Personality Issues

This is a classic mistake that a lot of first boots make, not just those who are voted out unanimously. The easiest way to give somebody a reason to vote you out is by clashing with them for one reason or another. The minute a player goes against the grain and stands out for how they act, they could easily be looking at a very early trip to Ponderosa.

Debb Eaton, Australian Outback

Debb is the first ever unanimous vote and she got a lot of unfair flack for her performance after the show. Still, she should have been able to read the tea leaves and realize that she was being way too bossy to her tribe. She kept trying to take control of things and failing at them while also telling her fellow players what to do. It was an easy decision for the tribe when they lost that first immunity to send Debb home. It helped them get some peace and quiet.

Tina Scheer, Panama

There are a few reasons Timber Tina ended up being the first one out of Panama. She was placed in a small tribe of only four people, making her target a lot easier to see. On top of that, her outdoorsy abilities and physical prowess made her an obvious threat to the other older women should they swap into bigger tribes. Who would the others want to keep around, the woman who can survive on her own in the wilderness or Cirie Fields, the woman who is afraid of leaves?

Besides that though, Tina was going through a lot of stuff having just recently lost her son. It caused her to sort of remove herself from the rest of her tribe. The other women sort of jumped on that and felt that Tina just wasn’t trying to bond with the tribe. In a tribe of four people, not feeling a bond with the other three is practically a death knell.

Michelle Chase, Gabon

Gabon’s Fang had a very obvious first boot. It shouldn’t have been Michelle. When the old woman is sitting around, doing absolutely nothing to help the tribe, she should have gone first. Gillian Larson, was basically marked for dead on that season. And yet, Michelle was so negative and impossible to live with that despite being one of their best challenge competitors, she was sent home first.

Outside of Kenny Hoang, Michelle made no effort to bond with anybody. She was openly livid with her tribe for being the last person picked. She didn’t help around camp. Mostly, she just moped around and complained that nobody would talk to her. She made it a very easy decision for Fang when there was no way she should have ever gone first, one of the worst performances by a first boot ever.

Carolina Eastwood, Tocantins

Think of Carolina look a younger Debb Eaton. She kept insisting that her tribe should be working more, despite not doing any of the work herself. She was kind of dismissive of Sandy Burgin, who Carolina thought would be the first boot on her tribe, and she was bad at challenges. Carolina basically made sure to highlight for her tribe every reason not to keep her around, while giving them no reasons to do the opposite.

Wendy Jo Desmidt-Kohlhoff, Nicaragua

Wendy was a weirdo and her tribe caught wind of it. She tried to downplay her personality because she knew it could be a little bit strong. By doing so, her tribe felt that Wendy wasn’t bonding like the rest of them were. Then, in an attempt to fix that, she ends up over-correcting at tribal council and actually flipping two votes she might have had in her favor against her. On top of that, she was pretty bad at challenges.

Challenge Issues

This is another easy way to single out somebody and vote them out. If people suck in challenges, especially early on in the game, it can be a big burden on a tribe. The best way to avoid being voted out on Survivor is by winning immunity and if you are slowing down your tribe in that goal, it could be a death sentence for you.

Players like Carolina and Wendy Jo were definitely liabilities in challenges and could have fit in here too. It just seems like they were more voted off because their tribe was annoyed with them than anything else.

Sugar Kiper, Heroes vs Villains

I sort of struggled with this one. Sugar was definitely voted off partially because she was annoying and because people knew her act from Gabon. The Heroes didn’t want to deal with her constant crying and woe is me attitude. It probably didn’t help that Sugar started crying as soon as the tribe lost its first immunity challenge.

That said, the Heroes were a tribe full of egoes. They thought themselves as some of the best competitors to ever go on Survivor. Sugar was decidedly much less of a capable competitor. She kind of sticks out like a sore thumb when put up against the Stephenies and the Amandas of the world. When you combine her personality with her inability to really compete in challenges, it was a very easy decision for the Heroes to send Sugar home first.

Semhar Tadesse, South Pacific

If you want a very obvious example of how not to handle the first immunity challenge, Semhar is your girl. It’s one thing to struggle in a challenge. It will happen to most people during their time on the show. Hell, Chris Daugherty was absolutely useless in Vanuatu’s first immunity challenge and we all know how he ended up placing.

The difference is when you put yourself in a position to fail. That’s exactly what Semhar did. At a spot in the challenge, Semhar volunteered herself to be one of the three players to throw coconuts into a net. She claimed she would be great at it. About three coconuts in, Semhar was winded and basically useless. She was not allowed to swap out for someone else and basically left Savaii playing three on two against Upolu’s crew. The tribe lost by a hair.

Combine that with the fact that she was getting way too close to Ozzy Lusth, in a visibly obvious manner, and it made it easy for the tribe to vote her out first. Had she kept her mouth shut and let somebody else compete in that part of the challenge, Semhar would have probably been fine at that first vote. Say it with me kids: during that first challenge, never volunteer to do anything. Anything!

