Andria "Dreamz" Herd

I think Dreamz is in the top 3 of all time when it comes to 0-vote finalist games. I would have voted for him over anyone but Earl.

Mind blown.

I just finished rewatching Fiji and came to Reddit to see people's opinions and I'm shocked how many people are anti-Dreamz here.

1. While I don't think Yau Man is a bad person at all, I do think he attempted to capitalize on Dreamz's real life financial situation, which in my opinion goes slightly beyond the scope of the game. I understand the point that Dreamz totally didn't have to accept the deal, but still, while I think Yau Man made a novel strategic play, it was somewhat dirty.

2. The day before the final 4 tribal council, Dreamz told Cassandra and Earl that when he got to tribal council, he wouldn't be thinking about Yau Man but would instead be thinking about what was best for his kids. And then he did what any of us would have done, I think: he gave himself a shot at the million or even the 100,000, either of which would have changed his life so dramatically. He didn't need to give up his game for Yau just because he "made a deal." Countless Survivor players have gone back on deals and we don't give them shit for it.

3. I genuinely believe if he had performed better at FTC, he'd be walking away with at least a few jury votes. He did what the jury often hates in waffling on a few answers and not owning his game. If he either admitted: a) that he accepted Yau's deal and then later decided to go back on it, or b) that he was playing Yau from the get-go, it would have seemed more impressive. But I think it was his constant attempts to explain rather than just own up to his game that cost him the votes.

4. Dreamz gets painted as this liar, this cheat, and this thief, when ultimately I think he played this game with heart. He played from the bottom and consistently made moves that he thought would get him farther in the game. And in a season with a few people who I genuinely do not believe are kind-hearted or good people, it feels frankly ridiculous to me that Dreamz is remembered as the season's villain when you have someone as vile as Lisi in the mix.

So, these are my thoughts. I just cannot fathom seeing Dreamz as a villain that season when there are so many beloved Survivor players who have lied more, cheated more, were ruder, and played more ruthless games.

I just finished Season 14 and after doing some google searching, have seen that many people absolutely hate Dreamz for not keeping his word to Yau. Don’t get me wrong, Yau might be my favorite survivor of all time, but I felt no one even took into account Dreamz’s background and what they might do in his situation.

A good article that basically aligns with my feelings on the situation:

I just want to see what people think about this because I’ve seen almost unanimous anger toward Dreamz. I understand to a point, but feel like not many can possibly understand how much was on the line for him.

I watched the seasons way out of order. Fiji gets bad reviews, but I think it's a bit of an underrated season. But the most baffling thing, in my mind, is the perception of Dreams.

Dreams floated in and out of alliance, each episode I was dead set it would be his last and some how, we would come out the otherside. I think a scrappy game is much more respected in seasons 25 and up, and nothing was more scrappy then Dreams.

I get it, I like Yau-Man too, but I liked Dreams a lot more. I think he might be the poorest, most right off the street contestants they ever have had. His story and background from being homeless to a street performer is a refreshing breathe of air then the regular ivy league college grads, attorneys, teachers, same ol same ol of most of the contestants. And yet somehow he was able to dip and dodge and make it all the way to the top three. He outsmarted, outwitted, and outlasted cast member after castmember, while delivering maybe the least polished deliveries in Trible Council history.

This guy was a complete underdog story, he was a villan, he was scrappy, and a real antihero.

Now that I have seen all the season, Survivor does an amazing job of bringing back people who were outliers of their seasons. 90% of the returning cast are no brainers, and a couple that are a bit head scratching on why they got asked back..... but I am absolutely baffled I never saw Dreamz in another season. He was absolutely one of a kind, and was way before his time.

Do you think Dreamz would be better perceived in this new era of Survivor then the hate he got back 2007? I think he would be championed for his lying and deceiving ways.... any thoughts?

So I get it, you can either agree with his choice or hate his choices with Yau Man over that car, but there are still people to this day that go to his instagram and comment hateful and shitty things to him 16 years later… that is so odd to me… there is literally no reason to do that over a choice a young man made a long time ago :/

I watched Fiji for the first time over the past two days. I went in excited for Earl's game and to see how he dominated, but came out really admiring Dreamz as a character. Survivor Fiji is Dreamz's story, not Earl's.

