Yin Lü

Yin Yin Lü (Chinese: 律茵茵) is a Faithful in The Traitors (UK)/Series 3.

Profile[]

Retrieved from BBC:

Age: 34
Occupation: Doctor of Communication
Location: Berkshire

Why did you apply to be on The Traitors?
This game is all about communication and I am a communication scientist. So it would be the perfect opportunity for me to exercise my discipline of communication science. More specifically, The Traitors is about rhetoric - the art and science of persuasive communication. This is my specialty, and I am so obsessed with it that I have a PhD from Oxford in the subject. Analysing how information and emotion are transmitted between individuals and social groups gets me going like nothing else.

The other element of why I applied is storytelling. I believe that there is no such thing as a lie. It's just a good story. It's good fiction. And so to win this game, you just have to tell the best story. And if you're a Traitor, you've got to even fool yourself with the fictional world that you've created. It's not a lie. It's just fiction. I've been crafting stories since I was able to physically write on paper. I would relish the opportunity to practise this craft in the high-stakes context of a game that is all about trust and sabotage!

What did you think of the previous series? Was there anyone’s game plan you admired?
Series one, I wasn't impressed with the gameplay, but I was impressed by the relationships that formed and how genuine they were, and what an amazing family that the whole cast seemed to be. I think that several people had amazing gameplay. So namely, Wilf and Amanda stood out as Traitors, who were both brilliant in their own way.

With series two. I thought the gameplay was a lot richer and more developed and far more interesting. Jaz was my favourite, in terms of how he was playing. I did also think Harry was really good, and he was sailing through the whole time. But I just had a particular soft spot for Jaz because of how scientific he was about how he was disclosing information. The gameplay was next level for me and it shows that certain methodologies, like observing and then working out what to say, at what time, do work brilliantly.

What do you think you'll bring to the game?
Communication and rhetoric, as I said are the two main reasons why I really wanted to do this. I have over the past, developed in my spare time, and also during my PhD, my own discipline, and I've called it communication science. And you have to view it in a scientific way in order to improve it. So be systematic and strategic and really try to measure how well your messages are landing emotionally as well as informationally. This discipline of communication science is basically my secret weapon. It's going to get me through the process, either as a Faithful or a Traitor. I'm always analysing, it's not just words, it's the tone, it's body language, it's also what's not being said, what's not being done and actions over time, how they match with the words. There's all of this stuff around it that I notice that I don't think a lot of people pay attention to.

Do you have a game plan?
I think it's important to have a game plan. You can't just leave it all up to chance. On the other end, if you're planning out every single thing, then that's also a bad idea, because people are unpredictable, and you cannot foresee the combination of individuals the producers have gathered together. So it has to be in between where there's some frameworks you'll follow, like a level of adaptation. You have to adapt to what the reality is. So at any time, I can pivot. You also need to be a bit like Jaz and observe, observe, observe, try to get exposure to all the other contestants. You also need to understand the physical environment of the castle - which rooms are really good for telling certain messages in and which ones are not. I’m going to store this information in my head but also write it down once I’m on my own in the evenings. I have a notebook with my pregame thoughts already.

What are you like playing games with friends and family? Are you competitive?
I'd say 90% competitive, 10% fun. You can't lose the fun entirely, but if you're in a game situation, it's all about the competition.

Do you think you’ll be good at the Missions? What strengths do you think you might bring to them?
Overall, I’m very excited for the Missions. But I’m definitely nervous for some, I can't swim, so if it involves hopping over rocks or floating objects in a Loch or something, I'll be the embarrassing person who falls out of the boat or off the wooden plank. I’ll admit my physical intelligence isn't very high, but I've got pretty good IQ, and even higher EQ, which is going to help me win the game.

If you are a Traitor, how do you think you'll feel?
I would love to be a Traitor, particularly because of that storytelling component. I want to have ultimate control over the narrative. There are three levels here. There's the Faithful, who have the least control. To put it as a kitchen metaphor, they're cooking with salt and pepper and eggs and bread alone, not that many ingredients. The stories are a bit weak, and they can't really have much flavour or spice.