Played too hard, too fast

Like I said, the first three days of Survivor aren’t like the rest of them. People want to lay low, set up their camp life and hopefully win an immunity challenge. If that doesn’t happen, nobody wants to be the first to bring up a name or go against the agreed upon target. If they do, it’s a one-way ticket to the firing squad when they get uncovered.

Nicole Delma, Pearl Islands

Nicole should have been fine to skate by the first elimination. Morgan needed to stay strong to compete against the stacked Rupert Boneham/Burton Roberts led Drake. Because of that, the target was either going to fall on Skinny Ryan or Lillian Morris for being the two obvious challenge liabilities. Nobody was even thinking of Nicole, except maybe Jeff Probst because of his obsession with her bra-less state.

Then Nicole shot herself in the foot. She had a vendetta against Tijuana Bradley. They didn’t get along and Nicole wanted her out. Knowing that Lill was on the bottom, Nicole went to her to try and get some numbers to form a counter-attack. Lillian smartly placated her and then went right to Andrew Savage to let him know what Nicole had said. It’s a lot easier to turn the tide on one “traitor” then amass the votes needed to vote out Tijuana so Lill plays this situation perfectly.

When she’s voted out, Nicole even realizes she played this terribly. She should have never said anything, voted with the majority and then used the extra days to feel out who she could potentially recruit to take a shot at Tijuana. Unfortunately she tried to take hold of the game too quickly and it cost her dearly.

Zane Knight, Philippines

Oh Zane… we hardly knew ye. I mean this guy was all over the place in his short time on the island. He basically made an alliance with every single player on that Matsing beach. People could visibly see him talking to other players in “secrecy” and there was never anything subtle about the way Zane approached Survivor.

Then, Zane goes out and performs terribly in the first immunity challenge. Partially due to his cigarette addiction, partially due to the fact that he’s obviously out of shape. That sort of puts a target on his back that Zane is about to blow up when they get back to their beach.

You see, Zane has a masterful strategy. He’s going to tell his teammates to vote him out. Only he doesn’t actually want to be voted out. He just wants to find out who really cares about him because those are the players he can truly ally with. The problem with that is… well there’s many problems with that.

In a tribe of six people, there’s nowhere to hide. That’s especially true when you make a big speech to people asking that they vote you out. Now consider that this is the first vote of the season where people just want a reason to vote for somebody. Zane just gave everybody that reason, “the guy asked for it, I’m just giving him what he wants”. Nobody cares enough about you after three days to even try to talk you out of going out instead of them.

Ciera Eastin, Game Changers

Returning players can be completely different beasts and I think this is partly in play here. After two seasons, Ciera had pulled off some big moves and was really buying into her hype as a power player on Survivor. “You can’t win without making moves” she might say. Well Ciera, you also can’t win if you get voted out first because of your moves.

She pre-emptively floated out Tony Vlachos and Caleb Reynolds’ names in an attempt to vote one of them out. It sent off alarms to everybody else on her tribe. Ciera should have read the room and realized that this was a cast, outside of Tony, that was trying to play a slow-burning game. By coming in guns blazing, she put the target on herself instead of her intended marks.

It didn’t help that Ciera blew a puzzle that she had previously blown in Blood vs Water but that wasn’t the main motivation for voting her out. People just wanted to play the game at a certain pace and Ciera was getting in the way of that.

Circumstances beyond their control

Jim Lynch, Guatemala

Jim was old and Jim got hurt in the first immunity challenge. That was it. Not much he could have done to avoid that.

Marissa Peterson, Blood vs Water

Out of all the first boots, Marissa is one of the people I feel the worst for. She was sent home for something she literally could not control: her uncle’s behaviour. When the returning players won the opening challenge in Blood vs Water, Gervase Peterson took the time to really rub it in their faces. This didn’t sit well with the loved ones tribe, especially not with Brad Culpepper.

As the dynamics of the tribe had worked out, Brad also happened to be leading a majority alliance in the early days of the game. This is one of those situations where players have to play fast because Brad stepped onto the island and started gaming immediately. Because he was so ticked off about Gervase, Brad decided to target Marissa. She had performed just fine in the challenges and wasn’t doing anything to piss anybody but because of Gervase, she had to go.

At least her boot gave us the forever iconic “Fuck you Brad Culpepper”.

A tradition Candice gladly kept up.

Asked for it

Jonny Fairplay, Micronesia

This truth behind this boot is sort of a long story that deserves its own post. Basically, Jon may have been missing his girlfriend and soon to be baby, but that wasn’t why he asked to be voted out. He had just been power bombed on his face by Danny Bonaduce at some reality TV award show, which is still a weird sentence to type out, and he was still in pain. It didn’t help when Yau-Man Chan piledrived Jon’s face into the side of a boat.

Because the producers were denying him the access to painkillers that might actually help his pain, Jon got pissed. He got even more pissed when he realized James Clement was allowed nicotine patches to wean off cigarettes but Jon was stuck with aspirin. He decided basically “fuck this shit” and asked his tribe to vote him out. They acquiesced and that was the legend that is Fairplay in Micronesia, still one of the best one-episode arcs anybody has ever had.