Survivor’s David Kinne Stands by His Meat-Shield Alliance

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Survivor 48’s David Kinne felt like a throwback to a previous era of the show, when buff men ruled the land and questions of “honor” and “loyalty” were top of mind for players. New Era Survivor is defined by wily competitors using their knowledge of past seasons to fly under the radar before ultimately making one or two well-planned attacks, and one of its most common winning strategies involves keeping physical players around to distract the competition from the smarties. Kinne, a muscle man keen to dominate through sheer willpower, pulled together a crew of macho men (plus Eva) to excel at challenges and keep one another in play, and he preached integrity while voting out former allies, like Chrissy, who didn’t quite fit into his plan.

For a while, it seemed like this method might carry the Strong Five to victory, but this week, it all came crashing down. Kinne began the episode in a power position, but following his push to take out his tribemate Kamilla, his concerns that his allies Shauhin and Kyle were targeting him for wanting to take out Kamilla, and his implication that his friend Joe had lost his honor, his torch got snuffed. In a way, you could look at his downfall as a self-fulfilling prophecy: He was so inflexible, any dissent from other players piqued his paranoia and, ultimately, got him voted out. In another reading, the sneakier players simply manipulated Joe and Eva to vote for David, and he didn’t have the social skills to fight back.

How did it feel to rewatch?
The challenge was the toughest part because I knew I should have won. I had a lot left. I made a mistake. Good on Joe, not taking away from his win, but knowing that I came here to prove myself, the challenges should have been the easier part of that. I knew when I lost that challenge I was probably going home.

What do you mean when you say you knew you were getting voted out?
I’m not assuming that Kamilla is sitting in the hammock not doing anything all day. I actually knew she was safe, or at least she thought she was safe, because she was sitting in a hammock. It was pretty clear something was going to happen with the Strong Five, and if that happens, especially after I lost that immunity challenge, it was almost guaranteed to be me.

Why not Mary?
She wasn’t a threat. We brought her into the Strong Five because she had a good connection with me, Joe, and Eva. We didn’t have the majority at the time, and she was the easiest to work with. But it’s not like I just brought in Mary without asking the group. One of the reasons I knew Shauhin had an in with Kamilla was because he came up to me and was like, “Hey, man, instead of bringing Mary into the Strong Five, what do you think about Kamilla?” There was absolutely no reason to bring Kamilla into the conversation, because nobody had a relationship with her as strong as we did with Mary.

What did you do wrong in your game other than not winning the immunity challenge?
That one’s tough to answer. Let’s be honest, I think I played a perfect … no, I’m just kidding. But I think I played a pretty darn good game. I had a really good read on the game. I was obviously good at the challenges. I was obviously good at the puzzles, and the strategy was working quite well up to that point. You could argue the social end was probably where I fell short, but I would argue that if Eva and Joe were replaced with any of the 95 percent of contestants that have played Survivor, they would’ve been like, “Yeah, you’re right, David, something’s definitely going on.” So I’m not going to say I got screwed, but I do believe I got unlucky that my two closest allies just so happened to be those people. My alliance members were very bad at playing the game strategically.

But the argument to that is that you chose them, right? It didn’t “just so happen” that you were working together.
I was working with them. You could argue that I could have gone with the Civa Four, for example, and included Mitch and Mary in that, and that’s another pathway to the end for me. But I’m looking at precedent, right? History repeats itself, and if I go with that group, we get down to the final six or seven, great. Who’s the biggest target? Me, of course. History is going to say I’m going home first if I go with the Civa Four. Then I would just be making the same mistakes as all the shields before me. People don’t realize that, in the New Era, for a guy like me, there are very few pathways to the end. I wish I could play the game like everyone else, but I couldn’t.

Could you have won the show?
If I was sitting in the final three, I could have made a damn good argument to win against anybody. Call me delusional! But I had great relationships. I obviously had a good strategy that worked for me. I was doing something different that we don’t see in the New Era very often. And Kamilla talking about jury management — I mean, she’s full of shit, let’s be honest. At the end of the day, she’s talking about Chrissy and I bickering, but Chrissy and I are having an argument because we respect one another. In her eyes, I’m her closest ally. She was crying to me at the water, begging me not to vote her out that night. I got teary-eyed myself because I had a real connection with Chrissy.

