‘The Simpsons’ has become a parody of itself. That’s a good thing.

Nearly four decades after it started, the series is still running. But no one really talks about it anymore. Ratings have been in decline for years, recently achieving just 10% of the viewership from 2000, when the show’s generally accepted 'Golden Era' had already ended and its long decline begun.

By Gearoid Reidy

There was a time when The Simpsons was a universal pop culture touchstone. President George H W Bush criticised it from the White House; millions tuned in in 1995 to find out who shot Mr Burns; words and phrases coined for the show, like “meh,” entered the common lexicon.

Nearly four decades after it started, the series is still running. But no one really talks about it anymore. Ratings have been in decline for years, recently achieving just 10 per cent of the viewership from 2000, when the show’s generally accepted “Golden Era” had already ended and its long decline begun.

The Simpsons Movie, perhaps the last time its content really resonated, is so old that it came out at the same time as the first iPhone went on sale. Recently when the series has made headlines, it’s for other reasons — 2017’s documentary The Problem With Apu, examining the Indian stereotypes of the show’s most notable South Asian immigrant; or the recasting of actors playing Black characters such as Dr. Hibbert in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests. Its supposed ability to predict the future, such as a reference in 2000 to President Trump, decades before he entered politics, sometimes pops up. But no one is talking about its content.

At least that was until a few weeks ago, when news of a shock “series finale” bucked this trend. After 36 seasons — it’s the longest-running US sitcom and indeed one of the most venerable shows in the world — the prospect that the series would finally, mercifully come to an end briefly rekindled interest, and many tuned in, in my case for the first time in around 20 years.

Except it wasn’t the last chapter, but a bait-and-switch parody of famous finales. While not without its charms, the episode, entitled Bart’s Birthday, also reminded me of everything wrong with the modern Simpsons: pointless and unfunny celebrity cameos (John Cena, Tom Hanks), cultural references that feel dated like multiverses, and voice actors struggling to sound like the characters they made famous. Instead of a fond farewell, viewers like me were reminded of why we no longer watch in the first place.

But that doesn’t mean The Simpsons is irrelevant. Indeed, away from its current creators, the show is positively flourishing. On social media and as memes, it’s funnier than ever.

The show has long been a “shared language” for those of a certain generation, as philosopher Tom Whyman wrote in 2022. Phrases like “Old man yells at cloud,” used often self-deprecatingly to describe being out of touch, or “that’s the joke” have long since passed from the series into the lingua franca.

Images from the series have become the equivalent of emoji, one-frame representations of feelings — think Homer backing into the bushes to display embarrassment or awkwardness, or Principal Skinner’s “it’s the children who are wrong” often applied to call out disconnectedness or corporate stubbornness.

One of the reasons I can’t quit X is The Simpsons memes and reactions that proliferate when news hits — whether it’s Elon Musk’s appearance at a Trump rally or the memorable moments from this year Olympics, such as breaking dancer Raygun. This phenomenon may have reached its peak during Trump’s September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris (herself perhaps influenced by the show), when he spread misinformation about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — which of course shares its name with the Simpson family’s hometown.

A recent example is how users on X have been sharing a picture of Grandpa Simpson speaking — everyone understands that this denotes someone talking about how good things were back in the day — recalling memories such as how “They used to put the lyrics to all the songs right inside the CD booklet.” There are entire accounts that post nothing but Simpsons memes in response to football news, or pro-wrestling. Even poorly received episodes, such as a widely panned crossover with Family Guy, have given us the Ralph Wiggum “I’m in danger” meme.

And that’s before we even get into the meta world of “Simpsons sh*tposting”: frequently self-referential content that obsesses over recontextualising a single frame, mashes together two or more jokes from the show to form new ones, or builds memes upon memes. The most famous example of this is Steamed Hams, a phenomenon which takes a once-obscure 1996 skit and recreates it as a Gorillaz song, a scene from Seinfeld or an unsettling Soviet-era cartoon. While the headfake finale had some amusing callbacks to earlier episodes, its meta commentary made it sound more like a rejected script from Rick & Morty. It’s in the hands of Simpsons fans where the real experimental creativity is happening.

At one point in Bart’s Birthday, the elementary schooler proclaims that “A classic series like this can never end!” It sounded more like a cry for help. Regardless of the misdirection, eventually, an actual finale must be coming for The Simpsons. The main cast is aging: Julie Kavner, who voices Marge, is 74 (and you can hear it); Harry Shearer, who performs Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders and many others, is 80 (ditto).

It’s time to let it end with dignity. Like Sherlock Holmes or the Cthulhu Mythos of HP Lovecraft, the show has long since passed beyond its original confines, sustained now in the public consciousness by other creators, from meme makers to electronic artists. Thanks to its fans, The Simpsons will live on. So don’t have a cow, man.