alexdo and i'm like what do you mean pull up to the building okay our office i've gotten i okay so

MerlinLet me finish the anecdote. I'd gotten two or three from the same guy, and I will attempt to give you a transcript of every call we got. Ring, ring, ring. Hello?

I'm here. Okay. You're where?

Speaker BHere.

MerlinOkay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. That's where I am, too. What are you calling about? Grubhub, I'm here. Oh. Did you, did you, um, did you, um, did you ring the, uh, did you ring the bell?

I'm here. Go down two stories. I'm like Jeffy in the family circus, fucking tearing ass to get my goddamn suit. And he's sitting in his car vaping. He's vaping in his car somewhere. I can kind of see him and I'm waving around going, look at me. I'm food boy. Food boy here. And so anyway, I'll finish the anecdote, which is simply that I finally said, you know what? Enough is enough. And I'm going to put him in the bad place.

You killed him? I didn't. I almost killed him, but I put him in the robot. And that went. So months and months went by and I would keep seeing the calls from the guy. And I was like, oh, gosh, I feel kind of bad that he's calling. Guess what? I was not blocking the ding-a-ling guy. I was blocking anyone who called from that delivery service. So anyone who ever called me from that delivery service got the old man who's confused and needs more information. and I suck

I suck so hard I didn't realize it I went and fixed the contact and now it's now ding-a-ling delivery guy is like 14 of the calls that I've gotten in the last two months and I feel like such a homemade dick end of anecdote

Speaker Away to put low-wage workers in their place yeah you showed him

Maxdid you ask to speak to his manager

Speaker BI'm here I'm here I'm here

Maxwell I just I need a little more information

Speaker BI'm here

MaxHere's my theory about this. I think I've never, I actually don't even know, do we know anyone who's ever delivered for a food service company? I know people who have done Uber Eats, but not like-

Speaker AOh, we don't talk to swine.

MerlinOh, it's Wednesday. Jen, it's Wednesday. It's Wednesday. Strike day.

MaxStrike, strike, strike. I'm trying, oh yeah, right there. Everyone's on strike today. I think that probably if you drive for Grubhub, you're hitting, I don't know what, like four houses, four or five houses an hour, and probably three of the four don't answer their doorbell. I guess.

MerlinIt's almost like when you call for a Lyft before you order dessert or something. I don't know.

MaxAnd I have to confess, I have a ring doorbell. Yeah, you do. You really, really, you really do. I have a ring doorbell and it just straight up doesn't work 70% of the time. You don't get the bloop on your watch like I do? No, it just straight up doesn't work.

Speaker AI had a Lyft driver one time that thanked me for waiting on the curb. And he was like, no.

MaxWhy are you looking at me?

Speaker Abecause nobody and he was like yeah nobody nobody comes out nobody

MerlinMax you almost gave Jen a coronary with that anecdote do you know what you did to her and it killed you know it was killing Alex and me

Speaker Ait was like a slow burn of a panic attack I tip

Merlinoh my god I started hyperventilating

Speaker AI tip

MaxI had actually some interesting follow up about this there was a new survey that came out this week from a company called Report Linker and they and it so apparently it's like an actual survey and Consumer Insights Company, and they did a big survey on smart home stuff. And they said that since 2000, it's from 2017 to 2019, the share of homes that own and use smart home things has fallen substantially.

Speaker BOoh.

MaxOh, really? So in 2017, the average American home had 3.4 smart devices, and now they have 2.9 smart devices. Average? Average. No.

Speaker AIs it because people don't trust them anymore?

MaxAnd so basically, if you ask people what smart home devices do you have, in 2017, 45% of people had no smart home devices. And now, 63% of people don't have any smart home devices. What do they classify?

AlexDo they classify anything?

MaxThis might just be homeowners.

AlexYeah.

MerlinDoes an Android phone count? Right. Those numbers absolutely do not add up. 2.what per household? 2.9 of homeowners.

MaxOh, I don't know, man. So 20% of people, this is in 20, well, I'll give you the 2019 numbers.

MerlinThe thing is, what you're saying, I think, if I understand, you're saying like regardless of how they got that percentage, it is an apples to apples comparison.

MaxThat's what they say. Okay. So they said of homeowners in 2019, 11% have a connected appliance like a refrigerator, washer, or dryer. 8% have a smart thermostat. And 7% have a smart... 2011? 2019. Oh, okay. 2019. And 7% have a smart security system. And those numbers are much higher in 2017. So I think there's some backlash.

MerlinSo that could include, let's say, for example, that could include an Xfinity alarm system that you get as part of a package.

MaxAbsolutely. Okay. Absolutely. And also they advertise that stuff in Chicago, at least. I see billboards and stuff for that SimpliSafe and all of that. That's advertised to normie regular consumers very heavily as a save money on your home security system.

AlexI'm going to call shenanigans. This is like the AirPods are a tragedy article you shared with us. Welcome to White Privilege by Friday, where it was a Vice story just about how bad AirPods are and how, you know, they're just made of conflict minerals and they can't be recycled. And it's trying to be almost like a turns out piece. But we've had this for decades and decades now. And like, I don't know. It's a clickbait article to make you feel sad. And this article just wants to be like, oh, smart things are on the decline.

But homeowners are also on the decline.

MaxI think people, I think too, I think a lot of people, I think 2017 was sort of the peak hype of all of these like smart home shit. Like isn't that around when like Nest got acquired and like everyone was like just so gung ho on like turning their house into like the Dale Gribbles, you know, basement with like booby traps and like punji sticks. Like a personal panopticon. Yeah. And you have like cameras and sensors on everything. and then I think a lot of people did it and they were like oh this is dog shit it sucks I did I bought a lot of that stuff and I and now I have like I have one of those big rubbermaid

bins in a stacked up in my basement it's just called like IOT landfill and I just have like and I just have like crazy sensors and devices you know you should bring that to the office I do I periodically do I do I put it up on the counter and someone takes it

AlexI've never taken...

MaxI've explicitly put stuff on your desk.

AlexOh, see, I assume that is to go away or go be put away. So now I'm going to have to do some rummaging.

Speaker AOh, yeah. I would definitely be like, that's a you take care of this situation.

AlexYeah. You got to say when it's a gift. Or it's a test. Now I think it's a test. Every time it's going to be like, wait, which is this?

MerlinRight. Like if you bring in a Tupperware with cupcakes and you leave that on a table, a pop quiz hotshot, is that for everybody? What if they don't have a sign on there? For once, somebody didn't make a sign. There's not a sign. There's cupcakes on the thing. Is that somebody's personal cake stash or is that for the table?

MaxWe have a special place in our office. We have this coffee bar. And I think it's understood that if you put stuff on the coffee bar, you can take it.

Speaker AYeah. It's very good. Marlon, why are you laughing?

MaxI don't know. I just— If it's on my desk, it's Father's Forbidden Cupcakes.

MerlinBecause Max is funny because I'm sure he got rid of all of his alarm systems at home because he hates all this stuff. No, I— For the cupcakes in his palatial mance. And then, like, at work, it's like, oh, yeah, we work that. You just put it on the coffee bar. I have people to do that.

MaxI want to make it clear to our listeners that I did not get rid of my security system. In fact, I've hired a professional company to install a high-class wireless security system that cannot be circumvented or disabled.

Speaker BWho watches the drill launcher? And it will electrocute you if you come into my house. Rusty, rusty Shackelford.

