Steve-O Says ‘Jackass’ Was ‘Worth Vilifying’ When It Started: ‘We Were Legitimately a Bad Influence’

Steve-O says Jackass was “worth vilifying” when it first debuted on MTV back in 2000.

When reflecting on the era in a recent interview on Mike Tyson’s Hotboxin’ podcast, Steve-O also pointed out how the rise and eventual dominance of YouTube dramatically changed the landscape.

“I think that, in the beginning of Jackass, we were genuinely worth vilifying,” he said, as seen around the 47-minute mark in the video above. “Because back then they didn’t have YouTube or video on the internet. And we were legitimately a bad influence, you know? When Jackass came out, little kids were showing up in hospitals all over the country and maybe the world because they saw … us doing this crazy shit and they wanted to do it themselves.”

The show, Steve-O said, was followed by “little kids everywhere” getting their own cameras, and in some cases, getting “really hurt.” These days, however, the variety of similarly stunt-focused content is much wider, meaning Jackass couldn’t fairly be blamed.

“At that time, you could point to us as being a very bad influence,” he said. “But I think over the years, now that there’s so much YouTube, Ridiculousness, so much. It’s just, like, it’s not our fucking fault anymore.”

See the full interview, which also includes a close-up of a sleeping dog by the name of Wendy, via the video above.

The massive success of this year’s Jackass Forever film, meanwhile, has helped inspire an impending new series under the Jackass name. As Variety reported in May, a then-recent Paramount earnings call revealed that discussions were being held about working with the series’ creators for a new series to debut on its streaming platform, Paramount+.