Loveita wrote: ↑Sat Apr 25, 2020 1:43:45 pm
- First, when you agreed to play this game, how did you want the other players to perceive you (and how does this match/contrast with your personality)?
When I agreed to play this game, I had been away for seven years and truly lost perspective on who I used to be in ORGs. I played from the years 2002-2013, and by the end I was being targeted at the beginning of games for who I was. In open ID games, the dynamic of working with the same people over and over again meant you either had to work with them now and forever, or risk never being able to work with them again. In closed ID games, folks would recognize my personality immediately, and target me for that as well. It stopped being fun.
If this was 2013, I'd say people saw me as a fun time. Someone who was open to working with everyone for an opportunity. Catalie and Melinda have known me the longest, and Catalie openly called me opportunistic, and someone who tells people what they want to hear. I could see where she was coming from with both of those things, and I'm sure she's felt that way for over 10 years now, because I remember hearing it before.
Since I knew this would probably be my last game, I wanted to just put myself out there 100% and be my authentic self throughout the process. I wanted to be seen as real person and player people would play with. Someone who could be both saved and savior. A person who you could count on paying you back if you helped them, but then never ask for anything in return if they helped you out.
Loveita wrote: ↑Sat Apr 25, 2020 1:43:45 pm
- Throughout this game, how did you work to manage that perception, or the perceptions others had of you in general? What communication strategies did you employ to manipulate the perception people had of you?
This was easy for me, as everyone had a very similar opinion of me and it was easy to get a group perspective on how I was perceived. In my answer to Joaquin's question, I mentioned how I was universally listed as a negative answer in the "Who sucks/Is great" challenge. Instead of genuinely feeling down and giving up on my game, I decided to project the feelings other people would expect me to have onto them. In the interest of coming up with another example, I won't delve too deeply into that one.
Whenever you have an opportunity in this game to manipulate the perspective of you, you have to take it. When Melinda got me to vote for Russell in the Tribal where Cristina left, I was in trouble. I had broken so many promises to so many people by trusting Melinda with my life and my vote. I was immediately seen as someone who would vote however THEY wanted to, not how their alliance wanted. What was the complete opposite of this position? Giving your vote to another player.
I went to Joaquin, Tammy, and Russell offering my vote to them. I told them I would go to the hosts and ask them if I could give up my vote for the round to them all. The correct move for me to play that round socially was to vote with the three of them, anyway. So I might as well make a big show of how sorry I was, otherwise I was going to be an open target from both sides. If they knew I went to the trouble of going to the hosts for confirmation, they knew it was true and they could "use" me for their cause, even if I had openly voted against it in the tribal council beforehand. For the record, Danni said that she "didn't know and had to talk to Jeff" and that she didn't think it would happen, I told her to not worry about it, then copy/pasted the part of our conversation to make it look like she told me no outright.
Whenever I'm conflicted about a strategy, I take a step back and look outside the box, but still within the limits of the game's rules. If you can hit a group with a strategy with little to no precedence in this situation, they're more likely to follow you.
Loveita wrote: ↑Sat Apr 25, 2020 1:43:45 pm
- Finally, the meta-aspect – how do you think the jurors in this game perceive you? How well does it align with your original intentions? And if it doesn’t, how have you worked against (or with) these perceived perceptions, even into these FTC statements and speeches, to turn our perceptions of you into winning votes?
I think the jury thinks of me as someone who had to fight my way from the bottom to here. Almost every single member of the jury attempted to vote for me at one point or another with the intention of my removal from the game. But, "somehow," another threat always took the place of me. Or when my name stuck around long enough to head to tribal, I worked hard to show one or two people my value to their game as compared to the other target.
I attempted to make sure my game was well seen and documented throughout. Of course, being the de facto go-to vote when no one wanted to bring up their actual target was never going to be a good look for the winner. Because of the position I was in due to Tammy's flipping on Cochran at the swap (a great move for her that I respect completely), I was on the outside of every possible groupthink alliance. From that point on, I knew my game would always be about surviving each round as it came by any means necessary, and once the endgame hit I would make my moves. And if possible, work to set up a contingency plan for the next round based on two things: if my plan worked without a hitch, or it barely got me by. If it worked and I wasn't a target, I would focus completely on getting out someone who I felt would be a threat to me if I made it to the end. If I was unsuccessful, I focused instead on making sure I would be able to stick around the next round.
In short, I believe the jury sees me as a fighter who never gave up. This is true, I threw every single situation at the wall for any possible advantage to move forward. After Melinda was removed, my game started to gain steam. Outside of when you were voted out, I feel like I played a very successful game once I was able to work on my perception of being someone who could be easily eliminated. It's simple- if you keep trying to vote someone out and it never takes, you eventually move onto another plan. I was un-killable. In removing me as a threat to be voted out, I became the biggest threat to all of the actual threats in the game. I don't know how more meta you can get than that.