Matt

**Matt** (MattyNumbers#0487) placed 11th in Season 9.

Starting off very quietly on the Dausaqalo Tribe, Matt would be this way to confessionals and castaways alike. This lack of meaningful social interaction saw him on the cusp of a first boot on Dausaqalo, with Grey only possibly slightly edging him out due to a more negative social capital versus non-existent. This would carry into the swap, where Matt would be the chosen boot should Nu Dausaqalo lose a challenge. Very fortunately for Matt, he was able to avoid elimination for the entire premerge, essentially getting away with being INV as a player. At the merge, Matt’s activity level spiked when heeding the host’s pleas to those who were INV to step it up for the end game. Becoming much more vocal both in DMs and camp chat, Matt had a lot of ground to make up after being vaguely on the bottom for six straight episodes. Initially positioned to perhaps avoid some gazes while bigger fish fought or those with negative social capital once again took more spotlight, Matt made the mistake of campaigning publicly and hard to be the captain in Captaincy. This instantly put him from INV to CP/OTT, which was a major whiplash to many in the game who had been considering him an easy boot or nonfactor. Upon realizing that the rules did not state the Captain is inherently immune, Matt began to regret this mistake but knew it was too late to backpedal. As such, he stuck to his guns and attempted to form better social bonds. However, once he heard his name coming up as a boot that could potentially leave no bad blood on anyone’s hands, Matt decided to double down on making a big move: blindsiding Ripple. Ripple had been far ahead of everyone in the Captaincy trust rankings, and enough players in the game wanted her out to make it happen. Unfortunately, they were not all on the same page, so this task was an uphill battle that many were attempting to navigate. When Matt caught word of these sentiments, he would go on to create a 7 person alliance with everyone but Ripple, Tye, Michael, and Kyle. He incorrectly assumed that because Ripple considered these people her inner circle that they’d not vote her out, when in reality Michael and Kyle were key forces in floating her name around in the first place. Zheema and James in particular were poor choices to add to this alliance as well, as both were probably the \*actual\* most loyal people to Ripple at that current stage in the game. With Ripple being tipped off of this alliance and her name floating around, Matt assumed James had to be the singular flaw with the alliance and created a new 6 person alliance instead without him, pleading to the 6 that they had the numbers anyway. This erratic behavior completely destroyed all prospects of anyone working with Matt, as those outside the alliance that liked him now had a reason to vote for him while some in the alliance now saw him as a liability. Sensing his impending doom due to the lack of responses in the alliance chats (“Oh, this is a big group.”), Matt would make one final attempt at staying safe when he claimed in the tribe chat that he was very happy to be safe this round, implying that he had received an idol for being the Captain. This caused some minor confusion to others, as they weren’t exactly sure what he could be referring to and privately called the bluff. In the end, Matt was not shocked to go home in a staggering 9-1-1 vote, being fairly good spirited upon his departure.