He’s a three-game “Jeopardy!” winner with an odd beef with the show that gave him some TV fame and fortune.
Who exactly is Yogesh Raut?
The trivia expert, blogger, and podcaster has been on a social media rant against the show for several weeks, claiming that it isn’t a true quiz show, questioning its value to society, and accusing it of being “fundamentally incompatible with true social justice.”
Raut stated on Monday that his criticism of “Jeopardy!” is not bad sportsmanship, and he rebuffed anyone who called him a sore loser.
“I don’t know how it could not come across that way to someone who wants to read it that way,” said Raut, a 38-year-old Vancouver, Washington resident.
“People who know me know that I was saying the exact same things, the exact same sentiment, the exact same words long before I was ever called to be on the show.”
Fans of the venerable question-and-answer show met Raut on Jan. 11 when he won the first of three games taped in mid-November.
In a spirited competition that aired on January 16, Raut, a well-known figure in quizzing circles, won $96,403 in prize money before being knocked out by a museum interpreter, Katie Palumbo.
Raut’s ongoing rants piqued the interest of former Deadspin editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell, who mocked the “Jeopardy!” champion’s “multi-week Facebook meltdown” to her 31,000-plus Twitter followers on Monday.
Although Raut did not directly compare himself to Muhammad Ali, as Greenwell suggested, he did cite the legendary boxer as an example of a nonwhite American who stood up to powerful interests.
Raut’s recent “Jeopardy!” rants were divided into several categories.
True quizzing ability is not displayed on “Jeopardy!”, which has been on the air for 39 seasons. On January 14, he stated that “Jeopardy!” will “never top the list of my quizzing accomplishments — not even my quizzing accomplishments in 2022.” Raut also compared “Jeopardy!” to an ABC show that takes place on a zany miniature golf course, writing on Jan. 12: “It is entertaining to watch but it bears the same relationship to real quizzing that ‘Holey Moley’ does to golf. “The quizzing “community has a hideous gossip problem,” he wrote Wednesday. Raut was irritated when word got out that another big name in the quiz community, Troy Meyer, was on the “Jeopardy!” set at the same time as him, but their fantasy “clash of titans” didn’t come true.
Raut was the target of racist trolls during his “Jeopardy!” tenure, and he appeared to blame the show.
“‘Jeopardy!’ is a fun TV show, but elevating it is an objectively bad thing. It’s bad for quizzing’s future,” he wrote in a Jan. 12 critique of the show.
“It’s bad for women and people of colour who want to be treated with the same dignity as White men. It is fundamentally incompatible with incentivizing the next generation of quizzers to excel, as well as true social justice.”
