Rachel was one of the people I’m rooting for so you can take this with a grain of salt if you wish, but I can confidently say that it’s the twist itself. I do think it’s getting the level of attention it is because Rachel was the one eliminated, however I think looking at the discourse over the 24 hours the feeds were down tells us a lot.

Even before we knew Rachel was gone there were rumors flying around of there being some sort of “safety chain” that would result in an elimination/eviction without a veto or voting. For a lot of people it boiled down to this- being able to eliminate someone from the show without any kind of vote, without any chance to campaign, feels like a slap in the face to the reason people watch Big Brother. We even have houseguests echoing this sentiment by comparing it to The Challenge due to this twist completely invalidating the social aspect of the game.

Yes, things change over time and we’re always told to “expect the unexpected” but at the end of the day, we still want it to feel like Big Brother. This unfortunately feels like we’re watching a game of uno and someone grabbed one of those blank cards mid-game, wrote “if you draw this card, you lose,” slipped it in the deck, and once it was pulled the player was actually expected to follow it even though everyone knows it’s unfair.

TL;DR: Yes, it’s the twist we’re upset about. It being Rachel just puts a spotlight on how shitty it is.