I want to start off by saying I don’t think the bias that put me off enough to make me unsubscribe from the patreon is conscious or malicious, which is part of why it’s frustrating. There are lots of things I really want to like about this podcast. I like the detailed analysis. I like that the hosts are willing to go against popular fan opinion instead of blindly repeating it, but generally still do so with respect rather than contrarianism. I actually have the most fun when I disagree with the hosts and hear the contrasting perspectives. However, it really is striking to hear full, long conversations about how under the radar social games by female players don’t win as often or the buried winner in Samoa or weird jury questions with hardly a single mention of how gender might be impacting how women are edited or women’s games are perceived by juries. Phil can be especially egregious. Listening back to an admittedly older episode, there was a long rant from Phil about how a male player who harassed women ‘would probably be cancelled today’ and it was good to have him on the show as a fun villain that was really telling. Women’s strategic moves are appreciated, but male players are given so much more defense and benefit of the doubt in extenuating factors in analysis. I really enjoyed this podcast at first, but the /lack/ of acknowledgement of the role of sexism in the history of the show is really telling. There’s also constant defense of and fanboying over male players who were incredibly sexist on their seasons and were edited and treated as fan favorites for it (ala Ozzy and JT- not that they can’t be enjoyed, but some recognition of the way they treated women at least on screen and the state of the fanbase at the time would have been nice). I subbed to the patreon anyways because I could overlook it for a while, but at a certain point the issue became so consistent and glaring it made an otherwise great podcast borderline unlistenable. I’m reviewing because I really hope this improves- I’d love to listen again, delete this, and be able to give this more stars, but as it stands I just can’t. P.S. this is separate from the sexism point, but we get it Phil thinks parv is good but overrated. Every time her name comes up he repeats this for like 40 minutes, takes over the whole episode and nothing related to the gameplay gets discussed.
