Bam Margera Says He Never Wants to See Knoxville or Tremaine Again. The Internet Is Taking That Seriously.
Rolling Stone called him 'the Britney Spears of Jackass.' He called the reunion a thing that is not going to happen. Reactions, accordingly, were not small.
On July 3rd, reports surfaced that Bam Margera had stated plainly, in what documents reviewed by this publication describe as a formal interview context, that he does not want to see Johnny Knoxville or Jeff Tremaine ever again and that a Jackass reunion is, in his words, not going to happen. Rolling Stone, in a profile published the same day, labeled him the Britney Spears of Jackass. The internet, characteristically, had opinions.
The dominant reaction, at least in the corners of the discourse this correspondent surveilled, was something closer to finality than surprise. Viewers who had spent the better part of two weeks watching Bam attend a pride parade, announce an engagement, break a thumb skating, and give what multiple outlets described as his most candid interviews in years largely read the Knoxville-Tremaine declaration not as an eruption but as a period at the end of a very long sentence. The sentiment, paraphrased across several posts reviewed by this publication, was that the man had already moved on and was simply saying so out loud.
A second and more heated cluster of reactions centered on the Rolling Stone framing. The Britney Spears comparison landed differently for different readers. Some found it generous, even apt: a figure who had been publicly managed, publicly broken, and was now, according to the coverage, publicly reassembling. Others found it reductive, arguing that Bam's situation involved legal and personal entanglements that the parallel did not fully account for. Sources who requested anonymity because the group chat is private described the framing as, quote, doing a lot of heavy lifting.
There was also a contingent, smaller but vocal, focused specifically on the reunion language. That Bam would watch 'Jackass: Best and Last' on his own terms while closing the door on any personal reconciliation struck these observers as the most psychologically coherent thing he had said in the entire press cycle. The film contains archival footage of him. His parents attended the premiere in his place. The through-line, as more than a few people noted, had been visible for some time.
What the Rolling Stone piece added, beyond the headline comparison, was a portrait of a man oriented forward. The Fishtank hosting role, his skating, the engagement to Darby Allin: the coverage framed these not as diversions but as the actual story now. Whether the internet was ready to let the Jackass chapter fully close is another matter. Attention, once given, is difficult to redirect. And the people watching Bam Margera most closely are not watching him because of what he used to be. They are watching because of what he appears, improbably, to be becoming.
