The chronically online got a belated apology from Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings this week after an October 24 episode of the series inadvertently sowed (there are a few more pig puns coming, so strap in) seeds of dismay with a clue about the viral meme character John Pork.
Pork, who has the head of a pig but the body of a human, has been popping up on Instagram and TikTok since at least 2018, but in the category of “Daddy, Is There Really A…” during the aforementioned episode, one clue described Pork as “AI-generated”, which had some viewers squealing hogwash.
Indeed, Pork was bacon a splash online before the relatively recent surge of generative‑AI content, and although he’s currently regarded as deceased for reasons that we promise are not worth getting into right now, he’ll probably still be lurking in some corner of the internet when AI has been replaced by our one true robot overlord: an air fryer that also folds laundry and does jury duty.
Jennings admitted he didn’t understand the John Pork clue at the time, and let’s face it, he probably wasn’t alone. You have to be at least a little too online to recognize the meme, let alone take umbrage at the besmirching of its good name.
