Ben Fowlkes interviews @JonJones
Jon Jones: “This is basically a wandering circus that shows up at my door by accident a couple times a year.”
Follow @JonJones.
Not the best fighter in MMA, who adorns his social media account with “Will you be a witness?” and then destroys his reputation over and over. That’s @JonnyBones.
@JonJones is the game developer and self-described geek who’s forever the target of Internet rants directed at the UFC’s Jones. ‘Good’ Jones deflects the trolls with remarkably good-natured and humorous verbal Jiu-Jitsu.
In a recent interview with Ben Fowlkes for MMAjunkie, ‘Good’ Jones talked about what it’s like having thousands of angry hardcore MMA fanbase members chew him out everytime UFC Jones screws up, and that’s a lot. He also discussed the parody video of his training for troll attacks, created by the New York video production company Between Pictures (at bottom; apologies for the autoplay).
“This is basically a wandering circus that shows up at my door by accident a couple times a year,” said Jones. “It’s the one time I can be unreservedly silly. It’s a vehicle to play this hapless doof who’s just happy for the attention.”
“For practice, I started taking on Trump voters [on Twitter]. I found them to be much, much worse than MMA fans. So by comparison, every time I feel like it gets kind of intense, I remember what it was like arguing with Trump voters, and I think, ‘Oh, this is much better.’ We’re not talking about politics or any serious issues. We’re talking about who punches gooder and who should punch better than the other guy, and we’re not even talking about the right people.
“The thing that keeps it fresh for me, my core engagement with it, is the chance to take someone who’s really, really angry and get them to laugh at how silly they were being. They’re expecting this professional fighter, and they get a guy who’s confused and eating a burrito and has no idea what’s going on. If I can get them to laugh with me, that’s the ultimate goal.”
“It’s been interesting seeing how people from all different walks of life are engaged with this. I promised myself I would never learn anything about [MMA] because it would ruin my bit, but I’ve absorbed a lot just accidentally. And for the most part, I’m impressed by the people I meet through this.
“I’m also surprised and impressed by how little racist stuff I see. Out of the thousands of tweets, race has only come up like two or three times, ever. The internet being the internet, and Twitter being Twitter, I expected much worse. So aside from the fact that I get torrents of hate mail intended for someone else, I’ve been pretty impressed with the MMA community.”
“The whole point is for this to be funny and not serious. I’m the Twitter equivalent of a squirrel that can water-ski, and that’s fine. I’m happy to play a clown, but I don’t want to be some sort of misery clown, if that’s even a thing.”