MaxYou will fall into a tiger pit. if you attempt to enter my home and take my cordless drill or any other Max Temkin memorabilia that I know that the fans of this show want I do I want to say that I have shotguns tied behind every door with a piece of twine that goes around the doorknob

I listen I think we should I have a lot of yeah you know let's skip let's skip let's skip that

Merlinbasically the doodler the doodler was caught the man the man who was making the poops who was dropping the dukes by the track as we know got caught a while back and it was just that it was it was just under the headline should a minor offense ruin a life no says ex-superintendent who defecated in your house.

He's aggrieved and counsel for the doodler.

MaxWhat is this? Everyone's on their phones all the time now.

Speaker BLook at it. Pornhub, XTube. I know these names better than the names of my own grandmother. And where should he be spent?

Speaker AWhere should he be spent? I'm just going to get in this random car. On the back button balls?

Speaker Byou sir maybe you could do it i'm just gonna get in this car whoever it belongs to

Maxi like when he goes to the guy he's like you sir maybe you could do it and he goes not gonna happen

Merlinno it's just also the woman's response she's like no it's you obviously we're driving the car

Maxall right i wanted to do i had i did have a little quick preamble to our topic this week because i don't want to hemorrhage listeners and i thought i would just give a a quick like 20 second sort of explain to people reintroduce Survivor and why we're talking about it and why the idea this week is funny even if you don't watch Survivor. Would that be helpful?

AlexProceed, please.

MaxSo here's the deal. The challenge this week is we all went home and designed our own Survivor challenges. And Survivor is a pretty normie reality show that we've all become obsessed with. And the premise, in case you haven't seen it, which you do not have to have seen it to listen to this challenge. The premise is they put 20 people on an island, and then every week they vote one person off, and they have these battles and tribes and fun game mechanics. And for me, what I really like about it is, number one, it's very voyeuristic,

and you really get to see people who are stressed out and hungry, and their machinations and their politics and their forming alliances and breaking them. And I really enjoy watching that from afar and not taking part in it like I do in Chicago politics. But two, so I think that's just very interesting. And two, I love the game design of Survivor. Like as a game designer, I think they do really clever stuff. I think they push people's buttons in interesting ways.

MerlinAnd they know how to, to our challenge, they know how to introduce things that not only make the game more interesting for people who've watched it a lot, but introduce Agents of Chaos into what the people on the castaways, what they think is coming. And they've been really surprisingly good. You can see this evolve so quickly after the first few seasons where they've gotten so good at being able to say like, oh, you thought a merge was coming? Well, guess what? There's no merge. Or now there's this thing. Or here's the swap. Or now there's this. And there's so many things where you're like, oh, like I didn't see that coming.

But they didn't see it coming. They made this alliance with these certain assumptions. And now they just completely upended it. And if you enjoy the show, that's one of the best parts. Well, our challenge this week, was it my challenge? Yes. Technically, I think I fed you.

MaxI was there feeding you, feeding you, but I think it was technically your challenge. Well, it was my challenge, and so we each went home, and we came up with our own different survivor ideas, and our friend Jen is here to judge them. Fellow survivor viewer Jen is here to judge them.

MerlinWell, can I put some sriracha on that? Because I'm sure you didn't read the doc where I extensively documented this. But I saw it as being two parts. I wanted to have, as they say, have fun with it, which people love hearing. Yes, there is the idea on the one hand that the two general branches are, number one, pitch a novel or even gimmicky season of Survivor. They do things like they bring back previous contestants. They have fans versus favorites. They break it out into groups as men versus women. Women, it's families. They've done all these crazy things. The one season, did you guys see Survivor Race War?

Speaker AOh, boy. I just started that one. Great name. Beer dads versus wine moms. Cucks versus Wall Street.

MerlinI have that one on my doc. The other one I wanted to toss out just because it's kind of where my head goes is I feel like watching this show a lot and you watch it often enough and you go like, you know, on the one hand you're so impressed with how they keep it fresh and keep it chaotic in some ways but I also, the second part was identify something they could do to freshen up or just generally improve the show. Things like a twist they haven't tried, a challenge you'd like to see Importantly to me, take an existing component or mechanic of the game that could be better utilized So yeah, I just like the idea of

Maxlet's improve Survivor, let's make it fun I began my research by going to the Survivor subreddit. Has anyone ever been to the Survivor subreddit?

Speaker AHave I ever been to the Survivor subreddit? It's an amazing place. Yeah, I think I've been to the Survivor subreddit.

MerlinThis is a real community of real happy people.

MaxThe first thing is... I'm very satisfied with this. There's a contestant this season whose name is Wardog. That's his own... I say Warthog. Warthog. He calls himself Wardog, and he wants everyone else to call him that, and the show calls him that. and the Survivor subreddit is really enjoying poking fun at him and he kind of positions himself as this like alpha male guy but he does not do very well. He's got a heart of gold. He has a heart of gold but a body of butter.

Speaker AHe comments on the subreddit a lot.

MaxYes. So there was one thread that was sort of like roasting War Dog and he pops into and I like read it to look at the comments and he pops and he goes this is War Dog and I am awesome and I am strong.

So he's totally he gets like red and nude online. And also, if he's listening to this... There's always one

Merlinevery year there's at least one who's got it all figured out. You know, there's always one who's like,

Maxthis is exactly what I wanted for my strategy. I'm going to control the board, people. If you're listening to this, please tweet me at HotDogsLady or you can give us... You can become a member of the Dubai Friday Patreon at giveusyourfuckingmoney.com. How's that work, Max? Well, if you like this and you want to hear us talk more about Survivor, you can give us $10 a month

Speaker Bfor the Dubai Friday. Oh no! When you put it that way, it sounds bad.

Merlinall right anyway what was it max max last question what was his username i am the war dog

Speaker Ai don't know i've never gone to subreddit but that's just what i assume it is

MaxI went on the subreddit to see, I thought surely if there are fans out there who have interesting ideas for seasons, or if there's like, these like, how do I put it? If there's these like fan, legendary fan ideas. Okay, I was talking to my friend Alon one time who works on Survivor and has contributed ideas to Survivor. And I said, Alon, what's the thing that everybody thinks is the great idea that obviously wouldn't work?

And he said, Survivor Space is the number one thing they get pitched. If you think about it for 20 seconds, Survivor in Outer Space. So you have to understand, for the first 15 years of Survivor, what made the seasons different was they went to a different country, a different place every time. And they were like, being in this new locale is the special thing about the season. Then they got into like a deal with Fiji, and now they're always in Fiji, but they rely more on game mechanic gimmicks to spice up the seasons.

Speaker AJeff has a house there.

MaxDoes he? Yeah. There you go. Nice. And for that reason, I actually really prefer the most modern Survivor when they've stopped moving. But anyway, the thing that everyone thinks of is Survivor Space. And then the second one everyone thinks of is Survivor Antarctica, which I hope I'm not blowing anyone's cover, but that is the thing that John Syracuse pitched when we were talking about it in our super secret channel. And he's like, they should do Survivor Antarctica.

That's how he said it. Apparently, everybody pitches that to Jeff. So the one that I did find – so I did not find anything good on the subreddit, but I did find something I wanted to share with you all, which is this is a submission to our Survivor. And I'm going to read it now. This is the post. Okay. I have to get into character. Hang on. Oh, boy. Here's the title of the post. Here's the title.

Speaker BIs it droopy? Why don't they have spaghetti and survival? They do.

MaxWhy don't they have spaghetti and survival? I had that question for a few days. First of all, it's easy to cook like rice. And yeah, I don't think it should replace rice, but maybe be an addition like beans. Maybe a few packets of spaghetti in the maroon. It just surprises me that they have never used them.

This guy definitely has a fetish for watching people eat spaghetti.

Speaker AOh, yeah.

