# Worst performance by a WWTBAM audience ever **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 23, 2017, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709 "2017-06-23T20:17:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/41 "2017-06-25T06:02:12Z")
Oddly enough, I heard or read recently that left to their own devices, the audience will generally come up with the correct answer, if only by a few percent. The important thing is not to influence them with your pointless ramblings, because they’ll respond with what they think you want to hear. I’m always amazed when a contestant automatically rejects the correct answer for no apparent reason. Just once, I’d like to hear Chris Harrison ask “Why do you say that?”\* \*And I’m sure the contestant would reply “Because my gut is telling me so.” ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/42 "2017-06-25T06:03:32Z")
Better than audiences on the Russian version of the show, who I hear deliberately sabotaged players. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/43 "2017-06-25T06:15:00Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > Better than audiences on the Russian version of the show, who I hear deliberately sabotaged players. Having lived full-time in Russia from 1992 to 2008, I can tell you this is typical Russian behavior. Most Russians resent anyone who’s successful, since (a) they believe the only way to get there is dishonestly and (b) they can’t have what the other person has. A 100% real Russian joke: God appears to two Russian farmers and offers to grant them anything they wish. The first farmer thinks for a minute and says “I’d like to have a cow.” God waves his hand and _ **poof!** _ a cow appears in the farmer’s pasture. The second farmer thinks a minute and says “I wish my neighbor’s cow were dead.” ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/44 "2017-06-25T16:35:45Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > I meant the early episodes as I haven’t watched in awhile. I fully acknowledge that it might be confirmation bias on my part. I wouldn’t be surprised either wayif it’s not really random. Just my opinion, but I think (would need to research to confirm) that the host uses the word “random” in describing the 50/50. If they do, and instead it’s a producer jiggering the results, that could be a huge\* scandal and big money lawsuit. \*relatively speaking. Not Teapot Dome huge, maybe not even $64,000 Question huge…but large. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/45 "2017-06-25T16:45:08Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Having lived full-time in Russia from 1992 to 2008, I can tell you this is typical Russian behavior. Most Russians resent anyone who’s successful, since (a) they believe the only way to get there is dishonestly and (b) they can’t have what the other person has. > > A 100% real Russian joke: > > God appears to two Russian farmers and offers to grant them anything they wish. > > The first farmer thinks for a minute and says “I’d like to have a cow.” God waves his hand and _ **poof!** _ a cow appears in the farmer’s pasture. > > The second farmer thinks a minute and says “I wish my neighbor’s cow were dead.” Hah! Same joke is told in Hungary about Hungarians, and I wouldn’t argue that there’s a bit of truth in it… ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/46 "2017-06-25T18:37:03Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > Just my opinion, but I think (would need to research to confirm) that the host uses the word “random” in describing the 50/50. If they do, and instead it’s a producer jiggering the results, that could be a huge\* scandal and big money lawsuit. I watch the show practically every weekday, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t use the word “arbitrarily” (at least not anymore). I don’t think he even asks the computer to do it nowadays. He just says “Please eliminate the two incorrect answers,” or something like that. The above scenario happens way too often for it to be an accident, and it \*\*never \*\* happens when the contestant hasn’t indicated a preference (at least not that I’ve observed). When Meredith Vieira was hosting the show, she used the words “computer” and “arbitrary” a lot, but I can’t recall any of the subsequent hosts doing it. Maybe I just had my TV muted too much… :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/47 "2017-06-25T18:37:13Z")
I see this show is still airing in syndication, a surprise to me. Has no one won the top prize since 2003 or so or am I reading Wikipedia wrong? why were there a few winners back in the first 3 years of this show and none since? ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/48 "2017-06-25T18:39:39Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > Just my opinion, but I think (would need to research to confirm) that the host uses the word “random” in describing the 50/50. If they do, and instead it’s a producer jiggering the results, that could be a huge\* scandal and big money lawsuit. > \*relatively speaking. Not Teapot Dome huge, maybe not even $64,000 Question huge…but large. [It says online(with no citations…?) that they originally removed the two most wrong answers and later moved to random.](http://millionaire.wikia.com/wiki/50:50) ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/49 "2017-06-25T18:48:22Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I see this show is still airing in syndication, a surprise to me. > > Has no one won the top prize since 2003 or so or am I reading Wikipedia wrong? why were there a few winners back in the first 3 years of this show and none since? Are you referring to the original nighttime version, or the dumbed-down daytime version? When the show first aired, contestants had to win a lightning round prior to moving up to the chair opposite the host. Ergo, they were likely the ones best suited to win $1 million (survival of the fittest). I don’t know when (or if) that changed in the nighttime version, since I wasn’t watching it on US TV in those days. But it’s obvious the vast majority of contestants nowadays are not picked because they’re the sharpest tool in the box; they just look good on TV and can fill minutes of air time with pointless drivel. In the six years I’ve been watching the syndicated show, I’ve seen no one win $1 million, though there have been a few very sharp people who’ve made it to $250,000 (one of them, a priest, was on last week). I haven’t seen anyone get any farther, at least not that I recall. Usually, they use up all their lifelines in the first five or six questions and fall back to $5000 even if they make it to $30,000. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/50 "2017-06-25T19:27:04Z")
Who Would The Batman Attack Mentally? Why am I the only one who doesn’t get WWTBAM stands for? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/51 "2017-06-25T19:51:27Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > _Where Would Tarzan Bone A Monkey_ Ah, it’s a panel show, like _QI_. Well, of course the stupid answers won: That’s what’s funny, and funny is the whole point of the show. The quiz is just something to hang gags on, and nobody takes it very seriously. ---
