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Kitty Pryde1 wrote:

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The problem with that line of thinking is that we, as Sucksters, dislike mactors.

A lil' bit.

Again, this gets into the usual edgic tone, personal opinion bickerfest. "Soandso did THIS which means they are negative!" Strategic backstabbing is often portrayed in a negative way, but not always. When the women snaked Erik, Natalie got a lot of N EDITING, but the others got little of that.

To rate tone objectively, you should consider the editorial intent of the player's portrayal. What did the editors want us to think? The point of edgic is to pretty much determine what story the editors were weaving and base a winner pick on patterns in the way that story occurs. You can make the claim that picking tone is as simple as categorizing behaviors into "P" and "N" and then adding them up, but the average viewer is not such a simpleton that each one responds to the show in the same exact way such that those categorizations will be accurate. There will always be variation, of course, in the way people actually perceive a player.

Thus, the editors must sometimes bend the footage to make a clear statement about the impression of a player. Now, of course, sometimes they do not need to do so. For example, if a player was kicked out of the game for punching a woman in the face, they can get across the tone message with mostly straight up reporting. On the other hand, if you want to portray a single player as the backstabber, despite the backstabbing being a team effort, you need to emphasize some footage and exclude other footage, possibly splicing scenes together in unnatural ways.

Because of these complexities, I still firmly believe that tone best is neither "What you yourself think of the player/the player's actions," nor "What do I personally think the casual viewer wants to see?" If we go by our own intuition, the Sucks biases are ever present. Even worse, the sample is biased in that all tone perceptions come from hardcore Survivor viewers that are intentionally working to dissect the edit. However, the editors are editing the show for millions of people - most of which don't even notice editing trends. Alternatively, trying to guess at what the casual viewer wants is still flawed (albeit preferable in my mind). How are we to know how the viewers respond to each individual event? We have general trends, as have been noted (yay alpha males, boo backstabbing), yet social cognition is extremely complex stuff and I am hard pressed to believe that edgicians can perfectly guess the public's reaction to each unique event (as each event contains dozens of variables that make it unique). Thus, making behavior categories (crying when someone leaves=P, voting out my favorite an ally=NNN) is likely to lead to overly stereotyped and inaccurate tone ratings.

My personal take on Parvati's edit was either neutral or a very weak N. I rarely felt like the editors were intentionally trying to make Parvati out as a villain. It seemed to me that it was mostly straightforward reporting of ambiguous events that you would either agree/disagree with her about. Examples:

Telling James to shut up: Well if you focus on the fact that he was working hard, that was a bitchy thing to do. If you focus on the fact that he is emphasized as making lots of noise next to sleeping people, he was in the wrong.

The cutthroat strategy: Often, I felt this was presented rather neutrally. Parvati was never the hero, working to take out a big villain. However, she was never portrayed as maliciously targeting someone (IE: Natalie). In nearly every case, she gave a clear, rational explanation for why she was doing what she was doing and how it impacted her game play. To me, that presentation by editors says "This is Parvati, what she thinks of the situation, and why she's doing it. Take it or leave it." Of course, if you like Parvati, you might say she was P for playing the game brilliantly, if you don't she was being a super N backstabber. To me, that does not suggest clear editorial intent.

The reason I do see the possibility for a weak N overall, was the whole "Black Widow Brigade" thing, relishing in taking out the guys. It always seemed rather tongue and cheek to me. More like trash talk in a pick up game with friends. However, I can see the possibility that the editors put it in to make her sort of the "one to root against if you are a fan of the guys," leading to a negative impression. Then again, thinking now, if you are all about girl power yourself, it was probably great. So perhaps that's just more reporting, with mixed reactions.