5 ms·

I encountered this recently with The Simpsons. There's a meme about "zombie Simpsons" and the show being a shell of its former self which gets repeated ad naus

I encountered this recently with The Simpsons. There's a meme about "zombie Simpsons" and the show being a shell of its former self which gets repeated ad nauseum on the internet. But when I sat down and watched every Simpsons episode, I discovered that meme to be out of date by 6+ years. Some of the new Simpsons episodes are surprisingly good and rank among my favorites in the series. Yet even though the show has really returned to form for half a decade now there are still people online commenting about how bad it is relative to some imagined older era of the Simpsons they might not have even watched. It's a weird groupthink meme that's hard to get past.

probably_wrong 4y ago
First of all, I am not here to tell you what you should or shouldn't like. If the last seasons of the Simpsons are some of your favorites, I am genuinely glad. Having said that, I don't think your personal outlook matches the opinion of the average Simpsons viewer. I took a quick look at the ratings over the years up to season 31 (which is all that was available in this dataset [1]), and the average IMDB rating for seasons 29 to 31 are 6.61, 6.04 and 6.37. For context, season 15 was the first season to get an average rating under 7 and seasons 2-8 are all above 8. But more generally, I wouldn't call a "groupthink meme" something that, even with an optimistic point of view, has been true for 17 years and allegedly less true for 6. I would rather call it "a strong prior". [1] https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/hod101s/simpsons-imdb-ratings https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/hod101s/simpsons-imdb-rating...
- lordgrenville 4y ago
  The problem with using priors in aesthetic judgment is that because it's inherently subjective, the prior actually influences your measurement. So it can be self-reinforcing.
  - Tarsul 4y ago
    yeah but still the simpsons today are something else entirely than the simpsons 20 years ago. It's not that they had 10 bad years and now, suddenly, are good and similar like before. It's simply not true. And it wouldn't even make sense (what would have to happen for that to become true?).
mhh__ 4y ago
My favourite groupthinks are pineapple on pizza being bad and moist being an ugly word. The thing about the Simpsons isn't that it's bad as per se but the fact it still going. Who actually gets excited for new Simpsons.
- avereveard 4y ago
  Pineapple pizza gets a bad reputation because it is usually prepared with absolutely no cognition of food flavor interaction. You cannot just put sweet on top of sweet on top of sweet and expect to serve it in a sizing as big as a main course without people complaining about it.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Complains about pineapple pizza are not about taste. It tastes good and fair amount of people is ordering it every day. Every pizza place have it, because it gets ordered often. There are way less popular pizzas people complain about less. The complains are that the pineapple does not "belong" there.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Yes exactly. It's a lot easier to buy a pineapple pizza than an anchovies pizza for instance. They're both shelf-stable in a can so the expense of a pizza shop having some in stock is fairly negligible, but a pizza shop offering anchovies seems like a 50/50 proposition while just about every pizza shop in America sells pineapple pizzas.
      - savoytruffle 4y ago
        I have come to sometimes like anchovies on pizza (or a salad) but I ordered one for delivery about 10 months ago and the place actually called me up and asked if I was sure. Maybe they get complaints!
  - astura 4y ago
    This comment makes no sense. Sweet on top of sweet on top of sweet? The fuck are you talking about? Nobody is doing that. The base is savory and only the pineapple on top is sweet. It's also usually paired with ham, another savory item. Sweet and savory are a pleasant food combination for many (though not all) but I can understand why some don't like pineapple as a topping - it's a really strong flavor and it changes the texture of the pizza. People who have never had it sometimes complain about the concept. Some of those people simply can't stand sweet+savory foods, my husband is one of them, he hates ALL sweet in savory foods. Since this is a very consistent trait in him, I don't knock him for finding the concept off-putting. Same way I won't try peanut butter+anything else sandwich, because I absolutely can't stand the texture of peanut butter on bread. I love it though, it's my go-to.
psyc 4y ago
I did as well when I watched every episode earlier this year. I kept on scrutinizing it (and I am normally a hyper-critical TV viewer) but aside from some slight "off-ness" in a few episodes roughly around the time they changed the intro, season after season passed with me still waiting for this decline to occur. Well it never arrived. Did the show change over time? Of course it did I don't know any long-running anything that didn't evolve. I just never noticed it getting less funny, less clever, or less Simpsonesque. So I brought it up to my brother, who used to watch it with me from its debut until around 2000, and is way more of a Simpsons nut than I am. He explained the decline to me, when it was and what it entailed, from his perspective, which I think more or less vibed with what most fans say. After he explained it, I could kind of sort of see it that way, at least to understand why a person might hold the 'decline opinion'. But I wouldn't have made that judgement on my own. It still doesn't seem notable enough to me to have turned into "what everyone says". Oh well. More chuckles for me!
dwringer 4y ago
You're right about the meme but "Simpsons being bad is just a meme, the last few seasons are actually good" is also a bit of a meme at this point. I don't think there's ever an end to it and I think everything in pop culture gets the same meme treatment. You can always find people who are for or against something, but past a certain threshhold, shared identities seem to form around these kinds of memes. For example, The Big Lebowski turned hating The Eagles into a meme. Plenty of people didn't like them already, but the movie provided something to rally around. I can only presume lots of people got burned out on The Simpsons for one reason or another and started amplifying each others' voices online, leading to the meme. The interesting thing to me is how people with little-to-no firsthand experience on which to base an opinion in the first place then simply adopt these meme opinions and identities.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > For example, The Big Lebowski turned hating The Eagles into a meme. The Big Lebowski might have been the nucleation site that started the crystallization of that meme, but I think the public was well primed for it. Hotel California was (maybe still is?) getting an absurd amount of radio playtime. They played it so often, I think backlash was bound to happen sooner or later. I don't dislike the band generally, Journey of the Sorcerer is still one of my favorite songs ever. But I've heard enough Hotel California for three or four lifetimes already.

