'Jeopardy!' Contestant's Awkward Answer Goes Viral
An awkward moment from Jeopardy! back in 2015 has resurfaced on social media today and is going viral again.
In April 2015, contestant Tom Imler made headlines when one of his answers on the iconic quiz show was deemed to be creepy.
The prompt that started the whole debacle, read by the late Alex Trebek went:
"In common law, the age of this, signaling adulthood, is presumed to be 14 in boys and 12 in girls."
This led to Imler blurting out his unfortunate response which was: "What is the age of consent?"
Trebek responded with a blunt: "No," and Imler seemed to immediately regret his answer.
The correct answer in fact should have been: "What is puberty?"
The age of consent in the U.S. varies between the ages of 16 and 18 depending on the state.
The clip is doing the rounds on Twitter years later, having been shared by user B.W. Carlin, @BaileyCarlin.
The clip was originally shared by the account @Skeeter and had racked up more than 251,000 views at the time of publishing.
When the moment first went viral, Imler who is from North Carolina was widely condemned on social media, but urged that he had made a stupid mistake while under pressure.
"It pissed me off," Imler said of the reaction to the NY Daily News. "It's 127,000 percent untrue. But when it started to snowball, I started to worry that people might think it was true. I started to think, 'Holy cow. What if one day I come home from work and there's a cop waiting outside my door.'"
Recalling some of the remarks made about him at the time, Imler said: "'This guy is a pedophile. Wow. Somebody check his basement. Somebody check his hard drive.'
"Things along those lines—nothing complimentary. Nothing like, 'Give it rest. It was a faux pas.'"
He added: "I was just astounded at how fast it exploded. It was the wrong answer to a poorly worded question."
Imler revealed that the phrase "common law" threw him off and that a friend told him he went viral on Reddit.
"All I had thought was, 'Darn, I got the wrong answer.'"
He added: "It's just utterly ridiculous. I decided I'm not going to let trolls ruin my accomplishment."
Jeopardy! recently announced that Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings will remain the hosts for the remainder of the game show's current season.
Uncommon Knowledge
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