Max100%. And he's got a list on IMDB.

Speaker AHis search history is like, hey, how about more spaghetti on the basket?

MaxYeah, like Natalie Dormer's spaghetti, like Brie Larson's spaghetti.

Speaker BThey should show more damage. This is so more damaged feet. Damaged feet and eating spaghetti. I like when the toes are dirty. I like the dirty toes when they get down to the quarter inch standing, and that should be spaghetti.

MaxThis guy's definitely made an IMDb list called, like, scenes where female movie stars eat spaghetti.

Speaker AOh, yeah. It's like, did the dog die? Right, exactly. Did the female star eat spaghetti? He 100% calls them a female. They're the Ferengis

MerlinSpaghetti thread

Speaker AI like

MaxIt's important to me that the female slurps it When they get to the end Spaghetti Spaghetti fetish So that's what my contribution to this challenge is

Speaker BOh no

MerlinNot like this Oh no you guys alex i found our next stretch goal how good how good is this guys check the text please oh no yes yes yes said something very upsetting no come on it's a good idea i like this okay this is definitely gonna figure in my challenges. Oh, no! Why?

MaxNo! Is this a fetish? I don't know why. Obviously, it is. I mean, we're looking at it right now.

MerlinYou can see the lady where she's laying down. And then they made spaghetti. Oh, it's her real feet!

Speaker BIt's her real feet!

MaxKudos to them for a lot of craftsmanship. This is like one of those Adam Savage builds. Oh, that's a big spaghetti.

Speaker BYou're welcome.

MerlinThe female should also drink milk.

MaxYou want to know what you're playing for? Survivor was much better when you saw the females drinking milk and eating spaghetti.

MerlinFire in the form of flint. Spaghetti in the form of feet.

Speaker AI love when Jeff goes, oh, I know it's worth playing with.

MaxCan I describe this picture that Merlin sent? Sure, absolutely. So what it is, is it's sort of a nicely set table. It's kind of a picnic table setting. It's got a lady in the tramp kind of vibe. Yeah. And there's like a crusty bread. And then in the middle of the table, there's a big old bowl of spaghetti. Big old plate of spaghetti. All the fixings. All the fixings. And then coming out in the middle of the bowl of spaghetti is a woman's feet. Wet. Her wet feet.

They're not wet. They're oil. They have olive oil. They're seasoned with olive oil. And then there's a big old dollop of tomato sauce. She's got extra virgin feet. Extra virgin feet. And there's a big old dollop of tomato sauce. I bet it's a spicy sauce, like an arrabbiata on there. And you can see, and you're looking at it and you're going, are those props, is that real feet? Is it fake? But then if you look at the edge of the frame, you can see a woman lying sort of down on a chair and then putting her feet up through a hole in the table

so they come up through the spaghetti. And also on the table is a bottle of wine that is barefoot wine.

Speaker BYep.

AlexOh, nice. Oh, did you see the bread?

MaxOh, crusty bread.

AlexWell, there is a knife just directly in the baguette sticking upwards for some reason.

MaxOh, maybe that's a play on like the heel of the bread. Oh, that's good. High-heeled bread.

Speaker AI'm going to be sick.

MaxNo.

Speaker ANo.

MerlinThis is making me hungry for spaghetti, honestly. It was probably her idea. You know, it's your birthday. It's birthday. Who wants foot spaghetti? Can we just do anal instead?

MaxExtremerestraints.com. I know that we're supposed to be talking about the challenge, but is there a market for this? Could we have some sort of restaurant where there's feet come up through the table into the food? Okay, I'm listening. Okay, because let me hear me out. There's body sushi. Uh-huh. And that's a thing for, I mean, is that still a thing? at a time that was a thing where like it was like businessmen, right?

MerlinSalarymen have body sushi and there's lots of rules and mores about what, as you know, about what you do and don't do. You don't talk to her. You're not allowed to talk to her. Why would you know this? Oh, where did I hear about this? I heard about this somewhere. But no, there's a whole... Come on, don't you... Please, please. In my various, my Pete Townsend research about these kinds of things, I've learned about that body sushi. It's a whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should see the Wikipedia page. It's so joyless. It's so joyless.

MaxTen years ago or something, there was like a body sushi. I guess it was new and it was in the popular. It was in the zeitgeist. And I feel like every HBO show that was in a contemporary setting had to have like a scene. Like a Wall Street guy. Yeah, where all the Wall Street guys went out for body sushi. And it was like everywhere. It was like, where did all this body sushi come from? Hmm.

MerlinI don't know. Must be a market for it. Nayatamori.

Speaker AIs it ever a man?

MerlinLooks like. Is that a fella? Oh, it looks like a fella that might have a cucumber roll on him. if you know what I mean. No, that's a lady. We should get that for our New Year's party.

Speaker AOh, that's such a good... You could do it. We could put you on the coffee bar. Nope. People would definitely remember that.

Speaker BIt would be very memorable when you're seeing it.

AlexIt needs to have a story. I gotta say.

MerlinAll right, Merlin. You thought you cried when you ate sushi before.

MaxListen, what do we call our restaurant? So if we have some sort of restaurant where the feet come up, there's a hole in every table and the feet come up through the table. What do you call that? Oh, this is like big bachelor party vibes

MerlinOh, yeah Is that a sushi boy? Oh, yeah, and there's the ladies

Speaker AThat could be you, Max

MerlinOh, Max, challenge, challenge, challenge

Speaker AOh, I know what to call it Foot for thought

MaxThat's pretty good Alright, listen, send us a message on Patreon If you would come to Foot for thought And, I mean, listen, let's just stipulate The food's not going to be good And it's going to cost a lot more than a normal restaurant Oh, no.

MerlinAfter the Survivor Challenge. After they've been all nicked up. They've been standing there. Coming into our fourth hour, standing on a tiny little block. Put them in the spaghetti.

MaxOnce again, foot spaghetti up for grabs. But you're saying hot and sweaty. That's a savory foot. Oh, but am I wrong?

MerlinAm I wrong? Is there not like incredible tight shots of nasty feet on that show? What is the deal with all the nasty feet? Stop it. Well, you got to see the trembling. Survivor knows their audience. What can I say?

AlexYep.

MerlinI mean, it's one thing to have everybody's brassiere fall off or like get, you know, oh, we blacked out this crack. And it's like, oh, no, but there's just plenty of like damaged feet. It's like, oh, God, I don't know why. It just really puts me off.

Speaker AOn a couple episodes ago of this season, they blurred out a labia. And I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Max, do you know what that is?

MaxDo I know what blurring out is?

AlexYes.

MaxYeah, it's a technology they use to hide a coffee cup to get to the scene.

All right. What's Merlin? What's your survivor? Give us one of your let's do let's do round Robin round Robin.

Speaker AAnd I have a couple ideas, too.

MaxOK.

Speaker AGo ahead, Merlin. Yeah.

MerlinSo my general opening remark is just this is harder than I thought, because as we're watching the show, you know, going, oh man, why do they do this and not that? But when I got to specifics, it was harder than I expected. And I think that you guys will be able to tell me how and why these are terrible ideas. Where do I start? I have like four or five. Okay. So one that I like a lot, one of my things is I feel like, so I was looking a lot at the, are there twists, but especially are there components that are already there that they've never made great use of, in my opinion. To me, the single most interesting thing on the show that has room for

something interesting is the jury. I still, I feel like that's not, I want to see something interesting with the jury. So one of mine, a quick one, post-merge, a person, each person voted off the show gets 30 seconds in private with the castaway of their choice.

Speaker AOh, that is so good. I actually love that idea.

