Board Thread:Survivor 22: San Marcos/@comment-27281906-20170208211451/@comment-26864283-20170209180306

Hey Brandon! Thank you sooooo much! I seriously appreciate it, and I'm glad you can recognize my game as a good one. Especially after being looked down on for a majority of this game. It’s also really assuring reading your speech along with a few other’s to know that either me or Sim could end up winning this game even after being told we were goats the whole time.

I feel like I had two main weaknesses in this game. The first, and this is going to sound a bit cliche, but probably not playing as flashy and being able to keep up with the items. Everyone else seemed to of found idols and was able to get all these advantages and I wasn't. Which is what kind of forced me to play the game I did, I knew the social game would definitely get me through it at the end of the day. If I was able to get at least some type of advantage, other than my light pearl, my game would of been A+. A "flashy" game, topped with a social game is definitely a huge threat in the game. I also feel like people looking down on me, was a weakness since you do not want your other contestants to view you as a weak player if you want them to vote for you to win, I feel like this was also because my game was not as “flashy” as the others. Once it got to final 4 it basically seemed like Chris or Nathaniel would be the winner. So in order to stop this I had to show people that I was here too and that I was a contender to win as well. By winning final immunity, I really do think I proved that because it gave me the power to pick who I wanted to go to the end with and not even worry about having to face a tie. That was the first challenge I’ve ever won and I believe it was the biggest one in the whole game because had Chris or Nathaniel won, they would of voted the other out and probably would of won the game. I think winning that challenge kind of got people to take a step back for a second and be like “Wow, Nick is here to win”. My second weakness would be that I could of developed an even better social game. Yes, I do think that my social game was the best of the three, but I do think that I could of made better relationships with those who were against me in the game. So people like Malik and Renz, who I knew were against me, I would kind of avoid them. It wasn’t necessarily that I did not want to know them, but I did not want to reveal information to them. Getting people to trust you, means you have to also develop trust with them. So, basically to get information you got to give information. I feel like if I were to of got closer with Malik and Renz, I would of ended up giving up information that would of hurt me going forward. However, now that I am reading through people’s speeches, I can see that I should of reached out to people like them a bit more so that way we could of had a better relationship.

I definitely do believe that my social game was actually the strongest of the three of us. Out of the three of us, I may not have had the strongest relationships with every member of the jury. For example, Shea obviously had a stronger relationship with Nathaniel than I did, but I do think that I had strong relationships with everyone who I necessarily needed to. In no way am I saying that certain people were more necessary in this game than others, but rather that I had better relationships with the people in power. I had very strong relationships with Claudia and Chris, who were literally the power players of the season. If I had no had a solid relationship with them, I could of been voted out simply because they did not want to keep me around. My social game was different than Nathaniel and Sim’s because I would reach out to people not on a game level. I would get to know people as people, instead of just going around and asking what the vote was. Some may disagree, because I did not talk to them as much, but I did make sure to at least have conversations with everyone. There was times in the game where Sim told me he did not want to message certain people because he did not want to feel awkward or fake, meanwhile I took this opportunity to message those people and build relationships with them. I did not look at people as just votes, but rather people. Nathaniel seemed to of cared more about game talk and strategy and Sim seemed to care more about how he’d be perceived by the jury. Whereas, I just tried to be genuine and real and at the end of the day I’ve made a bunch of strong relationships throughout the game that helped me get here.

I believe that my game was definitely superior to the other two finalists because of my strong social game. Survivor was originally a social experiment. So, in order to win this game you need to have a strong social game. I think that this aspect of the game is often really ignored and pushed to the side. However, I think that I really did excel at it, which is very rare for a Survivor contestant to do. I think that when people come into this game, they all want to make big moves and be “iconic”, I did not focus on that and did not really care if the audience did not like me for being UTR. I worried about how the jury viewed me, and in order for them to view me in a good way, and as a winner, you’ve got to build strong relationships with them. I do not think that Nathaniel built strong relationships with anyone on the jury (except Shea, but he’s removed now). Nathaniel was all about strategy and game, whereas I tried to actually talk to people and gain their trust. I think that’s why a lot of people trusted me a lot more than Nathaniel. Sim’s social game was also extremely strong, but I think I ended up building better relationship with jurors than he did. There were certain people he did not want to talk to, whereas I tried to talk to everyone. Even after Malik and I had a fight we tried hashing things out, I never did not talk to people, whereas Sim just did not try with some. In order to win this game, you need to have strong relationships and bonds with people, which I believe I definitely had more than the other two finalists.