BB25's Izzy takes this style of gameplay personally

Aggressively strategic gameplay is kind.

If you’re lucky enough to find yourself in the Big Brother house, every week you’ll be tasked with evicting one of your own, stripping away their chance at $750k, and potentially altering the course of their entire life. To do so without strategic justification is cruel.

Time and time again we’ve heard, “it’s not personal” and “it’s just a game”. Replacing those overused phrases with strategic justification for votes is a lot more generous than asking someone whose life has just been turned upside down to trust that it probably wasn’t personal (even though there is no way to prove it wasn’t personal and it does in fact feel deeply, deeply personal). Being able to provide an evictee with a clear strategic explanation for your vote is the most generous way to navigate the game of Big Brother. 

Let’s talk about what I mean by strategy and strategic justification. Strategy is the roadmap you create to ensure your safety throughout the game. To be clear, I’m not saying strategy should be purely clinical, it should take into consideration the personalities in the cast, personal relationships, and your own understanding of yourself within the context of this group. A strong strategist synthesizes the human elements at play and uses them to design their roadmap to the final 2, ensuring their safety in an ever shrinking group with continuously evolving social dynamics. Strong strategy should be both fluid and unique to each player. 

“I have to vote to evict you because we haven’t talked strategy” is not strategy; it’s an elaborate way of saying, “I don’t care to get to know you better, I’m happy to send you home.” It’s rude and it’s a cop-out. “I have to vote to evict you because you’re very good at convincing my swing votes to work with you instead of me” is an objective strategic justification. It isn’t void of personal context, but it doesn’t leave an evictee blaming their personality or identity for their early departure from the game. 

People tweet at me all the time with this tone that infers I’m unaware of how bold my gameplay was. I know, folks. Believe it or not, I have always been this person, and I really like her. So I chose to bring all of myself into the house out of respect for the game and the players around me.

How disrespectful to my family at home, working extra hard to keep my life together while I’m locked in this TV studio, for me not to shoot for first place. I would never play for third with this dedicated fandom watching and my family working their asses off at home. Out of respect for the game, for everyone who applied for BB25, for everyone supporting at home, and for myself, I went for it in a way only I could.

As a musician I’ve always been taught that if I’m bored playing a piece of music, the audience is bored, too. Any of us could have waited the season out, pretending just to be along for the ride, but how dull would that have been? And quite frankly, I can’t imagine having the audacity to send someone home for the flaws in their gameplay if I hadn’t yet attempted any gameplay at all. In the Big Brother house, passivity is rude. Passivity reeks of entitlement. Refusing to engage in strategic gameplay while still casting a vote for eviction week after week is the cruelest way to play Big Brother. 

Facebook is going to think it’s really funny that I have something to say about kindness. When I say kindness, I am not referring to pleasantries or daily hug quotas, I am in fact a native New Yorker and generally don’t value those things. I find it kind not to reduce my strategic justifications to something generic and palatable. I find it kind to trust others to appreciate a strong game move. I find it kind to treat everyone as the competitor I wish to be treated as. I find it kind to value everyone as an equal competitor in the game. I may not always be pleasant or polite, but I worked very hard to make sure I never made someone feel like they deserved this opportunity less than I did. 

Kindness in the Facebook sense of the word, pleasant kindness, touchy-huggy kindness, is often weaponized by the good old fashioned comp beasts. It’s used to tone-police aggressive strategists. It’s used to halt the game in favor of those unable to grasp the more nuanced parts of a strategic social game. It’s used to guilt and control players who do not have comp wins to coast through the game on. I find those who enforce their “kind” values on the house to be rather unkind. 

Kindness in the Big Brother house means always being able to strategically justify the painful situation you’re putting a fellow houseguest through. It will hurt. Playing Big Brother hurts.

But honor the devastation you're putting someone through by letting them know exactly why your move wasn’t a frivolous decision and then leave space for them to be mad. They’re allowed to be mad. Don’t demand decorum from them on their way out. Play Big Brother as kind as you can. 

-Izzy

PS yes I am aware I called Cameron a serial killer on night one. I dunno, I stand by it. Big Brother is inherently hypocritical, but that’s another essay.

Isabel Lepanto Gleicher is one of the biggest characters and game players from Big Brother 25. Many people thought the season got worse after she was evicted. They were right. She lives in New York and plays the flute. She is an accomplished soloist, chamber musician, and educator.

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