It was a fascinating study in human behaviour. I've spent a bit of time on the Traitors reddit and people HATE that series. As I understand Oz has cancelled the show in the wake of it (was before the recent UK & US series blew up so perhaps they might change their minds).
People hate it because it was so frustrating watching the faithfuls fail to spot the obvious - but I'm with you, I think subconsciously they all knew what was going on and were scared and acted on instinctive self preservation. And I also think that's why viewers hated it so much, because it's a deeply uncomfortable truth about human nature and group dynamics. Someone said that it was basically coercive control and I think that's bang on.
I don't actually think Sam played it all that well either, I think it was a combination of intimidation and a certain chance that there weren't enough strong figures at key points to organise against him or speak out at the round table and call out what he was doing - ie: you come for me and I'll take you down.
Psychopaths/sociopaths don't tend to have good models of others' inner lives and motivations and I don't think he did, which is why he blew up at the end when Camille didn't follow the script, even though she had no reason to do as he wished. In an interview afterwards she intimated that there was much more that was cut where he blew up at her, a real narc rage outburst.
Incidentally I thought it was a bit of a cheap trick to introduce the 'Traitor's dilemma' at the end from nowhere. Given there is no way to 'win' a prisoners' dilemma dynamic - if you trust then you're the sucker - then if it was coming then the remaining traitors had to ensure that they manipulated the situation to make sure there were no other traitors left by the end. The ending was inevitable once the producers stepped in.
What I find so interesting about the Traitors is that it holds a mirror to us all. Really the faithful have nothing much to go on when deciding who is a traitor so it brings out all the unconscious bias, predjudices, etc. Sexism, racisim, ageism, etc.
I am neurodivergent and the neurodivergent people on the shows (I've watched a lot - the US, Aus, Norway, and UK) always get banished early. They get voted off because 'somethings not quite right' or 'I just don't trust him, I don't know why'. It has gotten to the point that when they introduce the contestants I can guess how far they will go by their occupation. Software developer? Aerospace engineer? They are mostly voted off episode one or two. It is a sweeping generalisation of course -the UK season 2 had a couple of people who had a whiff of being on the autistic spectrum get quite a long way through.
The individual and collective misogyny (and probably homophobia and racism) felt like the big themes of the show. It was also notable that the clever women like Annabelle were banished while the clever men like Luke were murdered. A real lesson for producers in a) don’t have a psychopath as a Traitor b) don’t have a mix of clever/confident people and stupid/unconfident people and end up with only the latter group and a bully c) make sure everyone understands the rules d) call time at the right points in banishment to get rid of the people you need to get rid of for the benefit of a good show like the UK producers do e) it’s not fun to watch a bully and even the catharsis of him getting some comeuppance at the end doesn’t make up for the unpleasantness of the second half of the second half of the series.
As an Australian who just discovered all versions of the show (just finished Aus S2 yesterday) I’m sorry it got cancelled however since the first season was so badly edited and the second they let chug along into oblivion (however satisfying the ending was), these are obviously not the producers who should be making the show. Hopefully a reboot can be made by people with a clue (happy to keep Rodger). Sam was repellent (just hate, not love to hate like a good villain) but I admit I did do a lot of screaming at Sarah - how many times can one person talk herself out of the blinding obvious?
Australian Traitors spoilers! Wasn’t he just the worst most entitled brat. I screamed at the tv for most of the season and then witchy-laughed my way through the closing credits. A terrible show/season overall but some real big emotions in those last 10 minutes ooooeeeee
The mention of podcasts/bartlett/huel/thumbnails reminded me of a colleague of mine who found that Huel’s latest Greens product causes, shall we say, explosive digestive responses (essentially D&V every time he tried it, he tried a surprising amount of times)
I was considering sending him every thumbnail permutation of that product that I have seen on YouTube (there are a lot) but wasn’t sure whether that would constitute poor interpersonal skills in the workplace.
Confident this isn’t the sort of response you were looking for when you posted that, but here we are.
