Marketing is evil. Marketing has convinced us that we need to buy bottled water in a country with fabulously good public water supplies. Television shows are pure marketing endeavors. We have seen in previous threads that Blast and DR has passed up opportunities because the promoters wanted to market the teotwawki aspects of the discipline: these are ets kind of guys, not seeking to advance themselves at any cost. They have integrity.
Televison survival shows are about marketing, brand awareness, and viewership. Expecting good advice from such is unwise as it is unwise to base personal decisions on political talk radio or warner brothers cartoons. Any discussion of them, positive or negative, furthers the aims of the marketers involved, cuz it improves brand awareness and increases viewership.

If cody's and dave's behavior is viewed as a marketing exercise, it all becomes perfectly sensible, even inevitable.