This is where I get confused with your game: I heard two simultaneous narratives from you this season. One was that you wanted to make a meat-shield alliance, which made a lot of sense to me. But you also kept saying you were concerned with honor and loyalty. From my perspective, I saw you making plans with the Civa Four and then you were ready to vote out Kamilla and Chrissy because they didn’t fit with being meat shields. Can you help me understand?
In the context of Survivor, you have to lie. I tried to keep that to a minimum. When I say honesty and integrity, it means the people and the strategy I chose from the very beginning. What the show didn’t show is that, even in the pregame, my plan was to bring all the threats, whether they’re physical or strategic, together. It just so happened that we were on a season with a lot of physical threats. The Civa Four alliance was great, but Kyle and I had a plan to bring together the strong people from the beginning. When we had the tribe swap, he did his job convincing Shauhin and Joe, and I did my job by bringing in Eva. The honesty and integrity came down to stepping on that beach from day one and saying, “This is what I am going to do.”

So the alliance you were loyal to from the beginning was with people you were not on the beach with?
Yeah. I knew day one that I wanted to bring together Joe, Eva, Kevin — basically all the physical threats.

Why did you want to do that if you hadn’t met them?
Precedent. I don’t have the luxury of playing the normal Survivor game because people are just going to target me for being a physical threat. Doesn’t matter if I’m good or not, right? We saw that with Sam last season. He wasn’t the greatest at challenges, but people saw him as a physical threat. He did get to the final three, but it was for different reasons, and still that conversation happens. How many times did you hear me being brought up as a threat? Zero. Why? Because of the game that I played, combining all the physical threats, from day one. It’s the only way that I could avoid being labeled as a threat.

I want to talk about the Joe conversation. From what we saw, it seemed like when you said that he went back on his word, that was a tough thing for him to stomach. Did you realize that in the moment?
I saw the game slipping through my fingers, because these are people I’m supposed to see eye to eye with. I’m correct in my reads; I know I am. Joe is supposed to be my equal, but he was a very brittle man, and his ego was touchy. Anytime someone brought up his name, for example, or he was at risk of being targeted, he freaked out. He was a little insecure, especially for a man of his stature.

In those moments, I’m talking to him man to man, as two athletes, two competitive people. If someone told me, “Hey, man, you went back on your word,” I’m not going to sit there and say, “I’m not capable of that.” It was so naïve, especially considering I was right about all my assumptions. He was unaware of how he was being manipulated. What else am I going to do? I’ve lost Kyle and Shauhin, and now I’ve lost Joe. It was a Hail Mary of “Hey, man, do you actually consider yourself a good guy or are you just full of shit?” To affect a strong man, tell him a lie. To affect a weak man, all you’ve got to do is tell him the truth, and he showed his true colors in that moment.

But you did play that wrong, right? It was a mistake to tell him that you thought he went back on his word. Maybe to win Survivor, you had to lie about what you felt.
Then I would’ve been a hypocrite, right? The whole game, I’ve been playing as myself, and for better or worse, it got me where I was. I had respect for Joe, and by the way, Joe is one of the most incredible men you’ll ever meet. He’s a phenomenal dad. But I do think he has some shortcomings that forced me to push further than I wanted to. It should have been a very easy conversation. Anybody else would’ve been like, “Oh yeah, they’re clearly working together.” This is from a man who saw one of his good alliance members go home because of Kyle and Kamilla’s move. I truly do not know how Joe did not see Kyle and Kamilla working together.

But if he’s being manipulated, isn’t that the time on Survivor to try to manipulate him back?
So you’re talking about any alternative moves I could have made?

