I admit I did the same, with a similar realization. The card market has since crashed, but if I’d cashed in during its hey day, I would have made a decent amount.
Best post of this thread by far.
Also, now I feel old.
My wife and I are in our early 30s so we grew up with the Ren & Stimpy / Rocko’s Modern Life / Doug / Rugrats era.
Just recently we spent a saturday afternoon watching Ren & Stimpy and drinking. It was AMAZING.
Ren & Stimpy is legitimately one of the most disturbing and ahead-of-its-time shows out there.
I saw a filming of Double Dare live when I was a kid, and one of the kids they picked to be on the team was easily one of the dumbest kids in our class… but I guess they didn’t want contestants who actually knew the answer to questions, because then they wouldn’t do the physical challenge, which was a major draw of the show.
I’m almost positive that game show participants (with some exceptions) are vetted over and over to ensure they are entertaining above all else. That’s why everyone on The Price is Right is fuckin’ stoked to be there, and why everyone on Deal or No Deal takes big risks and talks through their decisionmaking for what feels like hours – it’s entertaining. So I 100% believe they chose that kid intentionally.
Except for Jeopardy. The two folks I knew that were on Jeopardy were crazy smart, but also introverts and very quiet. One of the guys was handsome, one wasn’t.
Jeapordy had a notoriously hard test to get in. I knew two friends who always knew every single answer on Jeapordy whenever I watched with them. It turns out both had tried out to be on Jeapordy, and neither had passed the test.
I’ve been there, but for me it was Morrowind. “I won’t be making a character that uses magic!”, etc… I lost that argument, but then won by default when I saved up to buy a new video card several months later that bundled the game for free, so that put my parents over the line to not care anymore. Ah, memories.
I have a couple of these too! They still try. I think a friend of a friend made it to step two, in person test or something like that.
My friends finished 2nd and 3rd on Jeopardy, and neither were really close to the winner. It is good to know that some shows actually live up to their reputation.
Yeah the test to go on is tough.
Source: I’ve done it about 11 years ago
My friend won one of the teacher tournaments. Really smart guy but outgoing also.
What amazes me about this, aside from the show is still going with the same host even, he’s not my favorite, but that money seems, well it seems so small compared to some other shows that I guess are more reality shows than game shows but… yeah, I’ve known some pretty smart individuals who’ve been trying to get into that show for a long time, so clearly the barrier to entry is fairly high. If they’re staging anything it would be very little.
Jeopardy is one of the last of the old time game shows. It was created in (gasp!) 1964 by Merv Griffin. The format has remained the same, more or less, this whole time. It seems that it’s not so much about the money as the prestige.
Edit: I don’t believe that there is any staging at all.
My wife was a contestant on Jeopardy–she did better on the online test than I did, and was invited to the in-person test.
The in-person test is where they screen the contestants for the ability to present reasonably well on television. Being smart enough to do well on the test gets your foot in the door, but they are looking for people who are reasonably personable and attractive. The assistant producers interview you and put you in a mock-game to see how you might do on TV. Lots of the qualifiers are introverts, but you have to be able to say a few words spontaneously when they interview you. Some people have qualified for the in-person test many times over years, sometimes crossing the country to show up for it, and never been picked for the actual show.
She placed third, missing a Star Wars question in Final Jeopardy that I imagine each and every person on this board would know the answer to.
Those are the best ones. the kind of stuff a lot of people know so for 2 second some feel smarter than these geniuses because you know an answer they don’t.
Thanks for saving me the effort of taking the test.
My understanding is that they are not only vetted, they are specifically coached to be that way. It’s not just a matter of picking the right people, it’s about telling them they need to act silly/crazy. You can just tell the way some of the contestants act - their movements are artificially exaggerated.
GODFUCKINGDAMMIT