Joining Ken Jennings, Julia Collins, and Jeff in the Jeopardy! hall of fame is Georgia attorney Laura Ashby. But while she has reigned supreme for more than just a couple of episodes this past month, people have been paying attention to something other than her wins—it’s her uptalking.
https://vine.co/v/iz6lI1eAZPu
The way Ashby ends her sentences with that upward inflection has gotten the Internet chattering, with a lot of people making fun of her speech patterns. One Twitter user has even suggested she get her voice box removed; another, of course, created a parody account for her voice.
Even my FIVE year old asked what the deal was with Laura Ashby’s voice. #Jeopardy
— Melanie Mansfield (@melmansfield) November 25, 2015
Laura Ashby needs her voice box removed #JeopardyLaura
— Trollèl Embiid (@AJ_Ratto) November 25, 2015
Laura Ashby, you just made me watch Jeopardy on mute for the first time in my life. Speech therapy. Please. #lauraonjeopardy
— Ninja Cuteness (@NinjaCuteness) November 24, 2015
https://twitter.com/dante2534/status/669319513234522112
Thankfully, there have been others sticking up for the Jeopardy! champ. These supporters are quick to point out that while people might be saying awful things about her, she’s still a whole lot smarter than them and, after her winning run, probably a fair deal richer as well..
Oh, and she also has degrees from both Yale and Vanderbilt.
https://twitter.com/SuburbanVoice/status/669323696146903040
Uptalk isn’t a new thing. You know at least one person that tends to talk like this. And, as New York points out, William and Mary sociologist Thomas Linneman looked at 100 episodes of the game show in 2012 and found that contestants use uptalk 37 percent of the time. So really, it just sounds like the Internet chose Ashby as an easy target to crack jokes about. Ashby may have gone home on Tuesday night, but at least she has $36,802 in winnings to drown out the sounds of all those haters.
H/T NY Mag | Screenshot via gr18vidz14kidz/YouTube
