|
Caught in the Tribal Net with Spencer Duhm of Survivor Tocantins
by Troy Rogers
 Although we haven't seen any of the tribe members on Survivor Tocantins resort to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in any of the challenges thus far, the competition is heating both mentally and physically for the Timbira and Jalapao tribes. In recent weeks much of the Survivor focus has been on the simmering Tocantins dissension within the Timbira tribe while the seemingly less cutthroat Jalapao members have been enjoying a more peaceful time as a collective. Now, however, the Jalapao tribe is beginning to crack, as secrets are beginning to surface, the grip of the game is staring to tighten, and some tribe members getting more paranoid about their fate in Brazil.
With Survivor Tocantins shifting gears to a higher level of play, 19-year old Lakeland, Florida student Spencer Duhm found himself increasingly becoming a target after getting dizzy in the reward challenge and then falling victim to his inability to master catching slingshot balls with a net on a stick. Although Spencer thought he made amends with his fellow tribe mates, also forming an all-guy alliance, the youngest Jalapao couldn't change his fate when the votes were counted at Tribal Council and Jeff Probst extinguished his torch.
The next morning we tracked down with the now ex - Survivor Tocantins competitor to find out why he didn't do more to plead his case, what went wrong in the net challenge, and what he thinks of his former Jalapao mate Taj and Coach of the Timbira tribe.
THE DEADBOLT: Why didn’t you reveal that you were gay?
SPENCER DUHM: Because in a social game like that I felt like everyone looks for a silly reason, or any little reason, to separate you from the group for whatever they want in their head. Sometimes people can have a prejudice against different types of minorities. So I thought, I'm not even going to bring it up. I’m not going to make it an issue. If they ask me, I’ll totally tell them. But if not, I’m not even going to worry about it. And I wasn't, honestly, because it never became an issue. I was surprised that they even showed that interview where I talked about it.
THE DEADBOLT: Did you ever think that it could’ve went the other way and they wouldn’t have voted you off because of that? Say, where they thought it would make them look bad for voting you off because of that?
SPENCER: Oh, no. I never thought that. It was just like the other tribe. They voted off the two African Americans and I’m sure they never thought, ‘Oh, man, we’re going to look like racists.' So, yeah, I don’t think that was a problem at all.
THE DEADBOLT: So what happened in the challenge with the nets and the balls?
SPENCER: I just couldn’t get the hang of it. It’s like when I played baseball as a kid. I was a terrible outfielder. I don’t judge fly balls very well. So, yeah, it was just very bad. And the weird thing is, J.T. scored all of our points, and Brendan scored just as many points on Taj as Tyson scored on me, and Joe didn’t score any points either. So I thought it was a little unfair that I was targeted just because of the challenge. I was the only one held responsible. But people - like I said - look for anything, for whatever reason, to vote you out or to target you. And for some reason I was more responsible than everybody else. So I just couldn’t get the hang of it. I was terrible, and I knew I was, and I felt bad that that was why they were targeting me.
THE DEADBOLT: I wasn’t thinking about Joe. You’re right, everybody else wasn’t doing very much either.
 SPENCER: On, no. J.T. scored every point for us and none of the other people on the tribe did anything. But again, I was the one singled out and blamed, which I thought was unfair. Again, I like everybody on my tribe, I’m not trying to throw them under the bus, they were launching the balls so they were not at risk at all for performing poorly. It seemed a little unfair. But that’s okay.
THE DEADBOLT: Do you have any regrets at not trying to work it or plead your case?
SPENCER: [laughs] They didn’t show any of it. It makes it look like I’m just, ‘Oh, you’re going to vote me out? I really hope you don’t.’ And it looks really horrible. But I had an alliance with Joe and Sydney and I had an all-guys alliance. Once I went down to the water and I talked to J.T. and we got over the whole challenge thing, all four guys talked about keeping all of the guys and voting off Taj or Sydney.
Taj was mainly the one we were talking about because she had been the plan after Sandy. So that’s why I ended up voting for her but Sydney’s name was brought up. Joe went to Sydney and said, ‘Hey, it could either be you or Spencer tonight. So if you don’t turn on ...’ - because he was really close to Sydney - and he said, ‘You don’t turn on Spencer then it could be you.’ So that’s why they turned on me.
