ArthurChu wrote:Well for the record in EVERY. SINGLE. INTERVIEW I've given I've basically led off with "You know, all I literally did was Google 'Jeopardy strategy' and start reading what came up...", I've name-checked the Forrest Bounce (and made the same joke every time, that this "new" strategy was invented on Season 2 of Alex Trebek's Jeopardy when I was one year old), I've name-checked Dave Madden, Roger Craig and Watson and pointed out that media coverage of them was hardly lacking...
But whatever. I'm still picking up the phone and still "milking" the publicity train because -- as someone who long, long before any of this wanted to have opportunities to do stuff like voiceover or acting work -- I'd be stupid not to.
Sadly, that's "journalism" for you. A writer/reporter starts out with an idea for a story angle and that will be the story angle no matter what you say to contradict it. It's disgraceful and sad. Basically, you are saying "hey, I didn't make this up, it all happened before!" The reporter looks at that as, "well, I can't very well write that, it's not news." So suddenly you are a "mad genius" and a "villain".
As someone that also is looking to do acting work and voiceover, I certainly can attest that you should take advantage of every opportunity to get yourself noticed above the crowd. Your auditions will undoubtedly spike because of your sudden fame and that gets you into the door to show what you can do. Might even get you jobs as a tiebreaker which builds up the resume and gets you work. Absolutely you are doing the right thing and saying the accurate things even if people ignore it.
The idea about playing "politely" and not "competitively" reminded me of the scenes in "Chariots of Fire" when John Gielgud's character berates Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) for using coaching to help him run.
Speaking more generally:
I also acknowledge the problem of socially playing a game with less skilled players. I can never get people to play my music trivia board games with me because they assume I will win (I actually don't always). On the other side of the coin, on my Facebook (mostly) weekly music trivia contest, I had to institute special rules for "Superchampions" (i.e., those that win it the most) so that they don't scare away the newbies and casual players. After a wrong guess a "Superchampion" is locked out at least until a clue is given. On the other hand, as Arthur pointed out, it's not fun to play socially with folks whose skill level is so much beneath you (I'm not being smug or snobbish, if I played someone in tennis they would feel the same way). When I was in law school, a woman that I was interested in liked to play Trivial Pursuit and she wanted me to play with her--not as a team mind you. She was a casual player so I deliberately sandbagged to keep her interest but it wasn't fun.
I should know by now that the way people appear on television is not necessarily an indication of how they are in real life. The Jeopardy contestant coordinators are very careful to put only nice personalities on the show ("nice" not being equivalent to non-competitive by any stretch of the imagination). I was one of David Madden's critics when he first appeared on the show and when I finally met the man I found him to be one of the nicest, unassuming guys you'd ever meet. I also was, to say the least, not a Colby fan, but when I actually met him last month at the O'Brien's pub quiz after his Decades' taping, he was super-nice and friendly. Sometimes television makes a character quirk look really bad, particularly if the person with the quirk is mowing other players down.
I used to be AWSOP but wanted to be more theatrical.