Mystic Gemini's BigBrother POV
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Big Brother Screen Caps and Commentary

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Vote Early and Often

You are now the 7th Juror! Your votes could help decide who wins Big Brother and the half million dollar prize, so cast your votes now!

Enter your vote for each Final Two scenario below. You must select a houseguest for each scenario.

 
jordan kevin natalie
First a note on the technical side.  CBS finally came up with a decent method of thwarting auto-voters and put a captcha test (the thing that makes you enter some wonky text to vote) on the AV page.  They started this with the "vote for your favorite HG to win $25K" AV, but that page would only let you vote once.  Though, it turns out that simply deleting browser cookies allowed you to vote again.  The F2 page allowed multiple votes, but surprisingly (to me, anyway) didn't limit you to 10.  Maybe they'll finally get it straightened out for next year.
 
It's also interesting to note that the online voting allows picking a winner per scenario.  When they announced the voting I thought it was going to be kind of interesting because you could only vote for one person in one scenario.  So, if, for example, you want Kevin to win and you vote 10 times for Kevin vs. Jordan, but it ends up being Kevin vs. Natalie, your votes went nowhere.  Or, maybe you want Kevin to win, but if it ends up that he's not in the F2 you want to be sure that Natalie doesn't win, so you put all your votes to Jordan vs. Natalie.  But it ends up as Kevin vs. Natalie, so again, your votes were wasted.  And if you split up your votes amongst the 3 scenarios you don't have as much of a voice as the person who voted all 10 in the scenario that ended up happening.
 
The moral of this story is "vote online."  It's free, and you get more votes any way you look at it.  Worst case, they're only counting the first 10 submissions per IP, but since you get to vote for each scenario with each submission, you're already getting 3 times as many votes as the txt voters.  (Why does this bring to mind the "fools and their money...." saying?)
 
Anyway....before I saw the AV page, I was going to go through a whole analysis about how you had to figure out if you believe Kevin and Jordan will both chose the other, or if not, which of the two is more likely to win part III and what will he or she do.  But since that doesn't apply...Here are my thoughts on the ways to pick a winner, and how the F3 measure up.

Winning Competitions-On the surface BB is about the comps.  Winning HOH keeps you safe, lets you protect your allies, and nominate the people you want out.  Winning POV lets you save yourself or an ally, or prevent an opponent from saving themselves/allies. But the fact is, in BB the people who win the most comps tend to get kicked before the end because they're seen as "big threats."  And if you're relying on comps to keep you safe, one miss and you're out.
 
On actual numbers, Kevin won the most with 1 HOH, 2 POVs, and part 1 of FHOH.  Jordan is next with 1 HOH, 1 POV and part 2 of FHOH.  Natalie has 1 HOH, and some credit for the 1st HOH comp.  Some of those comps were definitely thrown to them, but I don't discount winning a thrown comp.  It takes as much, maybe more, as a straight-out win.  You have to hang in long enough to be there to have it thrown to you, and you have to have an ally to do the throwing.
winner

Most Likable or Best Liar/Manipulator-Being a fan favorite or a friend to the jury members seems like a good way to get votes.  Most people are probably likely to vote for their friends, even if they justify it through some other explanation.  On the other hand, a lot of BB is about dishonesty, and the person who tricked the majority of the jury members might garner their respect that way.
 
Clearly Jordan has the lovable girl role down pat, and Natalie has the lie-lie-lie role locked up.  Kevin is somewhere in the middle, having played a fairly low-key game, and not gotten on too many people's bad sides, but yet he pulled off a few big lies and big back-stabby moves.
zip
 
Deserves to Win/Needs the Money-I tend to discount this one since, as anyone who has followed this site for a while knows, my feeling is that no one deserves to win a reality show.  The other way to look at it is that the person who deserves to win is the one who came out on top in whichever other philosophies you like.  And as far as "needs the money"?  Well, if you truly need cash, banking on winning a reality show is not the most practical way to go about getting it.  Sure, it's better odds than Powerball, but still.  And on the flip side, who couldn't use $500K?
dessert
 
Best Strategy-This is my personal choice because I think it encompasses all the philosophies.  Winning comps is good, but sometimes the best move is to not win something.  Making friends or enemies can carry you along, either because people like you and want to keep you, or people want to keep you because they figure you're so disliked you're good to have around as a target.  Strategy can even cover deserves to win or needs the money.  Whether it's true or not, if you can convince people that you're deserving or needy, that's good strategy.

