One Jeopardy contestant is facing the wrath of devoted game show fans after he boldly criticized the long-running competition series. Yogesh Raut, who first appeared on viewers’ screens Jan. 11, earned $96,403 in prize money only to post a lengthy takedown of Jeopardy on social media one day later, where he went after the popularity of the show he’d signed up for and proclaimed it’s “bad for the future of quizzing.”
Raut, a 38-year-old from Washington, penned a statement about his time on Jeopardy Jan. 12, which he posted to Facebook with the warning, “Please don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say,” before listing off his impressive accolades in the world of quizzing.
Noting the “attention, praise, congratulations, and nasty trolling from strangers” following his win, Raut wrote, “and for what? What did I do to get the biggest paycheck of my quizzing career?”
The Jeopardy champ compared his experience competing on the game show to a high-ranking chess player only getting recognition for winning a “non-standard bughouse version of chess, a derivative game designed to introduce high levels of variance that constantly threaten to swamp out differences in skill level, on a glorified reality show.”
While Raut recognized that Jeopardy is meant for entertainment, he still ended his note by calling for the game show to lose “its centrality to American society.”
“Jeopardy! is a fun TV show but putting it on a pedestal is an objectively bad thing,” he wrote. “It’s bad for the future of quizzing. It’s bad for women and POC who want to be treated with the same levels of dignity as their White male counterparts. It is fundamentally incompatible with incentivizing the next generation of quizzers to excel, and it is fundamentally incompatible with true social justice.”
Predictably, his words stirred up a strong reaction with Jeopardy viewers and past competitors.
One Twitter user wrote, “The Yogesh Raut JEOPARDY! drama is so funny. guy was a total sourpuss. wins three whole games. loses. then goes on to launch a sustained weeklong critique of the health of ‘America’s quizzing culture.’ quizzing culture!”
Another tweeted, “This is a WILD move. Yogesh didn’t qualify for the tournament of champions (only won 3 in a row) and now is publicly slandering Jeopardy? Our nations greatest television program? Disavow. Lifetime ban.”
Nemanja Dundjerovic, a previous Jeopardy competitor, tweeted, “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.”
Even champion James Holzhauer weighed in on the drama, writing on Twitter Tuesday (Jan. 24), “Anyone who’s ever used social media to criticize Jeopardy or its producers should get a lifetime ban from the show.”
Decider has reached out to Jeopardy reps for comment, but did not hear back by time of publication.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News published yesterday (Jan. 26), Raut only doubled down on his claims.
“I have a master’s degree in film and television studies. I know how a television show works. It’s a business,” Raut said. “But … Jeopardy is not good for quizzing.”