MerlinFigure through a little, right? So the notion is you just say, sorry, you know, tribe's spoken. And I don't know if the jury sees it. I think we see it. But like, So in that instance, you have the opportunity to go, okay, like here's a truth bomb for you. There's this thing that you didn't know that now I can tell you. Or obviously you could lie, but you could really try and fuck with the game or help an ally and nobody else knows what was said.

Speaker AYou could really change the game with that.

MerlinYou could so fuck up the game.

Speaker AAnd like in a good way because you know what really changes the game right now is like idols and gimmicks. But like this would be someone's will to change the game. And those are my favorite twists.

MerlinYeah. So that's my first one.

MaxI have a good way for them to do that, which is they could make tokens that let you do that so that they become like a currency or a thing that you have to collect or win in challenges.

MerlinI like the idea of it. That would work, and I do have some that involve idyllish things. But I just like that one because once you start getting into it, once you become so fucking broken inside and you start thinking about the implications of all the different things, some of mine involve like, okay, well, here's a thing that happened. But what's really important is what people think might happen. And what's also important is what people didn't know happened. And in that case, you know that when you – so in your theorizing about who to get rid of, you have to consider right now people go like, oh, yeah, when this person gets on the jury, they're going to fucking hate me.

And I got to think about that. But now they also have to think about will it blow up my game at this point for this particular person to go out. And it could be as simple as don't trust Russell. It could be like whatever.

Maxwhat if you had a this just occurred I haven't really thought through this because it just occurred to me what if you had a season where everybody's vote was represented by like a like a wooden coin and you just start the game with all your wooden coins and you can spend them when you want that's a very CGP gray approach I like it

Alexyeah it's like first past the post but you could also

Maxgive your coin to somebody you could also give your coin to somebody else

AlexI love those that figures into mine

Merlinyeah so anyway that's mine

Alexoh that's like a Dave and Buster's level Oh, man.

MerlinOh, happy birthday.

AlexHappy birthday. All right, Alex, go. The first thing, very simple. I want to let contestants steal idols from one another. I want to see them wrestle. I want to see punching. Like actually steal. Yes.

MerlinLike actually steal, not just go through their bag. If I find that it's mine now.

AlexIt is against the rules, like in the rule book,

Merlinthat you can go through someone's bag.

AlexYou cannot steal an idol.

MerlinYou're not even, technically, Sandra broke a rule. Oh, sorry, spoilers, you guys. But Sandra broke a rule when she threw Russell's hat in the fire. You're not supposed to destroy or steal from anybody. That's definitely a rule. a rule.

MaxI write Veronica and I are watching Survivor China right now. And in that era of Survivor, they had a lot of very physical challenges. They have one where you're just like standing on this bridge and you wrestle another person and try and knock them into the water. And they're very violent. And it really makes me feel bad watching it. It has a very bum fights feeling to it of like, fight for my amusement. You know, these like immiserated people who are hungry and they just want to win a million dollars. Like what happened in Heroes? The very first challenge in Heroes versus Villain, like two or three people were injured.

Speaker AI hated that. It made me so uncomfortable.

MerlinAnd the girl with the eyebrows dislocated her shoulder.

Speaker AIt was really bad. That's where Rupert Harris told, right?

MaxOh, my dang toe. Oh, yeah. I generally like the challenges that are a little more thinky and a little less battle each other.

AlexBut it's like, all right, if you're going to go for this and you fail, what are the repercussions? What happens to your group of allies? Are you putting your whole group at risk? I just want it to happen. Or maybe you just steal. No, no, I'm standing by it. I want to see some wrestling.

MerlinBut you could also hide it, right? Like if you chose to, if you did steal it, you could hide it. Or like in the one case of one season, it becomes important. And I couldn't get my goddamn family to pay enough attention to how wild this move was. But there's a season, I forget which, but it's one of the guys who wears a fucking necktie for some reason. And that guy has found an advantage clue that has an expiration date. And he like tore the expiration date off the bottom.

Speaker AYes. Oh, my God, Merlin. This blew my mind.

MerlinWasn't that wild? And then the way that plays out, because that guy, did he already have an idol already? No. Was it Devin's? Was it Devin's? It's the season. It was. It was Devin's. It just happened.

Speaker ABecause he didn't know. He didn't know if it was going to work.

MerlinOh, and then Devin's has his big scene. That's right. It was. Oh, man. That was big Devin's energy. So good.

Speaker AI hate it, Ron. That's happened another time where someone tried to play something that was exciting. Or like Bob.

MerlinLike Bob, my favorite. Bob, the master of the fake idol. fucking love Bob.

Speaker ABob is an adult person.

MaxI asked at one point someone involved in Survivor, I was like why isn't there more and higher quality fake idol making? And they were like, well you have to think about, like, they literally have nothing. Like, you might imagine that backstage they have you know, some stuff that doesn't make it out of the show. There is no backstage there is no stuff. They don't have a pen. They can't do it. Especially if somebody

Merlinknows for some reason that it's going to be like that green jade idol. Like, you're not going to You'll be able to fake something in a season with a green jade idol.

MaxBut also it needs the certificate of authenticity. The other thing is now they have in Survivor, they have like just written advantages where it's like you get to steal a vote. And I was like, why don't people just forge those? And they were like, they literally don't have a pen. And so I was like, I started thinking about it really hard. And I was like, okay, if I'm on Survivor, so I think full disclosure, I think Veronica came up with this. But it's basically a gambit you could do on Survivor. So what you would do is you would stand up during Tribal. And you would say, Jeff, I have an advantage that says – no, I'm sorry.

You wouldn't stand up at Tribal yet. You would go to someone on the tribe. I'd go to Jen, and I'd be like, Jen, I got this advantage, and it says during Tribal, I can stand up and say someone's name, and there will be no vote. They'll immediately – it will cancel the whole vote for the evening, and they immediately go home. I just have to say their name. And I don't feel comfortable using this, so I'm giving it to you, and I want you to use it.

MerlinOh, shit.

MaxAnd then the idea is Jen would not know that it was fake, go to tribal, stand up and say, I'm sending Alex home. And that would not work.

MerlinAnd now that blows up her game then.

MaxExactly. It wouldn't work because it's all fake. But the idea is it would potentially fuck up Jen's alliance.

MerlinJust the way that Devon's was able to out-neck tie guy by going like, oh, well, now I know this guy. Just fuck with me.

MaxSo I started thinking about that. And I was like, how would you make it? Because you need the piece of paper. Oh, I thought about this. What would you do?

Speaker AOkay, so I wouldn't be able to do the paper one. But, okay, so they don't really show this in more modern seasons, but they paint their flags. So there is paint somewhere. And someone, like they use it on their faces sometimes.

MaxBut the advantages are black.

Speaker AThe advantages are black. Yeah, the ink, it's also written in like a papyrus-y font.

MaxI figured it out.

Speaker AOh.

MaxI figured it out. So the order that you get called to vote appears to be random, which means you always have a chance of being the last person called to vote. you steal that fucking pen. You put it in your pocket, you walk away with it.

AlexNo, the pen is huge. That's against the rules.

MaxMost people can't figure out how to open it.

AlexYeah. That's why you guys are all playing checkers,

Speaker Band I'm going to go on Survivor, and I'm playing chess, and I'm going to steal the pen through the Jordan Peterson of Survivor.

Speaker AYou know, instead of getting voted out, I would simply not get voted out.

MaxYou would say no.

Speaker AI would say I'm not doing that.

MaxI won't leave. Jeff, you've been voted out. How about that?

Speaker ASomeone has voted for Jeff before and he did not like it. You're not allowed to do that anymore.