They went back to JT and Stephen and they were like, ‘Okay, fine, we can switch it back to Spencer.’ And Stephen had always been planting information in Sydney’s head for about a week, saying that I was really devious and I was going to manipulate her and vote her out and switch, all of this stuff, and I couldn’t be trusted. So I guess all of that whispering stuff. And he finally planted the seed in her head and got her to turn on me. So what they showed me getting voted out because of the challenge was not the case at all. It looks like I’m like, ‘Man, I really hope you don’t vote me out. I’m an asset ...’ And there was so much more that went on and it makes me look like a lazy super-fan or a pathetic super-fan.
THE DEADBOLT: We didn’t see any of the Stephen and Sydney stuff.
SPENCER: I know, and they didn’t show any of the alliances on our tribe, because alliances were formed on day two. They act like our tribe was happy go lucky and we just like to go fishing all of the time, we like to eat grubworms, and we have no problems. We didn’t really have any problems but there were alliances going on the entire time, and they didn’t show any of it, which is fine because it wasn’t a bad edit. But it was just the happy 19-year-old who’s just very thrilled to be there when there was so much more going on.
THE DEADBOLT: How tough was the spinning challenge?
SPENCER: [laughs] It was like wearing beer goggles. I obviously handled it a little better than some people. I had better balance I guess. But no, it was really really difficult. I had heard that when you get spun around, apparently, if you look at a point, the same point every time you make a rotation, you can keep from getting dizzy. So I tried to do that for the first three rotations. But I was going too fast that I just gave up and I got up very dizzy. But once I put my foot on the log and kind of shook it out I was fine, and it took me two times to get across. But, yeah, it was pretty difficult. It was fun to watch, though.
THE DEADBOLT: After Taj revealed that her husband was Eddie George and everyone got excited, I remember J.T. saying that she was already a millionaire and didn’t need the money. Did the tribe ever discuss that as a reason for voting her off?
SPENCER: The plan was, because I was obviously with the four guys and that whole Sydney and Joe thing was an overlapping person with me as far as the alliances go, obviously that was the final five people I expected to have in our tribe. So Sandy was obviously supposed to go first, and then Sydney was going next, and then Taj was supposed to go next. So that’s why when Taj blew up. I thought, ‘Okay, she was supposed to go. Maybe this will still help usher her out the door and I will be safe.’
But the reason it was never brought up again about her having the million dollars, or her being married to a former NFL player, was just because - J.T. obviously mentioned it, and it was discussed a little bit, but personally I don’t find something like that a reason to target somebody. I can find reasons within the game to target somebody. Say she was in the final two with somebody I found equally deserving and I was about to flip a coin, that is maybe when I would say, ‘Okay, well, she already has this lifestyle that makes her comfortable. I rather help change this person’s life instead of just adding to her life.’ Maybe in that situation I would use it against her. But aside from that, I don’t see why it would be something you’d hold against somebody.
THE DEADBOLT: Even though he wasn’t on your tribe, what are your thoughts of Coach?
 SPENCER: Again, I’m just going to talk just what I did out there because we had another opinion about him. We learned after a few challenges that he must be really weak, because he would make comments when Jeff would ask him a question. You know, before the challenges or after? And he made the comment about how they had this eye communication and how he was guiding everybody and all of that B.S. So we were like, ‘He’s full of himself,’ which we could pick up from a distance. So that’s pretty bad. In challenges he wouldn’t hold the weight, he let Tyson, who’s obviously skinnier, very athletic, but not really built to hold a lot of weight. He just seemed to be really weak in a bunch of challenges and wanted to take a back seat. That’s where I was just like, ‘Man, he seems so big. He must be trying to hide himself or have some sort of confidence issues or something.’ We were really perplexed by that.
THE DEADBOLT: I noticed that Sierra had tons of bug bites on her. What were the insects like?
SPENCER: I was fortunate. But because I didn’t have pants, my legs would get pretty torn up. But as far as holding up, I was luckier. Usually I would wear my shirt at night and use my buff and other things to try and keep bugs off of me, especially when we got the blanket. That really helped because we were able to cover up. Taj was really torn up because of Exile. Joe had it really bad on his back. Stephen’s legs were really torn up. But Sydney was okay, I was okay, and J.T. wasn’t too bad. I think some people just had a worse reaction than other people and I think Exile definitely took a toll on the people that went out there.
|
