CBS did the outing much more than Jeff Varner did

Great Debates
1

Story.

In an nutshell, two contestants on the show Survivor are in the news, because in an apparent effort to avoid being voted off the island, one of them, Jeff Varner, suggested that the other was a better choice for elimination due to his deceitfulness; as evidence for this character defect, he revealed that the second contestant was transgender. He himself is gay, and presumably ought to have had at least some insight into the proposition that there are circumstances in which keeping aspects of your life private arise from motives other than deceit.

The backlash on the show was apparently quick: his ploy failed and he was voted off.

When the episode aired, Varner was fired from his actual job as a real estate agent.

And this, too, makes sense. His job is primarily a public-facing one. There’s very little upside to controversy; I imagine very few clients will specifically seek out the guy and more than a few will specifically avoid him. In any event, whether it makes sense or not, it’s their call, and I certainly don’t suggest otherwise.

But . . . I’m reminded of an old Sam Kinison routine, where the comic would sorrowfully recount the commercials that urged us to send money to famine victims in Africa, describing the emaciated children and terrible scarcity of food. . . and then reflectively muse, “And then it occurred to me that. . . gosh, the film crew could give this kid a sandwich.” He imagined a director just out of frame screaming, “Hey, get that sandwich out of here! This shit doesn’t work unless the kid looks hungry!”

Here, I contemplate that for all the outrage directed against Varner’s unquestionably shitty behavior, he outed his fellow contestant to a small group of people on an isolated island.

CBS outed the man to a considerably larger audience.

I’m not a watcher of the show, and so there may well be an aspect of the story that I’m missing. But it seems to me that perhaps CBS, in the midst of proclaiming their sensitivity to the issue, is in effect off-camera screaming, “It doesn’t work unless he looks victimized!”

2

If he was getting voted off due to his actions, I’m not sure how they could cut that part out, and still hope to have any continuity for their audience.

He said it. It couldn’t be unsaid. To remove the footage would alter the show and make his getting voted off lack context.

Even if they had so chosen, the truth was still gonna come out. Then you have ‘coverup’ claims to deal with too! That makes everyone look way worse to my mind.

3

I don’t think going on a reality show is the best way to keep aspects of your life private.

The whole point of the show is manufactured drama. Therefore it’s a little difficult to take complaints about people’s dignity and privacy seriously.

TV isn’t real. This is like complaining that you should have won the championship of the latest installment of WrestleMania - it misses the point of the whole pointless thing.

Regards,
Shodan

4

How GD has fallen.

:frowning:

5

Reality shows aren’t documentaries. They’re edited to within an inch of their lives and almost all the drama is manufactured. CBS could easily have recut the episode and recorded scripy d footage to make it different.

6

I don’t agree. If you were revealing that they did stuff to make him seem worse than he was, then I would listen to that as a possibility. I know that Reality TV creates false narratives all the time, and that there are tricks to do this that seem 100% convincing.

But he said it in situation he knew would be public. And he didn’t just announce it. He used it as a defense for why the other guy was more deceitful.

Sure, CBS revealed the guy was trans, but that was inevitable given the nature of the show. That’s not the “outing.” That’s something he signed up for. It’s using his trans status the way he did that made it horrible. That’s the “outing.”

7

Right! It was about ethics in journalism!
There have to be ways to disappear someone. I think there’s every chance it wouldn’t have come out, and if it had, saying “we felt like revealing this information had the real potential to result in physical harm to the contestant, and we sought to minimize that. We also rewrote our contestant contract to make it clear that revealing this sort of information is not acceptable”.

8

What way did he ‘use’ his trans status ?

His game mate used it, in an attempt to discredit his trustworthiness. Big back fire, didn’t work. How is that the trans guy ‘using’ his trans status?

9

Controversy might not be good for a realtor, but it’s definitely good for a reality TV show. I’d hardly expect the network, on being handed a major source of publicity like this, to let it pass by. I don’t think that Varner expected that, either. When he said what he did, he did so with the full expectation that he was telling the world.

10

Varner was the likely target of the vote going into the Tribal Council, so no need to explain that away. However, it wold be very difficult to prevent the contestants from discussing this going forward (or to edit out all instances of such discussion).

That being said, CBS could have found some way to not show it if they wanted to. Supposedly, they worked with Zeke (the guy who was outed) to present it in a way most acceptable to him, but I doubt he was offered veto authority over airing it at all.

And yeah, this is the stuff that Reality TV thrives on. Also, as noted above, it’s hard to have sympathy for someone who gets outed after twice going on a realty show (he’s a repeat player from an earlier episode). That’s not what you do when you crave privacy.

11

It was not “inevitable”, even if it was likely. It becomes more likely the more often he plays, but it’s not “inevitable”. Plus, it never came up during his first appearance on the show. This was his 2nd time as a contestant.

12

Which one was on twice - Varner, or the transgender person?

I don’t watch the show, and I feel like Clarence Darrow supposedly did about Shredded Wheat -

Regards,
Shodan

13

Both, actually. This entire cast is called “Game Changers” and consists of players who have played before (and supposedly introduced some “game changing” strategy when they did). Zeke played in the very last season and so had very little down time between filming. Varner is actually a 3rd time player.

14

Thanks.

Regards,
Shodan

15

You can say that Varner only outed Zeke to a small audience, but he KNEW the whole thing was being filmed for a world-wide audience. Supposedly it was a “heat of the moment” thing for him, but there is still no way he would think “hey, this is just between us cast members”. Remember, he’s a 3rd time player of this game.

CBS could have, with great effort, tried to suppress this info but there would be no guarantee of success. Still, without trying, you never know.

In the end, I go with personal responsibility on things like this and say that Varner is the guy who outed Zeke to the world. CBS was, at worst, a co-conspirator, but Varner was the source of the outing.

16

In context, I think BigT meant “he” to refer to Varner, the game mate. He’s just suffering from temporary pronoun antecedent ambiguity. :wink:

17

It has been said by past contestants that the “tribal council” filming takes hours. If CBS didn’t want the outing to be in the final cut, they could have started over again. Varner did what he did, but CBS made sure the rest of the world knew about it.

18

Please avoid threadshitting.

[/moderating]

19

This adds nothing to the conversation. Please, if you must comment like this then please do so in the Pit.

No warning issued.

20

Quite likely both people signed significant rights away to appear on the program, including the right to dictate to CBS/the producers/whoever which of their secrets is allowed to be revealed.

If the contestants have secrets they don’t wish to be broadcast to America, well, don’t go on TV in situations where the secrets can be revealed.

So my ranking of who is at fault is:

  1. The trans person (Zeke)
  2. The outer (Jeff)
  3. CBS