Survivor 46 castaway Jessica “Jess” Chong has shared her side of the story from Fiji.
She has grown tired of reading comments from Survivor fans calling her “useless” on the show and clarified what people saw during her time on screen.
As a quick reminder, Jess was on the dysfunctional Yanu Tribe on Survivor 46.
During the first episode, David Jelinsky got voted out by the tribe soon after they lost the opening Immunity Challenge.
Yanu also lost the second Immunity Challenge, and Kenzie Petty, Q Burdette, and Tiffany Nicole Ervin decided to vote out Jess or Bhanu Gopal. The trio then constructed a fake Immunity Idol, set about convincing Jess it was real and that she should use it, and then they voted her off Survivor.
In her exit interview, Jess called her time on Survivor “torture,” but now she has more to say to fans disparaging her time on reality TV.
Jess Chong calls out ‘armchair critics’ in social media post
Jess took the time to write an essay about her time on Survivor 46 and laid out her personal experiences during the various challenges. She also clarified how she viewed the challenges that Yanu lost during her two episodes.
“To the armchair critics calling me ‘useless’ in the #Survivor46 challenges, please improve your media literacy,” Jess began her message.
“Just because someone’s on camera telling you ‘Jess is weak’ or ‘Jess is bad at challenges’ doesn’t make it true. Anyone looking more closely at what’s actually happening on screen can see that I’m no more ‘useless’ than anyone else,” Jess added.
Jess then explained how she tried to advise her tribe during the Gecko Challenge and could be heard advising the castaways about not pulling the gecko’s head down.
“They made it IMPOSSIBLE,” she said about her Yanu tribemates.
While explaining her participation in the Persistence Challenge during Episode 2, she talked about how she helped. This was the challenge where they had to steer a wagon through an obstacle course.
To win that second challenge, the tribe had to spell out a word and elevate it to become a bridge between two anchor points. It required them to lift and balance heavy letters. It didn’t go well.
“It was my idea to have my tribe spell the word out on the ground so that it was spelled correctly on both sides. Unfortunately, people on my tribe ran the pieces diagonally and jumbled them, and we wasted precious time and energy reconstructing it,” Jess exasperatedly explained.
Jess then wrote about how the Siga Tribe was “calm, methodical, and supportive to each other whenever the blocks fell.” It was in stark contrast to how Yanu treated Jess.
“But no, my tribemates called me weak because… I wasn’t screaming and running around like a chicken with my head cut off??” Jess wrote.
Some Survivor fans defended Jess during the show.
Below are social media posts from Survivor fans who felt Jess was badly treated during the season.
Another Survivor fan couldn’t believe nobody else took responsibility for the second Immunity Challenge loss.
Final thoughts from Jess Chong about Survivor 46
Jess noted that an executive producer also saw what she was dealing with who spoke to her after her Tribal Council elimination.
“While this wasn’t shown in the edit, I repeatedly tried to correct the rotated P, only to be yelled at in response. An exec producer told me, after my torch got snuffed, that he witnessed it with his own eyes, so if you don’t believe me, go ahead and ask him,” Jess revealed.
Before ending her story about Survivor 46 and the challenges she was in, Jess had one final message for Survivor fans who have been judging her.
“Before you go online and opine about how ‘useless’ I was, imagine how sucky it feels to have been screamed at during every challenge, to have been ignored while trying to course correct us, to have people call me ‘weak’ and ‘useless’ on TV (I played women’s rugby and broke someone’s collarbone), and then to have keyboard warriors on Reddit parrot what people said about me. GET SOME MEDIA LITERACY. Fin,” Jess ended her Survivor story.
More from Survivor 46
Venus is featured in a new deleted scene from Survivor 46. In the bonus clip, Venus revealed why she didn’t want to help her tribe back at camp.
Survivor host Jeff Probst also said he loves penalties for losing. He will not stop taking away flint from tribes that lose Immunity Challenges.
Previous episodes of Survivor 46 are available for streaming on Paramount+.
Survivor 46 airs Wednesday at 8/7c on CBS.