Board Thread:Season 57 - Laguna Colorada/@comment-38618213-20200216040945/@comment-31555005-20200217031629

Hi Phoenix! God, this is probably the hardest speech for me to answer to because I generally feel that the points you're making here are absolutely valid, and strategy aside, I do agree that I've had quite a few social shortcomings in this game, not just with you, but also with other people in the game and on the jury. If you recall, Will called me a bitch on La Paz 2.0 after I started targeting him, and while I don't think Ponderosa hates me THAT much (lol), I do believe that the reasons as to why he didn't have a particularly pleasant opinion of me have been somewhat echoed in many speeches, especially in yours.

Honestly, I'm just gonna hold my hands up here and say that, yes, I have been a gamebot. Most of my discussion with people (not just you) was focussed on votes, strategy, long-term plans, short-term plans, threats, non-threats, and so on. I dedicated far too little time throughout the game to forming tight, long-lasting personal connections, and this is one of the biggest negative aspects of my game. I had been aware of this, but I haven't realised how deep this really was until reading your speech and the other jurors'. Naturally, as most of my conversations were focussed on game, when I decided on working more closely with other people, or on deciding to vote someone, or when I had to do damage control, conversations with me did tend to die down. Again, I fully acknowledge this element of my game - it is a big negative of mine and quite frankly I have never claimed I played a perfect game, I absolutely haven't.

The importance of social game isn't lost on me. In many past ORGs, including the only one that I have won, social game was actually one of my biggest strengths, with strategy definitely being a few notches below. However, I ask you - what is the purpose of social game in Survivor? My answer to this question is that a good social game is important because it lays a strong foundation through which people can build mutual trust, which itself leads to the sharing of game information and to the formation of possible alliances. No, I haven't built many personal connections this game - but quite frankly, what I always succeeded in constructing throughout this game was a series of strong game relationships, which I built by talking so, so much about votes and short/long-term strategy. I would argue I succeeded in accomplishing the same goals/ends that a strong social game leads to - mutual trust, alliances, information sharing - although perhaps in a much messier way than a typical Survivor social butterfly. Through less finetuned and maybe slightly messier means, I got to the same spot which a strong social player typically reaches - that where I'm in the loop about whatever's going on, and where I have a series of options available at my disposal. Is that not a form of social game in itself? It's most certainly a less orthodox one, but one thing which I think I can argue is that it was definitely efficient in accomplishing the goals and votes I had in mind. Was it messy? Yes. Did it leave a sour taste in people's mouths, especially after those game relationships were no longer fruitful? Yes. Did I intend for myself to be a gamebot? No, or at least not to the extent where it got, but I did intentionally place emphasis on game in my talks with people, it was just way too often at the expense of more personal, off-game conversations, which in hindsight I realise I did too few of. What I'd actually heavily criticise myself for is not for an awful social game in itself (as weird as this sounds lol), but for a lack of balance - while I lacked in personal conversations, I reached the same ends as a strong social game does, but I happened to overdo Game Luca and it led to many people simply not liking me.

"if this speculation is true about you only actively talking to the people you really wanted to work with, why?" - this speculation is NOT completely true, although I can see where it comes from. There were occasions where I kept talking with people I no longer wanted to work with - for example, I heavily talked with Toby during the F7 tribal, I talked a decent amount with Micah at the F5 tribal, I talked a lot with Nicolai when I intended to vote him out at F6, and pre-swap, I talked a lot with Kamen and Will on both of their boots. Then there were other tribals where I happened not to - yours, at F8, and I'd say another example is with Abi at F6, though this was mostly to maintain the ruse that I was voting her out instead of Nicolai.

The blunt truth is that, as most of my relationships were built on the premise of game and not on an amazingly personal level, by the time it made sense for me game-wise to achieve certain moves, those relationships would have simply not carried on anymore and, for personal reasons, I simply decided it would be respectful to cut the bullshit unless it really was absolutely necessary. Another reason is that many times when I worked towards getting a certain vote done, I usually attempted to plant seeds one or two tribals in advance, so by the time of the actual votes I was mostly sure they would go the way I wanted them to, and therefore, the game relationship was set to die out. This is the truth - I played a game that was more focussed on, well, game rather than social ability; I didn't mean to disconsider the creation of personal relationships as much as I did, which definitely affected me at times (not just with, say, moves, but also with finer aspects like my standing in the game), but ultimately I did manage to make the moves I wanted to make and keep allies I wanted to stick with deep.

"you seemingly didn’t even bother responding to me sometimes because you simply didn’t care enough because i apparently didn’t help your game" - it's not that I didn't care enough, it's that I saw no reason to keep whispering nothings or to keep bullshitting you (and I bullshitted people a LOT this season). You said it yourself, you were gut punched when Toby voted you out - I might not seem like it, but I can also be an emotional player myself. My decision to not really keep the facade was enforced by a personal desire to avoid making people feel extremely upset when there was no need to, and I saw no reason to keep chatting snakey shit when I knew you were on your way out and when you had no idea of the votes being piled up on you. It was a personal call, and definitely not one made because I didn't care about you, but rather one made because I respected you and didn't want you to reach Ponderosa being emotionally upset that I had told you how great it is to talk/work with you 10 minutes before the votes were read. I did keep bullshitting people on their way out at times, when it was absolutely necessary to blindside people - the F5-F7 votes are instances of that - but in your case, I saw no reason to keep doing it.

Finally, I'd like to end this by saying that I definitely considered you a close ally of mine up to a point. It was really around the time of La Paz 2.0 when I decided on setting up my game for the future in a different way - TC had informed me a lot about the Sangre dynamics, and I considered that if I played my cards a certain way, I could meddle myself within that and give myself more options for the future. Next, I foresaw the La Paz 3.0 swap as something that could bring you a lot closer to TC and Timi than before, and I decided eventually that it was a smarter idea to: one, rid them of an option at merge so they naturally align closer with me, and two, bring myself closer to Abi/Micah/Toby by painting you as part of a potential "trio" that all of us on Sangre 3.0 could be reasonably concerned about. I could have stuck with you, but I judged that that would give me far less control over where the game was heading.