Board Thread:Season 13 - Anarchy/@comment-24212142-20140214063912/@comment-24251579-20140214084132

Blake -

First of all, you're generalizing heavily.. and to assume that you truly know me or my intentions with every other player in this game... based on the 4 conversations we had and the validations via 3rd party jury perspectives seems to go against everything you know as a psychology major. I can sit here and try to talk you down from your position, but you and I both know how aggressively attacking people's perceptions usually turns out. Instead I'll just present my side of things, and you can do whatever you want with it.

As far as being arrogant in FTC goes, I tried to make that distinction in my speech. Yeah, call me a dick.. Call me an asshole. Call me a fuck head. But never call me a coward... and never tell me I played this game poorly. I'm incredibly proud of the way I managed this madness. If I were playing any other game, I would be fired up in the same way. It's in my DNA. I'm competitive to a fault, and now that we're at the ultimate segment of this game.. I needed to put it all on the table. To come clean. I've seen the game play out from my perspective for 39 days and I've worked hard to keep that perspective my own, and not the rest of the cast's. Now that the jury is set, I felt it was time to own everything that I did in this game and finally wear it with pride. If it comes across like Russel... well then I failed at doing my job. The most important job. Personally I feel, to align me in the same category as Russel... knowing full well the way that I played this game and some of the friendships I've made... is just being totally unfair. I'm actually capable of separating the game from a personal relationship.

If you doubt my sincerity, I can't blame you for that. This is a social game first and foremost, and it would be stupid of me not to leverage that angle. I won't deny that with certain folks, I never felt the true connection that most people (including myself) will play up in those sentimental types of situations. You and I had a brief chat about psychology just before you left the game, so you know full and well that I have been monitoring and utilizing that aspect of things throughout. I won't claim to be an expert or anything, but I've seen enough situations in life to know "what people want to hear". What I can't really understand, is how you perceived that conversation to be insincere. Probably, it was the timing of it. I meant it when I said that you were the strongest strategist left in the game. Jerby and I had plenty of conversations over it, as you were gearing up to make your move on me. You obviously chose to lay low for X amount of days in this game, but when someone flips that switch and decides to start playing.. I was bound to hear about it. The fact that you think it pissed me off is pretty interesting though. I was in the position of power, while you were not. Why would it piss me off? Call that arrogant if you want, but it's simply the fact of the matter. I was sitting there waiting for people to make their move on me. I told Jerby this just this evening... whoever made the move to take me out and succeeded would have gotten my vote without question. Whichever way you choose to perceive that conversation in the end, well that's up to you. If you had been more involved with the game (which I'm sure was your strategy, not to be) I'm confident the whole psychology thing would have come up earlier, and we could have talked about it then. I don't bullshit for the sake of bullshitting when it's something that actually interests me.

Jury service? Yes.. I won't deny that. Everyone was/is/will continue to play that game until the votes are read. First of all, it doesn't disqualify what I said or make it any less genuine because there's a benefit to it being said. Second, we spoke a pretty limited amount of times, relative to the rest of the cast.. so regardless what your intuition informs you of my intentions, I meant everything I said in the rite of passage and I won't take any of it back or accept your assertion that it was ego-stroking bullshit. To those with whom I didn't make a great connection, or to those that I don't really respect... I felt I made it pretty obvious in my brief messages to them. I'm not going to go out of my way to be an asshole to them in something that is supposed to be respectful... but I'm not going to go out of my way to be kind either. To those who I truly felt got robbed because of strategy or circumstance, I made that clear as well. Outside of this game, I try to be a very open minded, understanding person. As for your rites of passage, I never called you a great friend, or even a friend of mine at all. Again you're generalizing. I said that you seemed the type of person that I would get along with great in real life, and I meant that based on our common interests. Kind of strange to me that you would twist it for the purposes of this jury question. If it comes across as bullshit to you, there's really nothing I can do about it. Especially in regards to the other players, and my relationships with them.. about which you really know nothing. For someone like me.. the opportunity to get to know people from other countries and cultures was not only rare, but invaluable to my perspective. Maybe they seemed repetitive to you, but to those with whom I made a true connection.. they're going to know it by reading those messages.

That's all I've got man. Take it and do with it what you will. I still respect you, your position, and I think you're a smart guy. I don't necessarily appreciate this approach, but I think that at least I understand what you're doing.