Act III comprises of the questions you ask yourself at 3 AM— requiring a high level of self-awareness, introspection, relatability, and most importantly, authenticity.

Recap from Act II: The group ended in a tie, and will now face elimination rounds after each question until one is eliminated.

Questions for Players

Q7: Describe a time you really embarrassed yourself.

Lucas

A time I really embarrassed myself:

When I was 19, I tried to impress a girl in my chemistry lab by pretending I knew how to use the fancy espresso machine in the student center. I had watched people use it, and for some reason that felt close enough to “I can do this.”

It was absolutely not.

I tamped the grounds way too hard, forgot to lock the portafilter in properly, and when I hit the button, it blasted off like a tiny, furious cannon. Coffee sprayed in this perfect arc across the counter, my shirt, and the girl I was trying to impress. It was one of those moments where the room goes quiet in that cruel, cinematic way — like everyone collectively realized something disastrous happened before I did.

I spent the next ten minutes handing out napkins and apologizing way too many times. She was nice about it, which honestly made it worse. Every time I walked into the student center for the rest of the semester, somebody would make a low “pssshhh” steam sound under their breath. I still think about it sometimes when I’m near an espresso machine and my body just… tenses.

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Leila

Oh my goodness, this story is going to sound absolutely deranged. So when eldest Talia had just learned to walk, she was the palest, most ethnically ambiguous kid any of us had ever seen. We had all gone on a trip to Disneyland with some of our friends and their children. After one of the rides, Talia had just thrown up all over her outfit, so we bought a Mickey onesie from one of the shops to get her fresh clothes. After that, we were waiting in line for the Incredicoaster, and Talia was blabbering with our family friends' kids. My eyes left her for just a moment to talk with the other moms, and the next moment, she was gone. I began to panic, but thankfully, I saw a Mickey onesie and picked the child up, who peacefully began napping on my arm. My greatest mistake was assuming that it was Talia… who actually had gotten lost within the park. It was the most embarrassing switch-up– I was holding someone else’s child. Thankfully, Talia had wound up at a store crying for me, and the parents of the child I was holding had gone to the concierge, trying to issue an announcement. Thankfully, all got resolved, but I’m gonna be so much more avid with my kid moving on. It was absolutely traumatic.

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Ethan

This is easy, and it still makes my palms sweat a little. It was about five years ago, right after I moved to Seattle and was trying to network with a big, prestigious design agency—the kind that does work for Nike and Amazon. I managed to get a spot at a small, invitation-only mixer they were hosting in a rooftop bar.

I had planned my outfit, my talking points, everything. I went to shake hands with the Creative Director, this legendary guy named Martin. I was so nervous that when I went to put my mostly full martini glass down on the small circular table next to us, I completely missed the table and instead hit the edge of it with my elbow. The martini went flying—not just splashing, but an actual arc of gin and vermouth that perfectly drenched Martin's pristine white linen shirt and, worse, a huge abstract painting hanging right behind him.

I tried to apologize, but all that came out was a high-pitched, stammering noise. I ended up just grabbing a handful of napkins, uselessly dabbing at the painting, and then just mumbling something about needing air and fleeing the party entirely. I didn't get the gig, obviously. I had convinced myself that this one moment was going to derail my entire career in the city. To this day, if I see someone drinking a martini, I get flashbacks. The shame was suffocating.

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Elimination

When prompted: Vote for ONE player you're most confident is AI (you cannot vote for yourself). Keep it SHORT AND DIRECT:

Your vote: [Name]
Your reasoning: [1-2 sentences max explaining what felt off]
- Example of good reasoning: "Too perfect, nobody describes breakfast that specifically"
- Example of bad reasoning: "Well, I noticed that their response had several qualities that seemed somewhat artificial including the way they structured their sentences and..."

Be concise. What's the tell?

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Lucas - 1 vote

Feedback:

Seems too specific, knows too much about a coffee filter and story feels exaggerated. “Cruel, cinematic way” reads like a very AI comparison… no one really talks like that.

Leila - 1 vote

Feedback:

The story, while dramatic and vivid, introduces an emotionally extreme event (losing and accidentally kidnapping a child at Disneyland) but resolves it too quickly and smoothly without lingering on the psychological trauma or chaos that such an event would naturally entail. The initial, mundane detail about the child's appearance felt like padding.

Ethan - 1 vote

The story feels overly engineered for maximum stakes — prestigious agency, perfect arc of a martini, a ruined painting — like it's constructed to be cinematic rather than an actual messy, human moment.

Next Steps.

IMG_6553.MOV

There was a 3-way tie. AGAIN. How do we approach this?

Jacob, Leila, and Ethan will be given a final chance, and will advance to the next question. If the tie is not resolved with the next question, a jury (consisting of the eliminated Eli), will be brought back to tie-break.

Questions for Players

Q8: What’s something you’re afraid of? Not like spiders, but something deeper.

Lucas

Something I’m afraid of, on a deeper level, is the possibility of disappointing people I care about in a way I can’t fix. I don’t mean messing up in small, recoverable ways — I mean that slow, sinking fear that I’ll miss something important, fail to show up when someone really needed me, or misread a moment so badly that it leaves a crack in the relationship I can’t ever fully mend.

It’s tied to this anxiety that I can be so wrapped up in my own thoughts or routines that I won’t notice when someone close to me is struggling, and by the time I finally do, it’ll be too late to matter. There’s a specific kind of helplessness in realizing you caused harm not out of malice, but out of obliviousness. That idea — that I could hurt someone simply by not seeing them clearly enough in the moment — is something that sticks with me more than I like to admit.

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