Board Thread:Survivor 29: Hallasan/@comment-32233167-20180109071557/@comment-31430415-20180109144549

Hello Jake. Thank you for your speech. Before I answer your questions, I just want to address one point that you made that I don’t see mentioned in your questions:

“Your claim that you only started to have second thoughts about me was during our call when I joked about cutting you is 100% false and you know it, because you were turning people against me the entire time. You got Jose to vote for me, and told several people about the idol that I only trusted telling you about because of our pre-existing relationship.”

I wasn’t trying to turn people against you because I wanted you out, and I almost fucked this up very badly after I mutinied onto Jinan because you were the vote Blake wanted after I attempted to reverse what you had said to him and I had to work to flip it onto Jose instead (who I also knew, by the way, and chose to target instead of Devon). It wasn’t about making you lose allies or hurting your position, it was about trying to strengthen mine by making sure Devon stayed in the game. I got Jose to vote for you because it felt as if you were reluctant to vote him, and I wanted you to see that he didn’t have the same resistance when it came to voting you. I was also worried that you were voting Devon, and with the penalty vote that he incurred I didn’t want to go to a revote if Jose also voted Devon. Up until the round that we blindsided you, the only person I told about your idol was Devon, which I informed him of immediately because we were about to swap and if you two swapped without me I wanted him to be aware of/able to plan for that. I never confirmed that you had the idol to Cammy until you had told her yourself and she brought it up to me.

1: Why did you think it was a good idea to put people on the jury who very clearly played a large amount with their emotions and trying to act like you were this mastermind when most of what you did can be summed up as using a pre-existing relationship to advance you further, rather than actually owning up to being a shitty person and trying to rectify some things that way?

I definitely should have done some things differently, particularly with you, and I apologize for not addressing those matters in my speech. When I wrote the speech, I was thinking of making it game specific and then addressing personal matters to specific jurors that wanted me to do so, and I’m sorry that that method is not going over well. As for the pre-existing relationships, I’m going to touch on that in my response to your 2nd and 3rd questions.

2: What reason do I have to vote for a gamebot, something that I, as well as several other jurors, do not respect at all?

I’m sorry that you don’t respect gamebots. I’ve never really considered myself one, but evidently I was in this game. I believe you should vote for me regardless of this because I played a strategically dominant game and worked with the hand that I was given. As Devon stated in his speech, I had a lot of information in the game -- partially due to my pregame relationships, yes -- and I worked with it and used it benefit myself and to get myself (and Devon) as far as possible. I shifted my strategy based on what I was learning, and I readjusted constantly. Unlike Devon who just absorbed information, stored it, and went with the flow, I took the information and did something with it, and I believe that my proactive gameplay is deserving of your vote, regardless of how you feel about me as a person. If I benefited from pregame relationships and Devon got most of his info from me, then he benefited from those relationships that I had just as much as I did even if it was secondhand.

3: I’ll throw in a gameplay related one. What exactly is the strategy in keeping Cammy at the F7 vote when she’s the best challenge player after Sam, and the biggest threat to win if she makes it to the end? Your goals just happened to line up with hers? Or, was it maybe because you and Cammy already knew each other, while Devon and Felipe already knew each other, so you just rode that as far as you could? Why are circlejerks only bad if your friends lose but an acceptable strategy if it’s in your favor?

If I was keeping her in because I knew her, I wouldn’t be keeping her in and getting rid of you, who I also knew. I kept Cammy in because I felt she was loyal/honest to me, and someone that was still benefitting my game to have in. You are also very good at competitions, and you are aware of this. If I voted out Cammy at final 7, I felt there was a risk that you win final 6 immunity and you play your idol on Sam, and she was who I wanted out next. You also didn’t particularly get along with Devon or Felipe, both of whom I wanted to remain in for a while, and it didn’t feel like our goals or interests were aligning, whereas Cam and I wanted the same things for a while. I hope that’s sound enough logic for you.

To address your point about circlejerks, I’m not going to deny that I knew people pregame or that it benefited me, because I did and it absolutely did. But I’m not fully sure what I should have done. Should I have told you to fuck off after you took me to the lake? Should I have told Cammy at merge that I wasn’t working with her and she could go talk to someone else? I worked extra hard socially with the two of you throughout the game because I wanted to build a game-specific relationship and feel like I was working for your loyalty rather than being given it due to knowing each other before the game. If I hadn’t been talking regularly to both of you, I don’t think any amount of pre-game relationship would’ve stopped you guys from trying to get me out. And with Cammy specifically, our interests started to veer at the final 5 and she voted for me at final 4, and at that point I was relying on my purely in-game bond with Devon, who was always my #1. I believe that my game can be summed up in more than just pre-existing relationships. I did benefit from them, but they aren’t my entire game. You, Cammy, and Jose had the same amount of relationships I did, and Cammy is the only one who made it nearly as far as I did. It took a lot of work in addition to those relationships to get here, and I hope you can recognize that.

4: Did you have to try to be fake as you were, or did it just happen naturally because that’s the type of person you are?

Evidently, I am as fake as Cammy said my tits are in her video. But no, I did not go out of my way/consciously attempt to be fake to people. Clearly I was, and I’m deeply sorry to you and anyone else that feels like the way I treated them went too far for a game, and I hope I can talk to you after the game and repair the damage that I caused. Hurting people on a personal level wasn’t something that I intended to do, and based on you and Blake’s speeches, I absolutely did, and I’m very sorry for that.

Thank you again for your questions, and I hope that my answers satisfied you.