Welcome to Andy’s Weekly Thoughts for Saturday, December 9. Normally I break up my editorial into thoughts on several smaller topics, but this week, I wish to focus my editorial on just a singular issue plaguing the Jeopardy community.
On this week’s Inside Jeopardy, Nick Cascone said in his interview that “I just think I’m on a quixotic quest for civility”, saying:
I think online people forget that there are actual human beings behind the keyboards and, and that are involved in this stuff. And so, I mean, I understand that people have preferences and, you know, if they’re tired of the tournament and they want to see new players and that, I totally get that, but when you come on and just kind of blindly just criticize, I hate this, this is dumb, I don’t want to see this anymore. There are people who are making these decisions, and there are people who are involved in making these shows, and the shows are excellent television, you know, and so I tried to just gently remind people that, you know, human beings are involved in this. And you’re entitled to your opinion, but look, this sounds like somebody from the 19th century, you know, but when you express an opinion, it might be nice to consider that people have feelings and are trying to do the best job that they can. And they’re working with a strike situation, which means that new questions aren’t able to be produced. And so I’m not trying to guilt anybody, I just think I’m on a quixotic quest for civility in the online space.
And with regard to this, I have to say: Nick Cascone, you are one hundred percent right in your assessment.
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It has become abundantly clear to me over the past week that the extent to which r/Jeopardy chooses to criticize the last three months’ worth of games is overly excessive, and it’s a systemic subreddit culture issue emanating from the top leaders of the subreddit.
The subreddit leadership, chiefly moderators “jaysjep2” and “ReganLynch,” have taken great pride in constantly criticizing the show over the past three months, going as far as to point at phantom statistics like unpublished “ratings,” claiming “a mass viewer exodus.” In fact, it got so bad that ReganLynch went as far as to ask me, “Are you on staff yet as the show’s PR flack or just volunteering?”, when I deigned to object to the criticisms, which I would say is the single most offensive claim to journalistic credibility that has ever been made of me.
Since those comments were made of me, I elected to peruse other places where the show is discussed extensively—mainly the comments on Facebook posts made by the show (which, for better or worse, is likely where the show’s target audience is most likely to congregate). And while there is a small subset of commenters on Facebook commenting negatively about the length of Champions Wildcard, one thing that stood out to me is that over the course of a week, more people appear to be complaining about the “adult content” and “Nigerian prince” scams in the Facebook comments than they are about the length of Champions Wildcard. Moreover, if there is a mass viewer exodus, I am absolutely not seeing that in the traffic statistics of this website, as I am receiving a normal amount of website traffic for this time of year here at The Jeopardy! Fan. My conclusion here is that the overall fan anger towards these changes is not nearly as pronounced as Reddit thinks it is.
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I would like to remind everyone: Just because a piece of media has changed in a way you personally don’t like doesn’t mean that piece of media is ruined. While you are allowed to have your opinion, change is inevitable, and as I have mentioned in the past in this column, I believe that the show is undergoing a necessary evolution in order to remain relevant in the changing entertainment landscape of the 2020s, and that these current changes are necessary in order to ensure that Jeopardy as a brand itself still is able to exist into the 2030s and 2040s.
Would a change at the top of r/Jeopardy provide the necessary community culture shift? I’m not sure—I fear that the subreddit might be too far gone to save at this point. Do I think Reddit—and those who quote Reddit daily to fill their clickbait quota—need to be taken less seriously as a whole? Without a doubt.
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I have never gone on Reddit (even just to read), I’ve only seen references to it and some quotes from it, but you and Nick Cascone seem to have the Jeopardy! subreddit pegged. (Though I think probably Nick meant to compare to 1900s people [20th century] rather than the 19th Century, since that was when the Civil War was. But maybe I was just not exactly getting his point.)
I’m sure ReganLynch said that specifically to be insulting. Hurling insults is what many people do when called out on inappropriate behavior.
It seems that most people online nowadays go by the opposite of what was taught for so long — instead of “if you can’t find anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”, now it is “if you can’t find anything negative to say, don’t bother saying anything (because negativity drives more web traffic)”. [Perhaps sort of what Nick was getting at about “19th century”.]
I remember you having one regular commenter who wrote (at the beginning of summer reruns, I think) that he was not interested in the Champions Wildcard weeks and would not be back “on” until after they were finished. However, he did not criticize their choice to do these [yes, due to the writers’ strike, but perhaps on the assumption that they might have somehow chosen some other option], just noted that the reason he was taking a hiatus himself was because he wasn’t interested in this format (not as some sort of solitary boycott).
Thanks for your good (and hard) work and your reasonable attitude.
The structural design of Reddit allows subreddit mods to act as basically a version in miniature of what goes on with Musk and X. Ultimately, that is why I feel it is better to either be in a social media setting with professional moderators or nice bespoke sites like this one
Thanks, Andy! I’m so happy to have you in my corner for this issue. It does appear that r/Jeopardy has some contrarians in moderation, but my eyeball test for posts there gives me the impression that the community at large is pretty supportive of the extended tournaments; so far, at least.
Lisa: I meant 19th Century exactly. There are wars in every century, but IMO the 20th Century was marked by a significant decrease in exactly the sort of civility to which I was referring. Source: I lived it lol. So when I was speaking with Sarah and Buzzy, I had to reach back in my mind to a time when gentility and eloquence was abundant in the writing of common people. I’m a big fan of Sullivan Ballou’s letter to his wife, for instance. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone’s social media were that eloquent?
Hi there Nick! I love your positivity and can’t wait to see you in the Tournament of Champions! 🙂
Thanks for the explanation. After all, I did say maybe I just wasn’t getting the point. I also appreciate the circumstance of your having originally chosen it “on the fly”. However, I still feel the 19th century was not especially more genteel than the 20th. Sure there were wars in every century, but they were not all “brother against brother” (not that the American Civil War was the only civil war ever to have that circumstance, but I believe it to have been exceptionally so).
I feel that the 19th century is sort of looked at through rose-colored glasses. After all, for the most part only the genteel and refined had enough education to be so eloquent [Sullivan Ballou was not exactly a common person, but rather a successful attorney in his 30s writing to his beloved, not denouncing wartime atrocities (like what ultimately happened to him) to strangers]. Remember that in general only positively-worded (even if not eloquent) old letters are kept for descendants — the opposite kind would more often be immediately wadded up and thrown away or burned. The 20th century had lynchings, the Osage murders, and serial killers, but besides the Civil War (with the inhumane treatment of prisoners in addition to everything else) the 19th century had the Hatfield–McCoy feud, genocide of Native Americans, and oppression of the working class, PLUS SLAVERY.
So, I know that you were mostly contrasting discourse, not events, but I still feel like the apparent decrease in civility between the 19th and 20th centuries was primarily due to the vast increase in communication options, most of which (until about the last decade) were impermanent. I do think that civility has decreased exponentially in the last 20 years with a large part of the reason being the extreme ease, wide dispersion, and permanence of today’s preferred method of communication.
Anyway, I am not arguing with you, just clarifying my opinion (which is not even thoroughly “pro-20th”), just saying that I don’t think it can really be determined due to only having the best of 19th century communications saved and disseminated and due to the broadcast media of the 20th century focusing on “bad” news, especially in “living memory”.