I'm thinking you mean Owen Jones or Giles Coren (I'm sure they would be thrilled at the comparison)? The thing that got me Traitors AU2: is how every woman who figured it out was immediately & so easily dismissed. And all the men seemed to stick to believing the Sheriff. The only woman who survives it literally has to nuke the prize from everyone! This is a metaphor right? People were literally afraid of the sheriff but why so much? I'm looking forward to the discussion because I've been thinking about it a lot.
Anyone else watching Traitors, especially the Australian version, think, yeah, i wouldn't last a week if the Tardis took me back to medieval times. The Monty Python holy grail witch trial scene had more logic than the typical banishment vote on Traitors Oz.
In terms of game logic it’s too easy for traitors to select which faithfuls they want to keep for the final rounds.
Remember Mike Reid’ runaround? When contestants could change their answer when they could see how the others had answered? There’s an article somewhere about the traitors and voting systems….Traitors on an alternative vote system anyone :-)
And oh yeah, Australia’s most decorated cop……strewth!
Janice Turner as a consummate columnist has that great ability to interview and present a variety of perspectives which I do find occasionally refreshing. That said, Badenoch's comments about her own upbringing and introduction to Britain bears reflection as often articulate new citizens' worldview is shaped far more precisely than the standard PPE route.
Ah Traitors S2, compulsive stuff... I agree it shows an intrinsic limitation of the game that only the traitors can be 100% sure of who's lying or not (cf Mollie not wanting to ditch Harry in case Jas was wrong about him). In the UK version, the producers were happy to throw more curve-balls (eg murder in the open - which did for Miles) to even things up a bit. Overall, the UK version is curated much better, including having contestants who know each irl, which is a much better device than including some random reality celebrities. Shame they've cancelled it, also Rodger was an excellent host.
“They reign supreme in the public eye for about seven years or so”
There is also the ‘7 year itch’ for relationships
Now I read once that all your cells in your body replace every 7 years, so my thinking is that in a way you are a completely different person today than you were 7 years ago, like an actually physically different new thing
So for the 7 year itch I started to think this isn’t a coincidence and now I have another data point for my (frankly insane) theory
It was a fascinating study in human behaviour. I've spent a bit of time on the Traitors reddit and people HATE that series. As I understand Oz has cancelled the show in the wake of it (was before the recent UK & US series blew up so perhaps they might change their minds).
People hate it because it was so frustrating watching the faithfuls fail to spot the obvious - but I'm with you, I think subconsciously they all knew what was going on and were scared and acted on instinctive self preservation. And I also think that's why viewers hated it so much, because it's a deeply uncomfortable truth about human nature and group dynamics. Someone said that it was basically coercive control and I think that's bang on.
I don't actually think Sam played it all that well either, I think it was a combination of intimidation and a certain chance that there weren't enough strong figures at key points to organise against him or speak out at the round table and call out what he was doing - ie: you come for me and I'll take you down.
Psychopaths/sociopaths don't tend to have good models of others' inner lives and motivations and I don't think he did, which is why he blew up at the end when Camille didn't follow the script, even though she had no reason to do as he wished. In an interview afterwards she intimated that there was much more that was cut where he blew up at her, a real narc rage outburst.
Incidentally I thought it was a bit of a cheap trick to introduce the 'Traitor's dilemma' at the end from nowhere. Given there is no way to 'win' a prisoners' dilemma dynamic - if you trust then you're the sucker - then if it was coming then the remaining traitors had to ensure that they manipulated the situation to make sure there were no other traitors left by the end. The ending was inevitable once the producers stepped in.
What I find so interesting about the Traitors is that it holds a mirror to us all. Really the faithful have nothing much to go on when deciding who is a traitor so it brings out all the unconscious bias, predjudices, etc. Sexism, racisim, ageism, etc.
I am neurodivergent and the neurodivergent people on the shows (I've watched a lot - the US, Aus, Norway, and UK) always get banished early. They get voted off because 'somethings not quite right' or 'I just don't trust him, I don't know why'. It has gotten to the point that when they introduce the contestants I can guess how far they will go by their occupation. Software developer? Aerospace engineer? They are mostly voted off episode one or two. It is a sweeping generalisation of course -the UK season 2 had a couple of people who had a whiff of being on the autistic spectrum get quite a long way through.