It starts with Dreamz at the camp with all 19 castaways, and everyone gets to know who Dreamz is as a person pretty quick. He says what's on his mind, which usually gets people a bit annoyed with him. His whole thing with wishing he could bring his family to Moto camp because it was better there than being homeless was really compelling to me because we don't normally see that point of view on Survivor. Another funny quote from Dreamz before the tribe swap was "There's two people we can afford to lose. And I ain't pointin' no fingers..." points fingers at Cassandra and Lisi " But it's Cassandra and Lisi. We can only afford to lose them."

Then there's the tribe swap, and Dreamz gets invited into the four horsemen alliance. He's fourth in the alliance, though. The other three know they can't tell him about much, like the fact that they found an idol. Dreamz can't keep a secret; they know that.

Then at the merge, he makes two votes that nearly kill his chances of winning, but really define his character through the season. First, he votes off Michelle instead of Stacy, which goes against his and Mookie's best interest, but really helps Alex and Edgardo's games. Then the next tribal, he is told by the horsemen about their idol, and immediately flips and tells Earl's alliance about the idol. There's a whole lot of back and forth that I can't do justice in words, and Edgardo gets blindsided, marking the death of the four horsemen (just watch this tribal and the scrambling beforehand, it's one of the best of the season).

The final, and most significant event of Dreamz's Survivor game is the f6 car deal with Yau-man. I definitely believe (whether he wants to admit it or not) that Dreamz took Yau up on that deal because he wanted the car now, and would deal with trying to not let Yau get to f4 so he wouldn't have to repay Yau with the immunity necklace. However, because Dreamz had pretty much zero control over the votes, and Yau-man was in a good spot in the alliance, they both made it to f4. Dreamz then has a very difficult situation he's put himself in: Be a man of his word and give Yau the necklace as promised, but be voted out right at f4, OR keep the necklace for himself, going back on his word, sending Yau-man home, and giving himself a shot to win the million. This scene was really emotional because you can see that this decision is tearing him in half. He of course decides to keep the necklace, and receives zero jury votes.

Dreamz's story is about being true to your word vs playing the game and manipulating. While he wasn't a very good survivor player, he was certainly an amazing character. Definitely top 30, maybe even top 20 in terms of characters for me.

Dude was in a lose lose situation, either betray a well liked player or go get eliminated. Dude was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

My wife is watching all of survivor per usual pandemic protocol and I’ve joined in partially on most seasons and entirely on a few great ones. I know Fiji is super early in terms of the evolving metagame but I feel like this season was a victim of the early season alliance/anti-betrayal meta and it bugs me even upon rewatches most fans on this subreddit still have an antiquated take from this season.

In terms of pure strategy, Yau-man deserved to win hands down but Dreamz was head and shoulders above Earl and obvious goat Cassandra in terms of gameplay. Despite being inarticulate at times, he orchestrated pivotal vote-outs that eventually consolidated his place in the final 3. He consistently talked about people who were in control of the game and needing to eliminate them. Even during the recap he described how he tried to make sure people in control of the game lost control through getting voted out or making moves that countered what they wanted. That literally describes perfectly the current moves-meta. He was also using voting blocs to try to help his cause in an era everyone else was voting down alliance lines every TC.

Yau-man only has himself to blame for playing Dreamz deal poorly at the end; he should have known Dreamz could win final immunity and betray him and voted him out keeping Boo, a much less strategic player who was less close to Earl and Cassandra. Finally, Dreamz shouldn’t be portrayed as a villain for being the only one who desperately needed a car in real life and had to take the offer while also knowing his only shot at a million was reneging on the deal. Even Yau admitted he thought he would be portrayed as a villain for making a deal in bad faith like he did.

Also people commenting on how Dreamz is an idiot for getting his car repossessed because he couldn’t afford the taxes for it really need to check their privilege.

Let's say Boo wins the Final Five immunity and Earl is sent home, and then at Final Four, it goes down as it went down and Yau-Man is voted out. And we have the Final Three of Cassandra, Dreamz and Boo. Who wins in this Final Three? Cassandra - pretty good social game but poor strategic and weak challengewise. Dreamz and Boo - both good at challenges but Dreamz betrayed a lot of people and Boo was clueless socially.

My bet is it would be Cassandra. What do you think?

