A ‘Jeopardy!’ Champ Has Seriously Upset Fans Of The Game Show By Calling It A ‘Glorified Reality Show’ And Unimportant

Yogesh Raut is a three-time Jeopardy! winner, but it’s what the blogger, podcaster, and quizzing expert did afterwards that has fans of the game show talking.

“Please don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say,” he wrote in a Facebook post before listing some of his personal achievements, including being “1/4th of the team that represented the US at the Quizzing World Cup and WON THE WORLD CUP against the best international competition out there” and establishing himself as “belonging in the top tier of writers/editors/bloggers/podcasters in the quizzing community.” Since appearing on Jeopardy! earlier this month, Raut has been “receiving the most attention, praise, congratulations, and nasty trolling from strangers (!) of my life… and for what? What did I do to get the biggest paycheck of my quizzing career? I beat two guys.”

He continued about the “glorified reality show”:

“This is also not an insult to Jeopardy!, which is a TV show designed for entertainment, and a reasonably good one. (I mean, it’s no _Recreational Thinking_, but….) It is entertaining to watch but it bears the same relationship to real quizzing that Holey Moley does to golf. There never has been, and never will be, any justification for treating Jeopardy! as the Olympics of quizzing.”

I would rather watch Holey Moley than the Masters, but I digress.

Raut doesn’t think Jeopardy! is “the problem,” per se, but “there will never be a healthy quizzing culture in this country until we learn to stop pretending that Jeopardy! is important,” he wrote. Raut blames the popularity of the game show on quizzing being a “fringe subculture,” which has allowed “racists, misogynists, and outright sexual harassers to thrive in collegiate quizbowl for so long. It’s the reason unapologetic bigots remain in positions of high power at major pub quiz companies.”

Raut listed the issues the quizzing community needs to address in a separate post:

Jeopardy! champ James Holzhauer wants Raut banned, but executive producer Michael Davies has a different take. “I like the fact that having been criticized, Yogesh took and defended himself… I would say vigorously and at length,” he said on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast. “We’re not beyond criticism. You don’t have to come on Jeopardy! and say lovely things about the game.”

Raut offered advice to anyone who wants to get into quizzing, like he did.

“We have to look the next generation of quizzers in the eyes and tell them, ‘I know you want to learn everything that there is to know. But, for your own sake, please don’t. It will only get you labeled a ‘know-it-all.’ You will be told that you’re a freak, a product of genetic quirks rather than hard work and shining passion, or else a personality-less robot, and that label will be used to justify excluding you and marginalizing your voice,” he told BuzzFeed, adding, “So, for your own good, kill the light that burns inside you.”

https://twitter.com/johnsemley3000/status/1618607893489790977

“This Is Jeopardy!”

(Via Decider and BuzzFeed)