The Survivor 50 contestants have returned from Fiji, and they’ve started posting on social media for the first time in more than a month. It’s been mostly a mix of coordinated Survivor promos and messages about being glad to be back, at least apart from a giant middle finger Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick pointed at another OG contestant.
After the cast of Survivor 50 was announced to mixed feelings, multi-time player Eliza Orlins, known for her deep run on Vanuatu and her middling run on Micronesia, posted something called “The Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick Files: MAGA, Misinformation, And Deleted Receipts.” She then tweeted about it and asked people to subscribe to her Patreon to read the exposé on Stephenie’s “political footprint” which includes her “likes, comments, follows, deleted content and more.”
Eliza’s tweet hyping the “files” was sent out at the end of May and prompted hundreds of comments, many of which were negative. LaGrossa, however, was in Fiji without access to social media and didn’t know any of this happened. She found out when she got back earlier this week, and not surprisingly, she had something to say. Here’s a portion of her response, which came in the form of multiple tweets…
What a nice welcome back Eliza! I don’t know u very well but I know enough that you will do anything to make a buck! Spreading lies for no reason! Clearly this is your life’s work, you should be so proud of yourself you truly are making this world a better place.
This isn’t the first time Orlins has gone after someone in the Survivor community. She has done similar posts on Cristina from Cook Islands and multi-time player Sarah Lacina. She even did four separate posts on David from Survivor 48. In fact, the stated mission of her Patreon is to “pull back the curtain” on Survivor players and talk about their behavior and their politics. She’s also doing rewatches and commentaries on her season, but that’s attracted less attention from the larger community.
Now, all of this is very in character for Eliza. She’s a public defender and talks about social issues and what she sees as injustice on a very regular basis. That’s a core part of her personality, and she has no problem with conflict and talking openly about other people. There’s clearly an audience for it amongst a segment of fans, as she has more than 300,000 followers across her platforms and almost 1,000 subscribers to her Patreon.
That being said, there are also plenty of people in the Survivor community that don’t particularly care for trying to expose other players for thinking differently. Eliza’s post about Stephenie has many dozens of angry comments from people talking about how they don’t care about anyone on Survivor’s politics and many dozens of comments from people talking about how Survivor is supposed to be a cross-section of the population, which means they should have a range of political opinions.
That last part is a fair representation of my viewpoint on the issue. I want to see Survivor cast real people, and I want to see them interact with each other. One of my biggest frustrations about the New Era has been the overreliance on casting hardcore fans. They tend to play the game in a certain way, and I don’t only want to see people play the game in that way, just as I don’t only want to see people like Eliza play Survivor. I also want to see people like Stephenie and Evvie and Coach and Ozzy and Davie and Jonathan.
You can catch Stephenie when Survivor 50 drops in the spring of 2026 as part of a year long celebration. The cast contains a wide cross-section of personalities and assumedly, a wide cross-section of political viewpoints.