**Author:** ![from\_a\_to\_z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5fc32e/32.png) [@from\_a\_to\_z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/from_a_to_z)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/52 "2017-06-25T20:40:09Z")
(“That would be in the jungle, **Gatopescado**.”) Hopefully now is a good time to promote Frances Willard’s [1895 memoir](https://archive.org/details/wheelwithinwheel00williala) _A wheel within a wheel. How I learned to ride the bicycle, with some reflections by the way_. As she admits, > [@](#): > > Born with an inveterate opposition to staying in the house, I very early learned to use a carpenter’s kit and a gardener’s tools, and followed in my mimic way the occupations of the poulterer and the farmer, working my little field with a wooden plow of my own making, and felling saplings with an ax rigged up from the old iron of the wagon-shop. Living in the country, far from the artificial restraints and conventions by which most girls are hedged from the activities that would develop a good physique, and endowed with the companionship of a mother who let me have my own sweet will, I " ran wild " until my sixteenth birthday, when the hampering long skirts were brought, with their accompanying corset and high heels ; my hair was clubbed up with pins, and I remember writing in my journal, in the first heartbreak of a young human colt taken from its pleasant pasture, “Altogether, I recognize that my occupation is gone…” You go Frances. And, thinking ahead to 1929… > [@silenus](#): > > What really put the genetic mix on puree was the railroad. Well, that and the automobile, which took courting out of the parlor and into the back seat. …Peter Arno’s _The New Yorker_ cartoon is [here](https://condenaststore.com/featured/we-want-to-report-a-stolen-car-peter-arno.html). Happy performances. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/53 "2017-06-25T21:31:25Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > I don’t know when (or if) that changed in the nighttime version, since I wasn’t watching it on US TV in those days. But it’s obvious the vast majority of contestants nowadays are not picked because they’re the sharpest tool in the box; they just look good on TV and can fill minutes of air time with pointless drivel. My personal experience: after the taping, those who wanted to audition were shepherded into another room, and given an extensive written test (with #2 pencils). They scanned the answer sheets into a reader, and then read the names of those who passed. The passing rate was about 10%. The 90% were dismissed. Those who passed were given a brief interview, and then sent home to await further instructions. I wasn’t called back, so I presume that I didn’t fall into the look they wanted at the time (i.e., they were all done with middle-aged overweight white males for that season.) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/54 "2017-06-26T00:33:47Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > When I was on WWTBAM the producers told me to take as much time as I needed and they’d cut out the excess, but they also warned me that Regis would pressure me to hurry up, and said to ignore him. This turned out to be 100% true, and when I polled the audience on a question (which they, and then I, got wrong), every few seconds he was like “what are you thinking? have you reached a decision? just waiting here.” > > So I’m not sure how much time I could have actually taken. That’s nice insight! I didn’t know you were on the show. I assumed there wasn’t any fixed limit, but it’s nice to have that confirmed. (Though I do wonder if the daytime version sans Regis is different.) But I was specifically asking about how long the _audience_ had to answer the question. How long was there between you using that lifeline and the results coming in? And is there any sort of timer or anything on the audience? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/55 "2017-06-26T00:41:52Z")
Even if the 50/50 doesn’t specifically pick the two options the person is debating, it could still just always remove the answers that are least likely. That would most often correspond to the ones the person is debating. The metagamer in me suggests debating with one of the answers you aren’t sure about, and one you know isn’t correct. If they are using what you say, then you’ve just given yourself a way to get the answer 100% of the time. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2017, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/56 "2017-06-29T23:24:41Z")
The \*\*\*Millionaire \*\*\*moment I remember most actually comes from the Russian edition of the show around 2001, which was hosted by a very young guy named Maxim Galkin, the boy-toy of an aging pop star. The contestant was a middle-aged woman who seemed to have a real attitude problem. Why, I don’t know; but it was clear she thought she was much smarter than any of her predecessors that evening. She had gotten through the first half-dozen questions or so, so she was already sitting on a pretty big pile of money. Then the next question came up: “Which of these movies ends with a demonstration in Red Square?” I forget what the other three choices were, but the correct answer was _ **Tsirk** _ (_ **The Circus** _), a Stalin-era work in which a young white woman flees racist America with her black baby and finds tolerance and romance as a circus star in the Soviet Union. \*\*Anyone \*\*who grew up in the USSR would know this film and how it ends; hell, **I** knew it, and I was born and raised in Minnesota! I was amazed when she rejected it out of hand, for no apparent reason: “_ **Tsirk** _? Not bloody likely!” Galkin was visibly astonished. “Have you \*seen \*_ **Tsirk** _?!?” he asked. “I’ve seen it,” she said very matter-of-factly, “and it doesn’t end that way.” What can you do in a case like this? She gave a wrong answer, and of course Galkin had to accept it. She was really, \*\*\*really \*\*\*pissed off, and I think she was convinced \*\*\*Millionaire \*\*\*had screwed her over. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2017, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709/57 "2017-06-29T23:49:48Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > That’s nice insight! I didn’t know you were on the show. I assumed there wasn’t any fixed limit, but it’s nice to have that confirmed. (Though I do wonder if the daytime version sans Regis is different.) > > But I was specifically asking about how long the _audience_ had to answer the question. How long was there between you using that lifeline and the results coming in? And is there any sort of timer or anything on the audience? Oooooh, sorry, and good question. There was definitely a fixed time because I remember a warning that they were about to close the voting. It felt like about three years, but if I had to guess I’d say 20 seconds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-performance-by-a-wwtbam-audience-ever/789709.md?page=2)