So I'm rewatching Fiji for the first time since it aired and I have a few thoughts on the whole Yau Man and Dreamz situation.

Yau Man is typically loved and viewed as a nice person and somewhat of a hero in the survivor world while Dreamz is viewed quite the opposite as a greedy and selfish individual but looking back on this season, I think the complete opposite.

When Yau Man made the deal with Dreamz, it was 100% strategic which he even said in a coffesional with plans to vote him out at final 4. This is incredibly manipulative and actually pretty villainous and probably would be viewed as a very villainous move had Dreamz honored his end of the deal. He essentially exploited the fact that Dreamz was poor and used it against him to gain leverage over him.

As for Dreamz, this deal essentially guarenteed that Yau Man wouldn't try to target him for the next two rounds and Yay Man had been the only person to bring up his name at that point so it was kind of a no brainier to make the deal.

And when Dreamz ultimately wins immunity, Yau Man makes it clear to Dreamz that he is voting Dreamz out and basically threatens him with the whole honoring his word thing. Yau Man should have just made a deal with Dreamz agreeing to target Earl or Cassandra in that spot instead. But since he didn't, it was super obvious that Dreamz would be voted out had he given up his necklace. And based on perception in the game, Dreamz was actually viewed as one of the biggest threats to win so giving up that immunity that he earned would have essentially lost him the million dollars.

Now obviously Earl won in a unanimous vote but no one (except Earl probably) thought that was going to happen at the time. Yau Man made a very devious and manipulative move that essentially screwed Dreamz over either way.

Had Dreamz given it up to Yau, I think Dreamz comes back for Micronesia and Yau Man ends up as a zero vote finalist against Earl since he would be seen as villainous had that move actually worked

What would’ve happened if Dreamz actually gave the Immunity Necklace to Yau-Man?

I wanna hear everyone’s thoughts on this hypothetical situation.

I was just rewatching Fiji and I was surprised he wasn’t invited to be on the Villians tribe. He made it to the final 3 backstabbing his alliance and tricked Yau Man, the tribe favorite, into giving him a truck.

Were people surprised that he wasn’t on HvV? Cause like why was Randy there.

Did anybody else think it was obvious Lisi has no idea there were 6 zeros in a million once Dreamz responded. "Can you say that again?" she asks incredulously while looking around for confirmation.

I think malice and mean spiritedness drove her to ask that to try to embarrass someone she perceived as uneducated and it blew up nicely in her face.

So, apparently, Fiji castaways agreed beforehand, that, if there's a car challenge, then anybody who wins gives this car to Dreamz. When the time came, Yau did give the car to Dreamz, but in exchange for the immunity at the Final Four. So he tried to capitalize on this (which I guess was not discussed).

If that is so, Yau can be considered somewhat sneaky and is Dreamz then so bad because he went back on his word? Or we can really say that Yau had what was coming to him (because he tried to capitalize on the car thing)?

Still Dreamz is hated by a lot of people and Yau is one of the most favorite people ever.

On here, people tend to go back and forth. I believe Earl wins for these reasons.

1. Stronger social game- Earl had one of the greatest social games ever. He was liked, respected and trusted by everyone. He pulled a lot of the cast in his alliance, due to his likability. He was liked and trusted to the point that he really wasn't in danger of going home, outside maybe a few hours on the day Edgardo would be going home. Yau has admitted that he was pretty quiet and was often looped in by Earl.

2. Truck deal- For anyone that does not know, the original deal was for everyone to give Dreamz the truck, but Yau ended up exploiting Dreamz situation with his deal. Had Dreamz honored his word, the truck deal gets exposed and likely used against Yau. One of the reasons Yau believes he would have lost to Earl is the truck deal. I am actually curious on how Yau and Dreamz would have been portrayed had Dreamz honored his word.

I know there's the reunion show poll, but that was after the whole season aired, so it's hard to put a lot of faith in this. Despite the poll, the exit interviews apparently indicated that Earl would have won, so there's a conflicting information.

I believe Earl wins in a close vote.

Do you think Dreamz was a villain for backing out on the deal with Yau Man? Was it a good move or not?

I feel for the guy because he’s attacked by almost everyone so many times. But he also made me feel so confused.

What I take from watching him is that I will not make any deal with someone who confuses me like that lol.