"People have been quoting to me so often, and for so long, that even if I don't recognize the quote, I am able to recognize that it's from . When I do recognize the quote, it's not because I've seen that episode, but that so many people have quoted it before. People quote The Simpsons like it's a secret handshake with the whole world-and at this point, it basically is."
"The Simpsons is going into its 37th season. Thirty-seventh. It's so embedded in the culture that someone like me, who never really watched it, still can't escape its influence. The remarkable thing about people quoting The Simpsons is that they still do it like it's niche. It remains a mark of a particular sort of taste in a way that quoting any other highly successful network television show could never be. The Simpsons is an institution. Who quotes institutions?"
"Stupid TV, Be More Funny: How the Golden Era of the Simpsons Changed Television-and America-Forever is a long title for a reasonably concise answer to this question. It's kind of an oral history, but kind of not at the same time, because this book has a clear anchor: writer Alan Siegel. By his own admission, the Ringer staff writer and now author (his book came out in June and is"
The Simpsons' lines circulate so widely that people often recognize quotes without having seen the episodes. Quoting the show operates as a shared cultural shorthand, functioning like a global secret handshake that signals a particular taste. The series has become deeply embedded in culture and remains treated as a niche marker despite broad success. The show's longevity and influence are tied to its original core audience: middle-aged white men who were the right age when it premiered in 1989. Explaining its staying power requires attending to that core and acknowledging that perceived subversiveness and progressivism existed largely within straight white male perspectives.
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