Yeah. I’m trying to figure out where you went wrong.
I can’t talk to Eva about it. I’d already tried. I can’t talk to Joe about it. I can’t talk to Kamilla. I can’t talk to Shauhin. I can’t talk to Kyle. I’m already in cahoots with Mary and I’m doing really well with Star, but that’s it. Maybe I could pull in Mitch, but I just don’t have the numbers to form a whole new alliance. In the moment, I thought my best shot was to play on his integrity. “Hey, man, you clearly went back on your word,” which he did. There are other things they didn’t air, where he swore on his wife and kids, and he broke that promise. Of course I’m going to be frustrated. Maybe there’s something I could have done. Maybe there’s some alliances that I could have pulled together. Maybe I could have gone to Kyle and tried, “Hey, man, I understand what’s going on. Let’s make a move against Joe and Eva. Joe. Eva’s obviously got an idol.” But it wasn’t the game I was playing.

Fans think that you were a little mean in your fight with Chrissy. Do you feel that way?
No, because Chrissy was just as vocal against me as I was against her. I think it shows the bias of the fans if they’re going to pick and choose which people are allowed to comment and which aren’t. Kamilla is sitting there calling me stupid, despite the fact that I have my finger on the pulse of the game. Clearly I’m not dumb, because I’ve clocked every single person. I went three for three on the puzzles. I don’t need to sit there and tell you I’m not the dumb person you believe I am because I have muscles, but people are going to give her a free pass. There’s a lot of bias when it comes to the fans, and it doesn’t rub me the wrong way. I know who I am, and they can say what they want, but at the end of the day, go play if you think you can do better.

But going back to the Chrissy thing, she’s getting voted out that night, right? Of course she’s going to go hard.
Well, you have to understand, I was not confident that I was not going home that night.

Really?
From my perspective, I’ve given everything to Joe and Eva. I’ve given them all the information they need to flip on Kamilla, but they’re not. That’s a red flag to me. What else could be happening? I thought there was a 25 percent chance that it could have been me that night. Firing back at Chrissy was almost appealing to Joe and Eva, because I wanted to reassure them that I was all in on this. And you can see Joe nodding when I’m talking to Chrissy.

Me and Chrissy are friends, and I spoke to her as someone that I had utmost admiration for. I wasn’t tiptoeing around. And Kamilla can sit there and talk about jury management, but she’s playing a completely different game when it’s not predicated on being your true self.

What do you mean by that? What if her true self really is strategic?
Kamilla is very strategic. She’s a gamer. But you don’t see her true personality out there, right? She’s flying under the radar. Her game is predicated on the fact that she’s going to stir the pot as little as possible. She’s not being her true, genuine self, as I was. It’s two completely different approaches. It’s a great strategy for her, and it’s worked out for many people in previous seasons.

It does sound like you’re passing moral judgment on her.
Oh, no, no. Kamilla and I are great, actually. I was laughing when she was calling me dumb or stupid. I’ve been playing online games since the ’90s. We invented shit talk. Her saying those things — I was eating it up. I know how she is in the real world, and we’re good friends. It’s the complete opposite of someone like Joe, who’s sitting there and is basically saying he feels one thing, then doing another.

So you judge Joe’s gameplay more harshly than Kamilla’s?
100 percent.

What advice would you give to future buff-guy players who go on Survivor?
There’s not many paths to the end, especially in the New Era. Just know who you are, but more importantly, know how everyone else on the island is going to perceive you. I was my genuine self. Despite the muscles, despite the arrogance, despite the ego, I was not afraid to be vulnerable. I think people appreciated that.

Do you think a potential meat shield could make it to the end and win Survivor in this era?
Do I think it’s possible in this era to play a game of honesty and integrity?

No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. Meat-shield alliance is separate from honesty and loyalty. Is it possible to do a meat-shield alliance?
I think any alliance based off commonality can have a chance of success. Kyle and Kamilla had a connection based on the fact that they were Guyanese. If you’ve got two guys who like CrossFit, they create that bond. Any sort of common ground can create an alliance.

And you think that alliance could be successful and make it to the end?
I do. I’ll stand by that. You’d have to be a fool to say we weren’t at least a little successful, right? Obviously, I went home, but I still think the meat shields getting together is a viable strategy depending on the season. I’ll die on that hill.