"But imagine if you were a chess player who racked up a string of victories against GMs at high-level tournaments, but the _only_ thing you got recognized or highly remunerated for was beating some 1800-2200 level players at 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.
That would be weird, wouldn't it? I'm trying to think of an analogy with regard to Big 4 sports and nothing even makes sense.
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. Would the Olympics only allow Victoria Groce and Patrick Friel to compete one time, long before they were at their peak, or refuse to let myself or [REDACTED] compete until we had nearly aged out of our physical and mental prime no matter how much we proved ourselves? (Note: Don't twist this into an insult either; [REDACTED] slightly off-peak can easily outperform virtually the entire rest of the world, even if the rest of the world is allowed to work together.) Would the Olympics bar the likes of Andrew Ullsperger, Jonathan Hess, and Tim Polley simply because some casting director decided they weren't telegenic or whatever enough? Of course not."
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acidraindrop (3055)
2 years ago
""Jeopardy!" is not the problem; its centrality to American society is. There will never be a healthy quizzing culture in this country until we learn to stop pretending that "Jeopardy!" is important.
(And FWIW, everyone there treated me just fine. Don't try to make this about personal spite.)
The fact that actual quizzing continues to be a fringe subculture in the shadows is what 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.
And, as a social scientist, I am telling you that the #1 way to get diverse minorities on an equal footing in quizzing is to make it as meritocratic as possible. Have we learned nothing from Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Peter Norman, and all the other brave POC and allies who proved that ONLY open, meritocratic systems that distribute rewards in proportion to talent and effort permit truth-tellers to survive?
"Jeopardy!" is a fun TV show but putting it on a pedestal is an objectively bad thing. 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."
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liscarkat (18367)
2 years ago
Fortunately for me, I don't give a rat's ass about "quizzing culture". I like "Jeopardy!". This assclown can suck an egg.
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