Last updated 20:45, June 3 2018
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Dylan Conrad's extensive Survivor knowledge wasn't enough to save him.
Dylan Conrad's extensive Survivor knowledge wasn't enough to save him.
Survivor contestant Dylan Conrad told his tribe-mates that if they were going to vote him out, he wanted to be blindsided.
But sitting in the tribal council shown on Sunday's episode of Survivor NZ, he was sure he'd make the upcoming merge of the tribes.
Instead, as requested, he was blindsided.
Conrad was voted off at tribal council.
He was betrayed by the same allies he'd formed up with to vote out Josh Hickford at the previous tribal council - Dave Lipanovic, Arun Bola and Renee Clarke.
The trio instead decided to side with Dave's high-school best mate Matt Hancock, who Conrad thought was getting the chop.
Conrad says he enjoyed his time on the show despite being on the receiving end of some harsh words from some of his fellow castaways.
Conrad said the previous friendship of Lipanovic and Hancock had created an "uneven playing field" for the other contestants. He was "super salty" when he found out their relationship extended beyond the show.
"You never factor in the fact that there's going to be best friends out there, because the whole tagline of Survivor is it's 18 strangers," he said.
"I feel like to an extent Josh was a victim to that, but I think if anyone's a victim of them being best friends it was me."
He thought he'd formed a solid alliance with Lipanovic, Clarke and Bola, to who he'd explained a plan he thought would to take them deep into the game.
Conrad is a self-confessed Survivor "superfan", and despite behaviour from some other contestants his comrade Kaysha Whakarau deemed "bullying", he enjoyed his Survivor experience.
"I had some horrendous days out there, but as a whole I walked out so happy, so stoked with the whole experience," he said.
He would have been less pleased if he'd been voted out in his first tribal council, where Whakarau was sent home.
But after the tribe swap, Conrad got some of the "game" action - forming political alliances with other castaways - he'd been craving.
Throwing the challenge in last week's episode in order to vote out Hickford was his idea, he said.
"I'm happy I wasn't the first one voted out. Being picked last really cemented in my mind that I was the first boot, so to make it as far as I did, I'm stoked with the effort given that apparently everyone hated me, from what we see in the edit," Conrad said.