Board Thread:Survivor: Japan (Season 6)/@comment-25237228-20150315164626/@comment-25615280-20150315201624

Hello Jack, I am disappointed in myself as well that I never talked with you. I said it myself, the social part of my game was indeed my weakest and it’s something I have to work on more. However, I still feel that it was better than the other two’s but I can get back to that.

I would like to say I probably should have talked to you when we first merged but honestly, I had no idea what to say. As Joe pointed out, it was probably out of arrogance that I said nothing. I figured I was in a good spot in the game and the next plan was to vote for you in order to dodge Tyler’s idol. I couldn’t exactly talk strategy with you because most everything I would have said would have been a lie, and I don’t think I could have talked about things outside the game because after the vote you might think I was just being disingenuous. Maybe one day we will be in an ORG together and we can talk then, hell I’m open to even do it now if you want. I guess the short answer as to why I didn’t speak with you is because I couldn’t bring myself to do it knowing I would be voting for you next tribal.

As for what I did in the FIC. No, when I did it I honestly believe what I did wasn’t cheating. Obviously my stance has changed now and I see that what I did was wrong and I understand my punishment. I thought for sure that the punishment would have costed me a spot in FTC and I think the hosts thought so as well which is why they gave it. My thought process during the challenge was this, what can I do to input these answers as fast as possible and get the best possible time. The obvious answer is to just try and type them in as fast as possible for the best score. Being a computer science student however, I knew of a method that would be faster than just normal typing. It did not involve doctoring a screenshot and it did not involve any third party programs. It was my work that inputted the answers as fast as possible. That’s why to me, at the time, I didn’t think of it as cheating. I even submitted that portion of the challenge fairly early on in the time window. Tyler gave his usual acknowledgement of having received it so I thought everything was fine. It wasn’t until after the deadline that he asked me how I managed to type everything in 1 second. I explained to him what I did (because I thought what I did was within the rules) and only after that I realized that I made a huge mistake. I did try to redo it and sent in another submission of me actually typing it within the hour, but obviously that was not accepted. For all the people that really know me, I love a good fair competition, but I am still willing to do anything it takes to win. So if I doubted even at all if what I did was legal, I wouldn’t have done it. Also I can’t state this enough, I NEVER did anything else of the sort on any other challenge. Every score I got was the result of many hours going into the game to practice it. I don’t think my entire physical game should be cast into doubt because of this one incident even though my fellow members of the final 3 seem to only do that. They know that their physical games can not stand up to my record.

So back to the very first point about my social game. Yes I did not speak to you or Max one-on-one which is a mistake on my part. As I said in my speech however, I try and treat people with as much respect as possible and that is the basis of my social game. The times Joan flipped out on people is not showing respect. Lucas disregarding people’s messages and ignoring some people out right is not respect. I know real life comes first, but some people take this game very seriously. I knew if I wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation with someone at that time, I would let them know out of respect and get back to them at a better time. I also never made things personal with people. In this game people are going to have differing opinions and will be against each other. I’m not going to curse out the guy guarding me in basketball, he’s just playing the game and the same is true in survivor. Now respect may not be the name of the social game for everyone, so if our views are different I understand.