Survivor: Samoa – Why Ben Lost

Some of you reading this (or perhaps those who skipped reading this article) may be thinking you already know exactly why Ben lost – because he was an argumentative racist jerk who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. And indeed that is the simple answer. But we know there are often other contributing factors even when the answer appears straightforward. Is that the case here as well? Why did Ben lose?

We can get our answer to that question by a careful reading of What Samoan Survivors Should Have Learned. As always, we’ll go through step by step, rule by rule, to identify the main places where Ben went so far wrong that even Russell, self-proclaimed puppetmaster and king of the tribe, couldn’t stop the anti-Ben forces.

In the first rule, we see that despite all their differences, Ben shared something with Betsy, who was voted out just before him. As we saw in Why Betsy Lost:

[W]hen I asked Betsy about her strategy in my interview with her, she didn’t talk about forming alliances or getting in good with other players. Instead, she said, “I was hoping to play strong and work hard around the camp … I just wanted to be a strong physical player.”

How many times do we have to see the same thing happen on Survivor before players realize that simply helping out around camp is not generally going to keep you in the game?!

My strategy was to work hard around camp, which I was definitely the hardest worker without a doubt…

Of course, the rest of Ben’s answer didn’t help his situation either:

… and be direct and forward with people. I’m that way in my life. If I have a problem with somebody, I don’t talk behind their backs, I tell them. … I’m pretty raw, I give it to you straight.

Ben did have an ally in Russell. Of course, Russell has done his damnedest to be allies with everybody, so that’s not surprising. But if we take Ben’s word for it, the two of them apparently spent a fair amount of time together that we weren’t shown. I think that’s probably a fair statement, as Russell was trying to protect Ben, at least for now. But I don’t think it was because Russell considered Ben a valuable strategic ally – rather, Russell wanted to keep the strength he perceived in Ben; plus, he probably felt he could control Ben better than, say, Ashley.

However, when it became clear that Russell’s other allies – his more important strategic allies – wanted Ben gone, Russell had to make a choice. Ben was cut loose.

So if Ben wasn’t plotting and scheming enough, he was okay in terms of the second rule, which warns against doing that too much, right? Yup. I don’t have much more to say about that, so let’s move on.

The third rule speaks of the need to be flexible. Usually, we talk about flexibility in terms of hopping from one alliance to another. But in Ben’s case, he needed to be flexible in the way he dealt with people. For example, when I asked him if he should have apologized for some of the things he said, he indicated that he would do so only in cases where he believes he was wrong. I noted, “It’s understandable in real life to be like that, but in Survivor, did you think you might have to change that aspect of your personality?” He replied, “Personality? No.” And we saw the quote earlier where he talked about how he says what he thinks. He needed to be flexible enough to see that people were not going to want to keep a guy around who acted like that. He needed to see that he was not going to change their personalities, so if he wanted to win Survivor, he needed to change his own. But of course there was no way he was going to do that.

The fourth rule also gave Ben a big problem, as it says not to allow your emotions to control you. Ben was a walking ball of explosive emotion. He kept insisting that he didn’t start the arguments, he just would defend himself. First of all, I doubt that’s true. Secondly, even if it was, it was still poor play on his part. Ben responded emotionally to all of these arguments, not realizing (or not caring) how his tribemates would react. For example, he went on and on and on in his ranting argument with Yasmin – an argument that never needed to happen, let alone continue for so long. It was all emotion, no brain.