Penzo

## *Survivor* Career

**Penzo** is a contestant on *Survivor: Norway*.

## Profile

*Full interview can be found here.*

**Name:** Penzo

**Between Mind and Heart, which group do you personally think you fit into better?** Mind. As a psychic, I literally just answered that question. After studying computer science for over 5 years, it's easy to lose sight of feelings and what makes people human and everything like that. Plus, I do have my roots in the Genius ORG scene. I placed 2nd in my first ever ORG there (Genius Online: Deadly Influx) and I'm also co-hosting another ORG very similar to it. The Genius is basically survivor with board/card games and money/item management. So on a surface level I'm definitely a "mind" person, and that would probably be my casting archetype. But in that Genius ORG, I played a giant flipper/rat game, using (real) moral reasons to justify why I (had to) betray certain people, and made a whole bunch of moves based on what I "wanted" to do instead of what I "should" do. It's weird. But I guess that's why themes like this exist.

**Tell us about yourself. What makes you, *YOU*?** I'm just a 23 year old computer science student living in Germany who loves Survivor, Big Brother, and The Genius way more than I should. I had a bit of a depressive phase a few years ago in my life where I pretty much completely isolated myself from everybody else, but I'm starting to recover. I kinda found an ORG community (Genius Online) just through a community discord, placed abnormally high for my first try, and the rest is... history, I guess? Game-wise, I'm extremely paranoid and worry about everything way too much. I will overthink EVERYTHING. I'm still not the best at making social connections, I will either overshare my entire life story or awkwardly exchange "hi how's your day" messages, there's no in-between.

**What do you wish to get out of this season more than anything else?** It's all about personal growth for me. Slowly getting better over time. Just, like, in general. I want to play the best game I can possibly play, and then I want to read the specs roasting me to see what I'm not self-aware about and what I can improve about myself and my game moving forward. If I win, cool! If I lose, ah well. But that's not the main goal for me. And ORG's definitely aren't "real life", but they definitely do mirror real life. There's been a bunch of situations IRL where I just kinda mentally freeze up and shut down (getting piled on by bullies, having to choose sides in an argument between friends, stuff like that). I want to be able to deal with confrontation better.

**What is your proudest characteristic of yourself, and what do you wish you could improve upon?** I'd say my proudest characteristic is definitely perseverance and patience. I was a tae kwon do kid growing up and I'm slowly starting to get back to the gym now, and keeping going while not seeing immediate results is really difficult. I've put in a lot of time for programming projects both for Uni and personal stuff, and it's extremely satisfying to see your hard work pay off. In-game, this translates to not giving up and always keeping a clear head. On the other hand... I'm extremely naive. I've gotten burned before by people that I thought I trusted, staying loyal to them until the end. It's definitely a fault of mine. The sixth sense to realize that people don't really mean what they say and the cutthroatness (?) to make a move against them before they make a move against me, that's something I'd really like.

**How would you describe the game you play in ORG’s?** I don't think this is something a lot of people would openly say, but I'm not afraid of playing like a rat or like a weasel. Often, something I do is to try to find a bigger target to hide behind or "sheep", and wait until the right time to turn on them. Until then, I'm gonna play the part of the most alliance-loyal player to people in my alliance, while dropping hints to people outside that group that I'd be willing to flip if the time is right. I'm not the most social player, I do prefer other people to come to me and to try to figure out the social threats that way. One of the "how to win friends and influence people" lines is that people love to talk about themselves, so I'd drop a few details about my personal life in a public chat or post a thing on my linked twitter or w/e and see who uses that as a conversation starter. Of course, these are just things I've done in the past. The most important thing is to read the room and adapt. I could be playing a completely different game and completely go against everything I said here if that's what I need to do to avoid getting voted out.

## Survivor

### Norway

Penzo was the ninth person voted out of Norway, and the last premerger. Penzo started the game on the Narvik tribe, being some what on the bottom of his tribe due to his timezone. He was safe at the first vote, but at the second vote the tribe agreed to throw votes onto Penzo and Thomas in case of an idol. Although Penzo stayed in the game, it revealed to him that he was not in the best standing on his tribe.

After the split vote, Penzo swapped onto the new Nesbyen tribe, where he tried bonding with his new tribemates. He found himself in a majority 3-2 position, but Helix revealed that Penzo was left out of the majority alliance on his original tribe. Because of this, Penzo decided to flip along with Helix, booting Sonya unanimously. When Penzo went to tribal again, he was looking to be safe, but Penzo decided to ask to be voted out from the game: struggling with irl issues. He was voted out as per his wishes, and became the last person to be voted out before the merge.

## Trivia

* Penzo received 3 votes in the *Fan Favorite Poll* in *Norway*.