The individual and collective misogyny (and probably homophobia and racism) felt like the big themes of the show. It was also notable that the clever women like Annabelle were banished while the clever men like Luke were murdered. A real lesson for producers in a) don’t have a psychopath as a Traitor b) don’t have a mix of clever/confident people and stupid/unconfident people and end up with only the latter group and a bully c) make sure everyone understands the rules d) call time at the right points in banishment to get rid of the people you need to get rid of for the benefit of a good show like the UK producers do e) it’s not fun to watch a bully and even the catharsis of him getting some comeuppance at the end doesn’t make up for the unpleasantness of the second half of the second half of the series.
As an Australian who just discovered all versions of the show (just finished Aus S2 yesterday) I’m sorry it got cancelled however since the first season was so badly edited and the second they let chug along into oblivion (however satisfying the ending was), these are obviously not the producers who should be making the show. Hopefully a reboot can be made by people with a clue (happy to keep Rodger). Sam was repellent (just hate, not love to hate like a good villain) but I admit I did do a lot of screaming at Sarah - how many times can one person talk herself out of the blinding obvious?
Australian Traitors spoilers! Wasn’t he just the worst most entitled brat. I screamed at the tv for most of the season and then witchy-laughed my way through the closing credits. A terrible show/season overall but some real big emotions in those last 10 minutes ooooeeeee
The mention of podcasts/bartlett/huel/thumbnails reminded me of a colleague of mine who found that Huel’s latest Greens product causes, shall we say, explosive digestive responses (essentially D&V every time he tried it, he tried a surprising amount of times)
I was considering sending him every thumbnail permutation of that product that I have seen on YouTube (there are a lot) but wasn’t sure whether that would constitute poor interpersonal skills in the workplace.
Confident this isn’t the sort of response you were looking for when you posted that, but here we are.
I'm thinking you mean Owen Jones or Giles Coren (I'm sure they would be thrilled at the comparison)? The thing that got me Traitors AU2: is how every woman who figured it out was immediately & so easily dismissed. And all the men seemed to stick to believing the Sheriff. The only woman who survives it literally has to nuke the prize from everyone! This is a metaphor right? People were literally afraid of the sheriff but why so much? I'm looking forward to the discussion because I've been thinking about it a lot.
Anyone else watching Traitors, especially the Australian version, think, yeah, i wouldn't last a week if the Tardis took me back to medieval times. The Monty Python holy grail witch trial scene had more logic than the typical banishment vote on Traitors Oz.
In terms of game logic it’s too easy for traitors to select which faithfuls they want to keep for the final rounds.
Remember Mike Reid’ runaround? When contestants could change their answer when they could see how the others had answered? There’s an article somewhere about the traitors and voting systems….Traitors on an alternative vote system anyone :-)
And oh yeah, Australia’s most decorated cop……strewth!
Kemi is great, we need her in Labour
Never heard of Traitor before, very curious to see this Aussie S2 now. I adore depressing revelations about human nature.
Janice Turner as a consummate columnist has that great ability to interview and present a variety of perspectives which I do find occasionally refreshing. That said, Badenoch's comments about her own upbringing and introduction to Britain bears reflection as often articulate new citizens' worldview is shaped far more precisely than the standard PPE route.
Ah Traitors S2, compulsive stuff... I agree it shows an intrinsic limitation of the game that only the traitors can be 100% sure of who's lying or not (cf Mollie not wanting to ditch Harry in case Jas was wrong about him). In the UK version, the producers were happy to throw more curve-balls (eg murder in the open - which did for Miles) to even things up a bit. Overall, the UK version is curated much better, including having contestants who know each irl, which is a much better device than including some random reality celebrities. Shame they've cancelled it, also Rodger was an excellent host.
From the public intellectual link
“They reign supreme in the public eye for about seven years or so”
There is also the ‘7 year itch’ for relationships
Now I read once that all your cells in your body replace every 7 years, so my thinking is that in a way you are a completely different person today than you were 7 years ago, like an actually physically different new thing
So for the 7 year itch I started to think this isn’t a coincidence and now I have another data point for my (frankly insane) theory