Board Thread:Survivor 43: San Andrés/@comment-4857808-20200522185946/@comment-28431903-20200523021827

Hey Matt!

I'm glad I have an opportunity to share my perspective with you. Initially, I want to share that I am very glad to hear that your perception of me had changed the longer you thought. When you left, I was trying to hide my game as best as I could. You started to see my game on your way out, and it created an unfortunate scenario where I felt I had to be ridiculously careful with you so you couldn't blow up my spot. At the time, the perception that I was just riding the favorites could very well have been the reality like you had alluded to. But for my own longevity in the game, I needed to hide the fact that I had much more power than I let on. The idea that Perception is Reality in Survivor is very real, and it was and will always be a main foundation to my strategy. I could spend hours talking about how I feel like I created or used perceptions in my game to my benefit, or about how ingrained that idea was into my strategy this season. However, I have a video outlining some specific examples of this, because talk is just talk. I want to prove it:

https://youtu.be/WD9KjnKJl1E

"You played a bloody game by befriending a lot of people knowing ultimately you already had a F3 planned, its one thing to play a social game, its another to make people feel used."

I did play a bloody game, and this is a perception that IS reality. While I did have a F3 planned, one thing I spoke about briefly in another response was the idea that I could not put all of my eggs into one basket. Survivor itself is dynamic at its core. For the person that I am, to apply a static approach to the game will never work. Part of why I felt like it was so important to keep my options open was to protect myself. Having the options to decide what moves you need to make, or have the agency to change the direction of the game is important. But what is more important is the ability to ensure you don't lose the ability to keep yourself protected. While this was not the cleanest way to make it to the end in any sense, I felt it was the way to ensure I had the absolute best chance possible. And while Andrew may have found success playing the game the way he did, I think you can look at it from the perspective that he lost that ability early on to protect himself. Not only at the merge, but even his own original tribe was trying to eliminate him as soon as we had swapped. So for Andrew, he did not really have to make anyone feel that duped. He did not make people feel used like you had said. That could be a huge thing for him at this Final Tribal, and I respect him for being able to do that. At the end of the day however, I feel like the only reason he was able to do that was because he relied on me so heavily just to survive. It felt like I may have personally slighted people the most, because as people were being voted out they felt I played a heavy hand.

I am not one to apologize for gameplay, because I am really confident in the game I played, and don't want to come off as in-authentic. One thing I will apologize for though is if my tactics drove you and other jurors to feel personal turmoil. I have a lot of respect for the people of this season, and I feel like I was very aware of not crossing any lines that I felt served me no purpose.

I played a cut-throat game. I turned on people that trusted me. I made people upset. But I truly feel none of my actions crossed that line to make it personal. I never tried to leverage how someone felt about our connection on a personal level to actively eliminate them. I knew that with such a strong cast, with so many strong game-players, that I needed to play the best game that I felt I could possibly play to earn the respect that would make me deserve to win. If there are any circumstances in which you Matt or any of the other Jurors felt I did cross an unnecessary line, I made an error and am willing to 100% own that.