There are different levels to Survivor fandom, and the closer you move to the top, the more obsessed people tend to be with the edit. You might not even know this if you’re not in the deep end with me and the other crazies, but there are multiple weekly podcasts that use confessional counts, screentime and the perceived tone the show is giving players to predict who is most and least likely to win the game. Most of them literally rank every player every single week. Usually the different analysts more or less agree with each other, but 50 is all over the island on a few players including Cirie Fields.
Whether the analysts are giving full so-called Edgic ratings or not, the most important metric they typically look at is confessional count. The person with the most isn’t necessarily going to get the most votes at the end, but the theory is that Survivor is telling a story every season and is going to want its winner to be a consistent part of that story. They shouldn’t be the main character every single week, but at some level, we should always know who they’re working with and how their journey is going.