MerlinNo, they're not allowed to do that now. That first season, Sue.

AlexDidn't that really piss him off? Yeah.

MerlinOh, yeah. Yeah.

AlexTake my show seriously. I really like when they inadvertently break the rules and it makes him really, really mad. And I don't know. He gets mad when they throw challenges too.

Speaker AYeah, yeah. And I get it. He's seen how hard his people work.

MaxYeah. All right, I have one to pitch. This is one that involves some technology that does not technically exist. But Veronica and I are really interested in the idea of, I've already talked about survivor deja vu. And the idea is that you have a group of people and they come onto the island and they have their machinations and they lie and cheat and fight with each other. And then through some contrivance, you get the same 20 people. They come back to the same island. They're on the same tribes, on the same beaches, and you replay it. And then there's repercussions for all of the lies and the dishonesty and stuff.

So we were talking a lot about that. Like, what do you do with that? And I actually, like, what we really want to see is Survivor Butterfly Effect. Okay? That's the name of the season. Survivor Butterfly Effect. So you reset to one, but then everything after that. Now, what you really want to do is you don't want to have the same people play twice. You actually want to take the Men in Black mind blinker device, the light, and you want to wipe their memories. And you want to have the same people with no memory of what happened before play the same season on the same tribes over and over and over again and just change one little thing. That would be nice.

All we need is that device.

AlexWell, we just clone people now.

MaxYeah.

AlexYeah.

MaxWe're close. So close. I mean, possibly a powerful cocktail of drugs could do it. Okay. So like a season-long roofie. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker ASurvivor roofie.

MaxSurvivor blackout. I want to be clear. That's Merlin's suggestion, not mine.

MerlinI like the Jonathan Colton cruise.

MaxBut I like, but I think. I think the people are nice. But I thought that would, I thought that would be really interesting. Like you would just see like, what happens if you give one tribe slightly more rice? Oh, that's one of mine. That's one of mine. Yeah. Okay. Well, tell us about it.

MerlinOh, no. I'm sorry. So wait. So yours, the one you're presenting here is the men in black. Men in black.

Maxbut then you just change the tiniest thing.

MerlinWell, okay. So this is one of my stunt seasons. Shit. Now, say none of this sucks. But I mean, I don't want to lose my turn with my dumb idea because it's in my bring out your dad round really. But basically it's called late capitalism island. There's three tribes.

Speaker BThere's three tribes.

MerlinThere's the swells, the normals, and the poors. The swells basically live in a resort. There's four people in the tribe. The four people in the tribe get all of the things and room service and all of that. The normals. Oh, and they get a huge advantage in every challenge. They just get that. And then there's the normals who get regular Survivor that sucks. This is so good. It sucks. There's eight people in that tribe. And then there's the poors. And there are 20 people in that tribe. And there's literally nothing to eat. And they have to carry a 20-pound sandbag in every challenge.

Speaker AEverywhere they go. Survivors.

MerlinEverywhere they go. They literally cannot win. And that's why you're on the island. And they will get voted out each time.

Speaker ASo it's like survivor class warfare.

MerlinYeah, so there's Late Capitalism Island. So my actual real one is, I know this is a wackadoo.

MaxMerlin, I would watch the fuck out of that. Would you watch Late Capitalism? That's a good season. It's Harrison Bergeron. It's Harrison Bergeron season.

MerlinIt's Harrison Bergeron. Yeah, exactly. Now, my actual one is, and this is a quick one. This would be going on pre-merge, and it's called Secret Switch Advantage. And I don't know if this has already been done. I haven't seen it done. But if you find this advantage or idol, whatever it ends up being, at any point up to the merge, you get to change places with a person of your choice in another tribe.

Speaker AThat sort of happened, right?

MerlinDoesn't that happen in China? No, but you, it's not like a mechanic, like everybody else might not know about it. But let's say you're getting your ass beat in this one tribe and everybody hates you. You change places with a ding-a-ling in the good tribe, and you just fucked your old tribe over so hard and improved your situation. So secret switch advantage.

MaxI had one along the swells and the poor season that I'm pretty excited about, which is Survivor. So I have two different twists on it, and it's also kind of a stunt season or gimmick season. So one of them I'm calling Survivor MAGA versus SJW. Oh, my God. I had that. That was mine. That was mine. Well, I'm curious how you would do it. So I would have basically all the MAGA team, they would all be like huge lumbering chuds, and they'd be like a coal miner.

Just be a band of hogs. Yeah, just a huge suburban. Like a lot of meatloaf. Yeah. Meatloaf men. But they're like.

Speaker BI'm a professional meat eater.

MaxYeah, but they're like halfwits. I own a pool service. They're like the dumbest people alive. And then on the other team, you'll eat 10 fried eggs for breakfast. My cholesterol is 900.

MerlinAnd then please tell me about the SJWs.

MaxIs there a lot of purple hair and like crafts, a lot of crafts? You're going to have a lot of people who they all sit around at night and they talk about their mental illnesses. And they have like colored hair.

Speaker BIt's just an island of Alex's. I'll tell you what music isn't allowed at the party.

MaxYeah. And they're going to have, yeah, it's going to be every trope. You're going to have like an NFL player who was kicked out of the league for protesting. It's going to be like everything that like sets Trump off. You're going to have all the triggers. And then the question is, can they, then you're going to have to slowly introduce them into like cooperation games. And the question is, can they overcome that in order to win a million dollars?

AlexSo what I had is this is more of like a concept season, but it's not like the challenges often happen not in real time. But there's like something like a meme off where there's I don't know.

MerlinOh, the Yang gang.

AlexHold on. I don't. I never look at anybody in the eye in the studio. And Merlin or Max just was twirling a rubber band. And I was very concerned. It's in my Tamagotchi. Oh, boy.

MaxYou still have that follow-up. I'm still on my first guy.

AlexOh, boy.

MaxHe's the old man Tamagotchi now.

AlexThere would be, like, meme challenges and how many times Trump retweets you and stuff like that.

MaxOh, who could make the Pepe meme that makes Jeff Probst laugh the most?

Speaker AThe dankest memes. Yes. What makes him get his dimples out?

MaxIt's a meme. The show just becomes a meme review with Jeff Probst. Alex you mentioned Andrew Yang and it just occurred to me that an interesting season could be circumcised versus uncircumcised and we'll see who has more power and that includes the women that includes the women as well

Alexthe people who a lot of them would be medevents

MaxI guess it's just all men in this season also Joe Bud

Speaker AI think it should be gays versus straights and then the twist of the season is bisexual people exist and then Jeff and then Jeff Oh, wait, wait.

Speaker BAnd then Jeff goes, come on in, boys.

MerlinOh, come on.

MaxSo I had one. This is one, just a little twist I thought they could throw in. What if one of the things that happened was one of your rewards you could have was Jeff comes to your camp and sits at the campfire with you and you can ask him questions about Survivor. You can sit on his lap. And you just bullshit with Jeff and he tells you stories from previous seasons. Didn't that happen in a very early season?

Speaker AJeff had a meal with someone? I don't remember. Maybe I've dreamt this.

MaxJeff's a very interesting guy. He's a very wise guy. He has a lot of knowledge about humans and Survivor and stuff. He's got nice couches. It would legitimately be a good reward. Why do you think he didn't eat your pie? He's a very healthy man. he's so healthy Jeff has not aged they've been doing the show for 20 years he looks exactly

Merlina little he looks yeah he's got a little prednisone thing going on now yeah this is actually the this

Speaker Ais like actually the first season where I'm like oh he looks like he could be 30 yeah he's actually

Alex58 I think so and and it seems like he aged and I knew this in a good way it's almost like he aged 20 years as soon as it went to HD but now he is locked into that age like he looked like a teenage

Merlinboy. He's grandfathered in visually.