Next level up is the Traitors. They have a full spice rack, your Cajun seasoning from New Orleans, and you've got the garam masala etc. so you’ve got lots of spice, because you're able to kill characters off, and engineer plot twists through putting people on trial, for example. And that's really spicy narrative. And I love that the next level up is the producers. They are the ultimate people in control, and they are the ultimate storytellers, but they're invisible. What I love about this hierarchy, is that you lose visibility the higher up you go, and you gain narrative control and storytelling power the higher up you go.

The Faithful, their stories are visually or verbally articulated at the round table, you are exposing what you’re thinking, and it becomes very explicit. Whereas the Traitors, you tell a story through murdering people and then working out how to connect the dots post murder, but that's invisible, because no one else is in the turret. And then a further level of visibility, of course, is the producers. So I would relish it.

Would you say you’ve got a good poker face?
100% I can do the poker face, but at the same time, my natural state is to be very emotive and expressive. I would try to use that to my advantage.

If you are a Traitor, how far are you prepared to go to win the game?
If I’m a Traitor, I’m prepared to go all the way with the big caveat, which is that I think this series needs a team win, either Faithful again or Traitor for the first time. I don't like or subscribe to the whole I need to backstab all my fellow Traitors at some point to be the last, best Traitor standing. I wouldn't go into the game doing that. I would look to form an alliance with myself and one other Traitor who I would absolutely trust. It's hard to fully trust someone, but I hope we could trust each other enough to genuinely have their back and hope they have mine and I’d try to win with that other person.

If you're a Faithful, what do you think your game plan would be?
It would be quite similar to if I’m a Traitor. I'm still telling stories; I just have less control. I would still be storytelling about myself and not revealing certain aspects of my identity. So, for example, the fact that I've gone to Oxford three times, or work in AI, these kinds of details make people think, ‘oh, she could be a threat,’ so I would absolutely withhold those kinds of things.

I would then try to work out who is more likely to be a Faithful or Traitor, it’s all about likelihoods not definites. Every day, I'd have this visual of a gradient of trust, which has a refresh every 24 hours based upon murders and banishments, and I would adjust the people on that gradient. The key thing is, if, over time, I suspect that certain individuals are definitely or highly likely over others to be more traitorous on that spectrum, I would, like Jaz, try to befriend the more powerful of them. The whole cliche of keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. So I would absolutely be trying to become their best friend whilst not trusting them fully, I think that is key to being a good Faithful, or a faithful that survives.

How good are you at spotting a liar?
I think generally good, but in this particular context, where it's a new environment and it's very high pressure so it would be presumptuous and arrogant of me to say that I will absolutely be able to detect liars in that particular context. In everyday context, people I naturally interact with, like my family, I'm very good at knowing when they are lying. It's easy because I know these people. I think the less you know people, and the fact that everyone there is going to be pretending to some level, makes it even more difficult. But the key thing to me is time, I'm really good at benchmarking people's words and actions over time. So if I can stay in the game long enough, I should be able to form a pretty good set of hypotheses around who's lying purely by analysing what they're saying and doing over time. But first impressions, I will probably be wrong!

If you are a Faithful, what qualities do you think you're going to need to make it through to the final?
There are two things. One is observation. You need to be good at analysing and hoovering up all the details to be able to make as scientific a judgement as you can about who is more or less likely to be a Traitor. If you don't observe things and make scientifically grounded or head versus heart decisions, it's just going to be a game of luck for you. The second thing is, you need to have a really high level of emotional intelligence to be able to persuade the other players that you are manipulatable. That's the key thing. You have to come across as someone who shares their thoughts and is transparent to some level, and who doesn't try to control everyone, but can be controlled and can trust.

If you win the prize money, what do you think you'll spend it on?
I have a pretty large loan from my mother because she helped me buy my first house, which was a really amazing moment, because it happened just before Covid. I've been paying her back quite slowly, but this would allow me to finally just send her a sizable amount, because she's not a wealthy person herself, she's just self-sacrificing for her children and her family. Secondly, I've always been toying with this idea of starting my own website around my communication science discipline. I called the whole thing Yin-powerment and so a bit of the money would be spent towards setting up a website and some social media for that, and content as well.^[1]

Gameplay[]

Yin was selected as a Faithful on Day 1 by Claudia. She was shown to be a clever moments within the castle, such as showing her knowledge in sociology by mentioning words such as “social capital”. This however caused unwanted attraction to the traitors.

Believing her was a threat, she became the first victim of the Traitors and was murdered in Episode 1.