I have to admit, Natalie has had a pretty good strategy.  She hasn't won much, but she hasn't needed to.  The problem is that she couldn't pull off the one win she really did need.  And though her lying and manipulation has gotten her this far, she hasn't pulled it off with the charisma needed to get taken along that last step.  In fact, Kevin and Jordan see how well it's worked with the jury (or at least they think it worked) and that could be what keeps her out of the F2.  And she's just so darn irritating that I really don't want to see her win.

natalie nat finger

Kevin has also had a pretty good strategy.  He basically made friends with everyone, won comps when he needed to, including a BIG win with the F4 veto, and pulled off his lies without being as icky as Natalie was.  He was a big part of getting out some big threats through those lies.  His reneg'ing on the deal with Jeff sent him packing, and the True Lie sent Russell out.  And of course, his vote kicked Michele.

evicter kav kev

Jordan's strategy was kind of one of those non-strategies.  She came into the game knowing very little about Big Brother, so she didn't have the whole thing planned out.  But that may have served her rather well.  Her alliance with Jeff was a big part of how she got so far, and one of the reasons it worked was because it was real.  They became friends/allies early on when they had no power, and stayed loyal to each other once they did.  On top of all that she won comps, despite all the doubts the rest of them had about her, including the key win in Part II.  If she pulls of another win in Part III, it will be hard to argue that she's a weak player.  And she's just so darn cute that I really do want see her win.

cutie jordan jor


Based on your vote, one Big Brother house guest will be granted a mystery power, the Coup D’etat.


Over the next two weeks, the winner of Coup D’etat will have the ability to overthrow the Head of Household and replace the nominations right before the August 6th or August 13th live show evictions. The winner of this power can only use it once and only the winner will know they have the power.

Which house guest do you want to receive the Power of Coup D’etat?

Normally with these "America's Vote" things I go through all the options and tell you my thoughts, but this one is pretty simple.  Vote for Jeff.  Jeff and Jordan need the power...they've been the underdogs the whole game, with all their allies going home.  And now Jeff has given up HOH to Russell, on the hope that he'll stick to a deal.  And why Jeff and not Jordan?  Well, she said herself she doesn't like making decisions.  So, there you go.

go jeff!

 

P.S. Grammar police note to CBS...it should be Coup d'État.

Auto-Voter Saga

It seems most people are able to submit unlimited web votes, though some people are having issues with Internet Explorer. My guess was that it's supposed to only allow 10 votes per IP.  My complaint about that was that nowhere on the site does it say there's a limit on web votes, just says 10 txt votes per phone. Because I'm like this, I read through the source code of the America's Vote page and discovered this:

There is a "Terms and Conditions" section that includes the following:

"Free Method of Voting Online: To submit your vote without using text messaging go to www.cbs.com/bigbrother during any of the Voting Periods and follow the instructions to complete the voting form. There is a limit of ten (10) free online votes."

The problem is that the T&C section is still associated with the "Voting Period" of 7/26-7/29, so it's not displaying.  The code for the current poll doesn't reference it. So technically it is somewhere on the site, it's just pretty darn hard to find.  There's also no indication of how the limit is imposed.  It could be that they're already silently dropping votes after 10, or it could be that the bad coding is also not displaying a "max votes reached" message and they're going through.  This is one we'll probably never know....but, whatever, I'm just happier now that I understand it....because I'm just that way.

I'm not going to post any of the CBS site's source code, because a.) most people don't care, b.) it may very well be copyrighted and c.) it just seems rude.  Everyone makes mistakes (I know I sure do....), though you'd think CBS could get this stuff right.

And the results....

Jeff did in fact win.  Julie didn't let us know any percentages, just that we voted "in record numbers" of approx. 12 million.

Now we're just waiting to see if he uses the power.  Moments after HOH, Natalie was already psst-psst'ing to everyone that whoever had the power shouldn't use it unless they themselves are nominated.  Ha.  Nice try.

There's been a coup....

Jeff did stand up, and wizzed Russell and Lydia off the block, and Jessie and Natalie right on.  The least shocked was Jessie.  He finally gets that America wants him D-U-N-done (©BB9 Natalie), only he thinks it's because he's a "winner" and we root for the underdogs.  Like Jeff and Jordan, who, in Jessie's words "didn't feel like winning."  Whatever.  Obsolete.

wiz

de-throned

off  on

gucci  coupe

 

good job

Jessie: Good job, America!