AlexYeah.

MerlinI think it's a split diopter. You know what? Can I do one? Please. And this is going to be weird. I really feel like there should be more stuff involving the jury and my daughter and I, as I'll show you something after the show when we're done recording, but we've thought, we've talked about this. I can't even tell you how much fucking time I put into this stupid goddamn challenge and I don't even have that many good ideas. It's really embarrassing but i've been pitching her on these and she tells me whether or not they won't work she was skeptical of this one i do think they should find something dollar sign something

to do with the jury so one of mine is an advantage called jury save so um and it's like a tim gun save yeah so so basically at some point you come across an advantage diddly diddly d this is a jury save if you or the person if and when you or the person that you give this to makes it to the jury they have the ability at the time that Jeff says this would be the time to play you know an idol if you have it you get to do a save of the person of your choice now I know this is not extremely

interesting but I think it's a little interesting because we see what happens when people get panicked right we see what happens when you're really you've been you've your name wrote your name down several times and you're like oh fuck what am I gonna do and somebody says well here's the deal, you know, I will vote to keep you in and bring my alliance to help you, but I'm going to give you this jury save. And on the strength, when you're on the jury, if it ever comes up and my name gets written down, I need you to save me. I love that because it shifts the power.

It involves trust. And I just generally love the idea of an idle advantage you won't or can't play yourself. You could go to jury with it yourself just to be a dick and take somebody out. Yeah, jury save. But yeah, it's a one-time ability for a jury member to play the equivalent of an immunity on behalf of a remaining player of their choice.

Speaker AYeah, I love that. I really like that. That's pretty good.

MerlinNow tell me how that's fucked up. Is that going to screw stuff? Because now Eleanor, sorry, my daughter, whose name you don't know, said Eleanor says, oh, yeah, but the thing is they're going to go back to Ponderosa, which is supposed to be a nice relaxing time to play darts and eat chicken. And do you think they're going to talk about that? And I was like, I don't know.

Speaker AThey definitely are. I mean, that's like introducing hours of gameplay footage that we won't see.

MaxBut doesn't that happen already? Do what Last Chance Kitchen does. Do a YouTube series. They do that. Oh, interesting. They do it. But make Ponderosa more of an extension of the show.

MerlinWell, that's one of my pitches, Ponderosa Knights.

MaxOkay. So I had another idea. This is, again, like it's a little half-baked. But what if you had a season, you know, similar to David vs. Goliath, where you have a bunch of like really impressive sort of alpha people and then mixed in there you've just got these like total fucking dweebs and weirdos and like an old guy who's like a ham radio enthusiast and he's like a greeter at walmart and then this is very specific well wait a minute it's coming it's gonna come back like spaghetti yeah well yeah that's

mainly why he's there is he's he's trying to see the feet and then about halfway through the season one of the tribes is out you know they're looking for an idol or whatever they're exploring and they find like an old shack like like like a hatch like i'm lost and you go and you go in and there's a bunch of weird shit in there like a bunch of broken radios and electronics and if you've been smart enough to save some of your smart people they can fix this shit to get advantages in the game like you can listen into the radio to like hear oh what the other tribe is doing what the other tribe is doing or like tips on what's coming up and the challenges and stuff like that like

Merlinbasically like the equivalent of a puzzle in some way in the sense that like only one person can really you don't have Boston Rob he's not going to fix your radio but somebody who's a smarty pants uh who likes spaghetti would be able to do something with this equipment that gives you

Maxlike a ridiculously lopsided advantage yeah but basically the idea is like I really love the moment in there's this great moment in in the last season David vs Goliath where this guy is just getting this they pick this this little guy Christian to like run a challenge against this huge professional wrestler he's just getting his ass beaten in this obstacle course and then it ends and they come to the sliding puzzle and this wrestler this big dumb wrestler gets like stuck on the sliding puzzle he can't figure it out christian gets there stares at it for three seconds and then just like zip zip zip solves it done and jeff was like what just happened here and

he goes oh when i was an undergrad i wrote an algorithm on how to slide salt how to solve sliding puzzles and you're just like this it was such good tv like i was just delighted i was like it was the ultimate like that was this guy's special thing and it came up and you know it's the right guy, right time, right place. And I just want more of that. Like, build that into the format of the show where, like, you bring in people who are experts in something or another and then you introduce that in the game. And if you're smart enough to, like, get to know your castmates and learn what they're experts in, you can not kick them out.

Speaker AOh, like if someone, like, like a season where everyone is, like, the top of their field in something?

MaxOr they just have a weird hobby. Like, maybe there's, like, maybe you have a, oh, man, I'm trying to think, like, what are weird, weird hobbies that nobody cares about?

MerlinThe SJWs would be really good at making people from the Twilight books out of pubes. And that would be something where you could go to the village where they have AIDS and you could bring those in, trade those, and you get a goat. Hang on. You get a goat. You trade the pubes for a goat. It's like Dwight starting out with the thumbtack, right? The eBay challenge. But you have the ability to do that. And then you can buy hair dye or you can buy pens with which to write a protest letter. you bring that back to camp and then now you have a new way

to you know in the bad humidity you can tune your ukulele

Maxmaybe there's a challenge where you need to critique the portrayals of queer culture on Game of Thrones and who's going to do it

Merlinwho's cancelled that's good

Maxand if you vote out all the SJWs who's going to do that challenge are you going to put some fucking truck driver he's hopped up on I didn't like the tropes

Speaker BDo you guys like the

Speaker AThey haven't done it in the past couple seasons The auction

MaxThe auction is one of my all time favorite things There's also one in the auction where so one of the like a typical thing is they have letters from your loved ones and you can bid on them. And so one season they all decided they were like this was huge. They were like we're all gonna like save up our, we're all gonna have equal money and we're gonna save up our money. It was the Bobcat

MerlinGoldthwait guy. Was it Michael? Remember that one guy who fucked up the challenge?

MaxYeah. Yes. And it was like and they were all like okay we're gonna have equal money so we could all get our loved one letters. and then this and and then an advantage and then one of the things that came up was an advantage in the game and everyone's sitting there sweating and then one guy was like fuck all y'all like you take your letters like i'm buying it and he like walked up and and bought it yeah that was good

Merlinthat was a good season you know what i don't know if they always do this every time because i'm not always by the time it's late in the season there's so much bullshit and i'm just like oh god there's just i can't you know and one of my notes is what i was like you know what can we can we dump the fucking family visit

Alexthing. Oh, no, no, no.

MerlinI agree. Can we dump the memory games and the quizzes after the

Alexmerch? I have a way to improve it.

MerlinOkay, so just... Conjugal visits. Conjugal visits. Oh, do they fuck? Now that's a YouTube series. But I also, just that one thing, I love it. I guess they, I don't know if they still do this, but I love the mechanic of Jeff saying, okay, it's time for auction. Y'all have seen this before. You've got this much denarii to spend and i just love i love when he says this auction will end without any warning like you you will not know when we're on the last item until it's over do you know what i mean it's

Alexa good game i love the auctions all right alex what do you have okay so in you know how sometimes they make the loved ones participate in the channel it's so weird and awkward fucking kobe

Merlinwas such a dick.

AlexOh, he was so mean. He was so mean. It's always so cringy. I kind of like it when they hug and everyone's sad. It's a little weird when the brother and sisters hug a little too much and you're just like, It's also, okay, this is, I would say, okay, Jamie.

