Board Thread:Season 38 - The Ganges/@comment-30203302-20170207044600/@comment-30203302-20170208054921

I wanted to make one final plea to the jury to vote for me and I'm not even sure if this will get to you in time. I know what you may think of me: I'm an asshole who fabricated friendships to get farther in the game, I am arrogant and have a sense of self-entitlement about my game, I had bad jury management. I just wanted to really clear any misconceptions you may have about me.

1. The belief that I fabricated friendships to get farther in the game is really ridiculous; my friendships were fucking genuine. I talk with people and that's what I do; it is what I enjoy about Survivor. Does anyone here really think that I signed up for a 2 month ORG, the majority of which was during my 40 day winter break, to play flash games and make people quit the ORG community? It's not easy for me to open up completely to people and to some, I did just that. I'm getting punished for fucking caring about people and actually giving a damn about other people's lives and words can't describe how hurt I am about the comments that people are making about who I am as a person. When people opened up to me, I could have walked away and said "that sucks" or "don't tell me, i don't want to hear it because I'm going to have to vote you out later", but that's not the right thing to do. That's not what you would do if you were in my situation. The problem for me was that I talked so much with people that MANY people opened up to me and in the end, I can only take one person to the end.

2. The belief that I am arrogant is more or less true. However, I don't think it ever applied to the context of this game. As I said in my response to Ryan's jury question for me, I didn't expect FTC to be easy. I knew what I was getting into and I knew what to expect; I thought it was going to be very difficult to convince all of you that I'm not an asshole. So above all, I wanted to say that I don't feel entitled at all. I had two options in my Final Speech: I could either omit many of the things that I did and I could have not owned up to the game I played or I could be strong and clearly articulate every strategic decision I made. Ultimately, I went with the latter because you, the jury, deserves to know what happened and it would be the most genuine thing to do. I knew that whichever path I went, it was going to be difficult.

3. I would like to challenge the notion that I had bad jury management and I believe that my jury was actually poisoned and that there's a bit of a hivemind right now where everyone believes that I backstabbed them. I think that I tried to lie only when necessary. I probably managed Blake and Ronel badly when I did not tell them that they were going home. However, for everyone else, I either did tell you I was voting you, did not have a hand in voting you, or you were voting me either that day or in the immediate future so I didn't feel the need to let you know that I was voting you out.

Above all, I think that I have been both respectful and courteous towards the jury. We all have gone through this journey together, there's no need to be an ass.

I just hope that maybe, you will consider voting for me. If not, it's fine, at the end of the day, this is a game. But I just urge you, to at least consider it, especially if I personally did not wrong you or backstab you.