I spent four weeks like a traitor in my office – and almost lost my mind Ed Campbell
TThere aren’t many people who understand the pressure that famous traitors Cat Burns and Alan Carr felt as their mission to wear that famous green cape came to an end – but I do. I spent four weeks lying, cheating, and murdering friends and colleagues in the desktop version of Traitors.
I almost lost my mind.
Everyone watches The Traitors and sees the contestants, traitors and loyal alike, behaving irrationally and making bad decisions and thinking: “That wouldn’t be me. I’d be rational. I wouldn’t be Linda from series three, giving up the game immediately. I’d be Harry from series two, emotionally manipulating a girl with a colostomy bag.”
Reader, I was once like you. I was so sure of my sanity that on New Year’s Day Tweet my confidence I would be “so natural” if I was on the show.
Little did I know that one of my colleagues was wearing metaphorical eyeliner and eyelashes to play Claudia Winkleman. Just a week later, I received a message from Slack explaining that I and three of my colleagues had been chosen as traitors in a game in my office. I’m not sure why God chose this example to teach me a lesson about being careful what you wish for. Or was it a matter of pride? I’m glad the risks were so low. Perhaps his message should have been clearer.
The rules were simple. Everyone in the office has become either loyal or traitorous. In the morning, the latest victims of the traitors will be announced on Slack. In the evening, we would vote on who we wanted to remove. If there are any traitors left at the end of the game, the traitors win the grand prize, which is a day of annual vacation. On paper, it all sounds like a low-stakes team-building exercise. No one was competing to be able to buy a bionic hand Nikki did in the first season. And I’m sure the fellow who applied metaphorical eyeliner like Claudia didn’t intend to induce McCarthy-level paranoia in me. But she did.
I immediately left the Slack channel we were in. The idea of forming a completely new group called Project Costing, involving four people from completely different parts of the business, seemed very suspicious to me. We moved to the WhatsApp group, our digital tower. It was easier than trying to have convincing meetings in the supply closet after work.
We named the collection “Nan’s Birthday” so we could open it on our work laptops without raising suspicion. To make it look more realistic, I turned the group photo into an actual photo of my nanny on her 90th birthday. Only when I saved the numbers of my fellow traitors with fake names did I feel happy that the digital level of OpSec was high enough.
On a personal level, the story was different. We are subjected to cross-platform interrogation 24/7. WhatsApp messages, promotional meetings, client lunches – they all become the arena of accusation. Lying has become second nature. I lied to my colleagues when I was microwaving my lunch, I lied about work drinks, and I even lied to my boss who worked in a different office and wasn’t even playing the game.
She talked about almost nothing else. I would wake my friend up, bore her about what theories the believers had, who was about to be arrested, and who we were going to kill next. I dreamed about it.
There was a comic moment as I discussed the game with some colleagues on my PoliticsJOE podcast. Through gritted teeth, I claimed to be a believer. Now I wasn’t just lying to people I knew. I felt like Richard Nixon.
On the way to Manchester with two of our loyal colleagues, we spoke of nothing except those we thought were traitors and believers. We highlighted each other, and each of us underwent about 45 minutes of scrutiny. After my turn ended, my classmates looked at each other.
One of them said: “You have to be mentally ill to be able to lie like that.”
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We traitors were not discovered for about four weeks, and we happily slaughtered the faithful. We even managed some daring murders in plain sight. It’s gotten to the point where if things go as planned, we’ll win without any of us being voted out. We have become arrogant. “Surely you would expect them to be better than this,” she texted Claudia. I imagine that’s when I decided to level the playing field.
Did you think Jonathan Ross was sweating when Joe Marler revealed the “Big Dog” theory? Imagine how I felt when we had Claudia alive The first believers.
Our perfect game is off. We turned on each other, and one by one the believers were arrested. I was eventually banished after a sloppy murder in plain sight, for which I loudly offered my boss a “poisoned” picnic bar.
After about a month, I had to take time off work due to stress. Who can say whether the two events are related?