Speaker AThese moments when the family comes in are kind of peak Jeff because he's an extremely good host, but he definitely runs out of things to say. Yeah. Like in the last episode, he went, You are father and daughter.

And then he definitely, he clearly forgot if one of the men was gay. And he didn't say like, let's have your spouse come out. He stumbled and went, let's see who married you.

Speaker BYeah, you like people.

Speaker AIt was so good. You sure are father and daughter.

MaxNot the one who I thought was gay.

Speaker ARight? You thought the pineapple shirt was gay. Yes, right? When his wife came out, I was like, oh.

AlexLet that be a lesson to all of you. Jen, bi people exist.

MerlinOh, that guy. No, no, no. The southern guy. No, he has that southern guy problem where you're like, that guy's totes gay. It's like, wait a minute.

AlexYeah, yeah. I thought he was like that other.

MerlinSo did your gaydar, did your gaydar, be honest. Did your gaydar go off from him?

Speaker AWell, Survivor also loves to bring in southern gays. Southern religious gays. That's a true.

MaxThey typecast.

AlexYeah.

MaxSurvivor absolutely typecasts.

AlexOh, oh. Family. how to how to fix the families um please it is only the loved ones who participate in the challenge but it is like one of those crucifixion challenges that christian won like incredibly painful and

Speaker Bdo you remember the one where your family gets like thrown off a dock into the water it's like oh no meemaw meemaw got thrown in the water she waves she waves from the asiatic sea goodbye Brent good luck do you remember this they're literally throwing elderly relatives off a dock

Alexit's so sad but at any point mid challenge you can switch

Speaker BI'm so tired I'm so tired I can't tread the water anymore at one point I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth it. Got a big move from Jen.

MaxMeemaw's drifting off to sea.

Speaker BShe died, dude. Grandma's got to dig deep. Oh, no.

MerlinJohnny Fair play it for the dead grandma. okay so the improvement the improvement is that the family members are the only ones in the

Alexchallenge and they sit on the bench no no no no no well they all the contestants are on a bench but if they see that not their loved one is struggling but another one of the contestants loved one is struggling they can sub in for that person and but then they have to give up their chance to win the family uh or win the family visit and so this could like if you if you have a meemaw up there and you're like okay my like my grandma's gonna die she has an oxygen tank like

there's nothing that's gonna happen here but then that also influences who you bring onto the island

Speaker BShe wasn't allowed to bring her Walker.

AlexAnd I know this breaks down as soon as you think about like the math or something, but I just, I want the loved one visits to somehow be better because they're never going to get rid of, they're never going to get rid of that part of the show. Jeff said they're never getting rid of them, so don't even think about it.

MerlinBut you also, you're also, you're also pointing out something when you talk about that, like being able to like call an audible on your own part. I also love the times where I feel like a combination of Jeff and certainly Jeff, certainly the production staff, will deal with something that has just come up. And I don't know a famous scene of Boston Rob having to be reshot, the worst thing ever on the show.

Speaker AWait, wait, wait. What part is that?

MerlinOh, shit. The one where he falls down and is laying on his back and the camera goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, before Rob falls down. They had to reshoot that scene and it's excruciating. Oh, we should circle back to that. I love the things where a contestant comes up with a thing and like presents it to Jeff as, is it okay if I do this? Oh, I love that. I love when they say like, well, is it okay? I'm trying to think it was a reward challenge that involved like something everybody wants. Is it okay if I give this up and like let the tribe share this? And then in the cut that we get, Jeff is like, yeah, we can do that.

And I'm like, you know that had to go through some kind of approval.

Speaker ALike pause, take an hour to discuss this.

MerlinI think so. I think so. But I love those improvised moments or what feels like improvised moments so much.

Speaker AMe too. Whenever someone goes, Jeff, I have a question. I'm like, oh, shit.

MerlinNo.

Speaker AIt's going down.

MerlinIt's like the jury writing a note to the judge. Boston Rob has had it. He's one of, God, I love Boston Rob. I love him so much. Boston Rob has had it with all these slackers. He's been doing all the work. And then at one point, you know, and of course, they're thirsty and they're tired. At one point, he's like, I don't know, man. I got to go. I don't feel so good. And he goes out into the woods, and he's doing stuff. And we said, you got to fuck. It's one with Jerry. It must be Heroes vs. Villains. Yeah, it's Heroes vs. Villains. And so Rob's out there.

We see a medium shot, medium to long shot of like, do-do-do. Rob's walking around in the woods. Cut to a hilariously eighth graders version of using a camera to show someone falling down. next thing you see rob's on the ground going cut to jerry and jerry's like hey where's rob and then cut to jerry over rob and and rob is doing the stupidest fakest and that's in the where the title that he says something like it got to me it got to me and it's

like i i heard that they had to reshoot that and i wondered because there's no fucking way a camera was there and went wubba wubba wubba right at the moment he fell down

Alexthe face he makes is just oh

Speaker Boh no there it is oh my god it got yeah that's it it got

Speaker Aoh no I love him he's got they have four daughters with oh I love that

Merlinhe loves Amber I love it so much

Maxoh alright what else what else did he want I had a good I had one one good one that I maybe you guys can help me figure out how to do it okay do you guys know the game werewolf yes Merlin I've heard you talk about it it's like you figure out who the one person is game yeah basically everyone's a villager and then one person is secretly a werewolf and at night the werewolf like picks people and kills them and it's a social deduction game so you're trying to figure out who's telling the truth and who's lying it's like a clue for college kids it's like what? clue for college kids

Speaker Bwhat for college kids? no you gotta figure out who clue

Merlinthe game clue you know Mr. Dildo did it in the factory

Maxwith a, you know.

Speaker AWe just didn't hear you.

MaxNone of us could understand what you were saying. Clue. Yes. It's like the messaging app for teens.

Speaker BChallenge. Yeah.

MaxChallenge. So it's basically the premise of this is a werewolf season of Survivor. So you tell, so one contestant at like the marooning is told, you're secretly playing for the other tribe. Like, I don't know how that works exactly.

Speaker AOh, like a Battlestar Galactica.

MaxYeah, yeah.

Speaker AYou're secretly a robot.

MaxYeah, like you win when they win and you're trying to sabotage your tribe.

MerlinHe's Jorah Mormont.

MaxYeah. And then you tell everybody, listen, there is a traitor in this game. And the traitor may or may not be on your tribe. You don't know. But it just makes everybody very suspicious. They have a hard time trusting each other because they don't know if they're the traitor or not. And there should be a huge reward, a huge upside for the traitor if they successfully accomplish their mission and don't get caught.

Speaker AThat's amazing. And then you could lie and say, I'm the traitor to get someone's trust, but you're not.

MerlinOr you could say, yeah, exactly. And you could do the whole classic like, hey, so-and-so told me, you know, he's actually the werewolf. Right.

AlexThis is, yeah, this is just werewolves up to not even 11. Like all the stress and exhaustion. And then people are going to forget who's the werewolf and like who has the special healing power. Oh, my. Max, you can make this. This could be a thing if you really wanted to.

MaxCould somebody else become the werewolf?

AlexGet Jeff on the horn.

Maxwell there are some very like well I made a game called humans versus zombies and part of the premise of that game is there it's werewolfy one player is the original zombie and they tag other people and turn them into zombies so I also had the idea that maybe if there's a component of this where if you you wake up during the night and you try to sneak around and tag people and turn them and get them into your camp and that becomes like a like a it could be mogul wolf like you go and

Merlinyou touch somebody and then they become a chud.

MaxOh! Yeah. But they wouldn't yell because I guess that would give it away. Yeah, be like, man, these college kids are out of control with their PC politics.

