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.”
RIP to Yogesh, possibly the worst anecdotalist in Jeopardy history. He was on the show 4 days and his anecdotes were:
I beat James at quizzing in high school
I was the “only carbon-based life form” to beat Brad and Ken
I tried to meet my Jeopardy hero but she recognized me first— John Cullen (@cullenthecomic) January 17, 2023
#jeopardy Yogesh, along with being a completely unlikable personality, can't even manage to clap for the woman that beat him. He looks like he is just sitting there seething, when so many others have shown appreciation for those who beat them.
— fivefeetunder (@fivefeetunder2) January 17, 2023
Well I am a Jeopardy! champ, and anytime that comes up people get SO excited, they ask me about Alex Trebek or how much I won, they reminisce about watching it with a family member…I cannot imagine being this sour about something that brings so much joy
https://t.co/Wr5KVG0fCt— nemanja (@nemanjaYVR) January 26, 2023
personally, if i won one hundred thousand dollars on a game show i would just shut the fuck up and enjoy my moneyhttps://t.co/qHfF1IxV0n
— Bill Hanstock (@sundownmotel) January 24, 2023
Hey Yogesh Raut! You win $96,403 on Jeopardy, then whine and call it racist. Dude, you knew how the game is played, asked & tried out to be on the show, got picked, won a pile of money & now complain because you lost! If your entitled quizzing ego’s so insulted, give the $$ back.
— Patrick Hanrahan (@Hanrahan1949) January 27, 2023
https://twitter.com/johnsemley3000/status/1618607893489790977
“This Is Jeopardy!”
