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Floating to the Top
by Drew, the Big Brother Cynic

Of all of the four-letter words that you can hear uncensored on the live feeds, the dirtiest of all words spoken in the Big Brother
house is actually seven letters: floater. In short, a floater is a houseguest who has survived by virtue of anonymity.
Competitively, floaters don’t win competitions and always vote for the foregone conclusion on eviction day. Socially, they don’t
rock the boat and either let their fellow alliance members do the dirty work or play both sides of the house.

I am staunchly on the record as being against a lot of “underhanded” activity. Backdooring, throwing competitions and
unnecessary lying all seems like taking the long way home and leaving plenty of room for error. But, despite the attached
stigma, I just can’t get behind the prevailing “anti-floater” sentiment.

As some of you may recall, I work in sports, and right now we are getting geared up for football season. Regardless of how
much you know about football, I think we all know that there’s a reason why the quarterback doesn’t just throw the ball as
far as he can every time. You need to make steady progress, change-up your strategy and – when the time is right – unleash a
deep pass when the defense thinks you’re going to run up the middle.

Now, I’m not implying that Shelly (or Adam or Porsche) is going to turn into Tom Brady all of a sudden and start winning
everything. But I do think that we’re a bit too quick to write off every houseguest who doesn’t act like Snooki at 3 a.m.
as a “floater”.

As far as competitions, Shelly (again, for example) knows that she isn’t going to outrun Jeff in a physical competition or
outlast Dani in an endurance challenge. But what she can do is keep a target off of her back, and put herself in a position
to stay alive up to a point where winning is a necessity, not a luxury. Then, with some luck, she is just one or two
well-timed victories away from $500,000.

Avid readers know that I’m fond of pointing out that there is no one way to win Big Brother. And in a game where contestants
have destroyed each other’s personal belongings and lied about critically-ill loved ones, I refuse to dismiss “not acting
bi-polar” as a valid strategy.

Looking Forward
This section has been causing some confusion in the comments section. Just to clarify, I cut myself off from all things
Big Brother immediately after the HoH competition. It is not unusual for some of the things I say to be proven
right, wrong or inconsequential by the time this article is printed.

This week strikes me as a “Veto Week” rather than a “Nominations Week”, and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see
anybody (except for Jordan, naturally) to go home. With a double eviction looming, Jeff should probably take the path of
least resistance and nominate existing enemies rather than rock the boat. He knows who would definitely take him out, so
one of them needs to go.

Dani should be the primary target. Nominated or not, she will be playing in the PoV competition (thanks to her PoV
pass), so she should be nominated right out of the gates to ensure that, if she does win PoV, she uses it on herself.
Then Kalia goes up as the secondary target, taking away someone who would otherwise use the PoV on Daniele. Porsche is
the replacement nominee by default – pawn no matter who she is up against. Worst case scenario is Porsche winning the PoV
and using it on Daniele. If that happens, it may be a golden opportunity to backdoor Rachel. He would definitely have
Dani, Porsche and Jordan’s votes to take her out of the game.

The smart money says that we’re all going to laugh at my thoughts in this post come next Thursday… but, rest
assured, I’ll be back next Friday to do it all over again with the final six.

-Drew

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