AlexI had one more. That's a good point. That's like a full, like, it doesn't work. But do you remember the 90s TV shows and reality shows from Nickelodeon? Of course. Yeah.

MerlinOh, like the Temple one?

AlexYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the Temple one. Legend of the Hidden Temple. Yeah, this was actually inspired by our friend Anthony Carboni, who's been on the show and also been on the show.

MaxHe was on Legends of the Hidden Temple. You're kidding me.

AlexYou want to hear him?

Speaker BHe was a contestant.

AlexYeah.

Speaker BHow long have you been drawing? Since forever. What's your favorite thing to draw? Landscapes. So anyway, I skipped a hand to his team.

MerlinIs he on the team that always wins? Isn't it the one team that always wins?

Speaker AYeah, the blue barracudas. Yeah, yeah. It'd be funny if he responded nudes. feet

Speaker Bbut

Speaker Afeet spaghetti feet spaghetti feet

Merlinokay moving on we really need to dig deep this is a mental game it's not about your feet and how they hurt already dropping down a notch really need to dig deep for this one

Alexit's survivor double list dare the two the two tribes are children who are on 90s television shows from Nickelodeon, and the other tribe are just straight-up children. And the contestants are competing in old challenges from- Nils Island.

MaxDo they have labor laws in Fiji?

AlexYeah, exactly. Exactly. And at the end, it's like, okay, there's got to be some sort of twist at the end. Like, maybe they watch Are You Afraid of the Dark, which is a very scary show where the kids would tell ghost stories. I think that was fictional, right? Yeah. I don't know. I'm not sure I'm getting it that much better.

MerlinBut it sounds like it involves watching TV on Dingling Island.

AlexPretend. Okay. But now the Dingling Island is called Scaredy Camp, which is based on a show from the 1990s. And listen to this trailer.

Speaker BI've been hearing a lot of rumors. People are getting pulled in or they feel something under the water. The reservoir and the lake are definitely haunted. I hear screaming in the camp and I think it's from Dennis Williams. Ten years ago when the kids were meeting Dennis Williams at camp. He really couldn't do anything about it. But now that there's new kids here, maybe he wants to get his revenge on them. I think that the thing that was gurgling in the lake actually was Dennis Williams calling for help. Sometimes at night when we're on overnights by the lake, I get scared.

My boat started to shake. Just like started to move. I just like was freaked out about that. Gets really creepy down there. There is something wrong here. Something freaky. This is a game based on an actual legend. Two teams will have four days and five nights to investigate the ghost story that haunts their camp.

Speaker ABy day they'll play, by night, they'll fight their fight and collect clues to put the ghost behind the ghost story to rest.

AlexScaredy Camp is now in session. This was a real television show. And the ending is just who lasted the longest. who was the least scared. That's the whole show is scaring children. You wouldn't watch that? Oh my God. No?

MerlinOh. Okay. Is that in the 90s?

Speaker BYeah. The 90s fucking rule. I know. Oh. Oh my God.

AlexOne more. There should be, like Last Chance Kitchen, there should be a Survivor sort of after show.

Speaker BI need to restart my mashed potatoes.

AlexThere should be a psychiatrist at Ponderosa. And like the person who has the worst PTSD gets to go back into the game if they want to. And make it worse.

MerlinOh, my God. Oh, they get up and there's two signs, points left and to the right. Trauma. So is this to bring out your dead round?

Speaker AYes. Did you have many more, Jen? Oh, no. I just think there should be more cuts of Jeff on volcanoes and jet skis. Right?

AlexHe should just, there should just be a GoPro strapped to his calves at all time, but it's just looking at his calves as he walks around.

Speaker AYou know what his favorite thing to say is? Bring the bird in when there's a helicopter. You can just tell he feels so good saying that.

MerlinI like when he talks to the recently very injured person when the New Zealand doctors are there and he goes, it's Jeff. It's Jeff, can you hear me? For the very first episode of this show we ever watched on Max's suggestion, somebody gets really badly injured in the very – whatever, I guess, the previous season. Yeah. There's an older guy who gets really badly injured. He falls over on a boat. Yeah, he hurts his back very badly. Yeah, yeah, really bad. And then all the doctors – and my introduction to Jeff is he walks up and goes, it's Jeff.

It's like, we really need to take care of him. He's very ill right now.

Speaker AJeff is always like right up in there.

MerlinHe's right up in the mix, man. So my quickies are obviously Douchebags vs. Ding-a-Lings, which is going to be the greatest season of the show ever. Douchebags, you get Coach, you get Dan, you get Colton, you get Ding-a-Lings like Avi Maria, Eric Phillip, Brandon Hance, Johnny Fairplay. Douchebags vs. Ding-a-Lings is going to be huge. And of course, we eventually decide. Yes, you realize they're all the same. The Douchebags and the Ding-a-Lings are one spinoff show called Ponderosa Nights. I'm not sure what that is, but Ponderosa after dark, and that's something.

And then my final one is Season 40, Survivor's Sopchoppy. And we drop people into Wakulla County, Florida.

MaxSopchoppy?

MerlinSopchoppy, yeah, yeah. It's a town that's famous for a festival they have every year where you try to charm worms out of the ground. And I want them dropped into Sopchoppy.

Speaker BHang on, you're moving too fast.

Merlinmy brain is breaking so no it's sap choppy sap choppy is the name of the town in florida hell yeah man it's florida dude yeah you get dropped into what call a county florida and like you're just gonna like figure out what the fuck to do in the tallahassee metropolitan area when you're gonna have like you have to barter the tack for the goat and you get the goat for the hair dye and you gotta just kind of work your way up with the community the town is home to the annual worm grunting festival a town celebration named in honor of a worm grunting also known as worm charming a method for driving worms to the surface of the earth.

So, yeah, they hammer wooden stakes into the ground and then rub them with metal slabs. The resulting vibrations cause worms to surface, whereupon they are typically gathered and used or sold for fishing bait. Huge advantage.

Any other dead to bring out?

AlexI would like them to, at some point, when all the contestants are completely exhausted, just replace Jeff with, like, a doppelganger. And see if they notice? Yeah, because... Wait, you're not

MerlinYou're like Adam and Jamie wearing Mission Impossible masks and you have to see if you can identify them

Speaker AJust a little fun thing That is so funny, Alex. That's my favorite idea Not to bring the group down, but are you guys know or are familiar with the survivor contestant that was charged with child pornography? What? No. I know one of them died

MerlinThe guy whose name sounded like penis. What's his name?

Speaker AMichael Scoopin Scoopin. His name sounded like

Merlinstupid yeah that's bad he uh wow wow thanks jen thanks for stopping by this is great so he uh he

Speaker Arecently like got a appeal denied to like get out of jail um so he's like still in jail in michigan or something and one of the top comments on reddit under this article uh was so is he gonna be out in

Maxtime for season 40 oh my god jen bane everybody so this is a winner of survivor no he did not win No, he didn't win.

MerlinHe's the guy who fell in the fire. He's the guy who kept getting hurt.

MaxSee, this is the kind of expert that we might need on my season where one of the challenges is going to be like, go on the dark web and find child pornography. And if you kick that guy out. Worth playing for? If you kick that guy out, who's going to know how to download the Tor browser?

There's a crossword to put your dick in the mashed potatoes.

MerlinLet's go ahead and draw for spots. Wait for my mark. No one's going to know how to navigate the dark web. uh oh adam having trouble with his tor browser having difficulty breaching the firewall he's not gonna see any small peen with that kind of access

Show notes

Transcript

131. Band of Hogs

Show notes

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