probably_wrong 4y ago

First of all, I am not here to tell you what you should or shouldn't like. If the last seasons of the Simpsons are some of your favorites, I am genuinely glad. Having said that, I don't think your personal outlook matches the opinion of the average Simpsons viewer. I took a quick look at the ratings over the years up to season 31 (which is all that was available in this dataset [1]), and the average IMDB rating for seasons 29 to 31 are 6.61, 6.04 and 6.37. For context, season 15 was the first season to get an average rating under 7 and seasons 2-8 are all above 8. But more generally, I wouldn't call a "groupthink meme" something that, even with an optimistic point of view, has been true for 17 years and allegedly less true for 6. I would rather call it "a strong prior". [1] https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/hod101s/simpsons-imdb-ratings https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/hod101s/simpsons-imdb-rating...

lordgrenville 4y ago
The problem with using priors in aesthetic judgment is that because it's inherently subjective, the prior actually influences your measurement. So it can be self-reinforcing.
- Tarsul 4y ago
  yeah but still the simpsons today are something else entirely than the simpsons 20 years ago. It's not that they had 10 bad years and now, suddenly, are good and similar like before. It's simply not true. And it wouldn't even make sense (what would have to happen for that to become true?).

mhh__ 4y ago

My favourite groupthinks are pineapple on pizza being bad and moist being an ugly word. The thing about the Simpsons isn't that it's bad as per se but the fact it still going. Who actually gets excited for new Simpsons.

avereveard 4y ago
Pineapple pizza gets a bad reputation because it is usually prepared with absolutely no cognition of food flavor interaction. You cannot just put sweet on top of sweet on top of sweet and expect to serve it in a sizing as big as a main course without people complaining about it.
- watwut 4y ago
  Complains about pineapple pizza are not about taste. It tastes good and fair amount of people is ordering it every day. Every pizza place have it, because it gets ordered often. There are way less popular pizzas people complain about less. The complains are that the pineapple does not "belong" there.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Yes exactly. It's a lot easier to buy a pineapple pizza than an anchovies pizza for instance. They're both shelf-stable in a can so the expense of a pizza shop having some in stock is fairly negligible, but a pizza shop offering anchovies seems like a 50/50 proposition while just about every pizza shop in America sells pineapple pizzas.
    - savoytruffle 4y ago
      I have come to sometimes like anchovies on pizza (or a salad) but I ordered one for delivery about 10 months ago and the place actually called me up and asked if I was sure. Maybe they get complaints!
- astura 4y ago
  This comment makes no sense. Sweet on top of sweet on top of sweet? The fuck are you talking about? Nobody is doing that. The base is savory and only the pineapple on top is sweet. It's also usually paired with ham, another savory item. Sweet and savory are a pleasant food combination for many (though not all) but I can understand why some don't like pineapple as a topping - it's a really strong flavor and it changes the texture of the pizza. People who have never had it sometimes complain about the concept. Some of those people simply can't stand sweet+savory foods, my husband is one of them, he hates ALL sweet in savory foods. Since this is a very consistent trait in him, I don't knock him for finding the concept off-putting. Same way I won't try peanut butter+anything else sandwich, because I absolutely can't stand the texture of peanut butter on bread. I love it though, it's my go-to.

psyc 4y ago

I did as well when I watched every episode earlier this year. I kept on scrutinizing it (and I am normally a hyper-critical TV viewer) but aside from some slight "off-ness" in a few episodes roughly around the time they changed the intro, season after season passed with me still waiting for this decline to occur. Well it never arrived. Did the show change over time? Of course it did I don't know any long-running anything that didn't evolve. I just never noticed it getting less funny, less clever, or less Simpsonesque. So I brought it up to my brother, who used to watch it with me from its debut until around 2000, and is way more of a Simpsons nut than I am. He explained the decline to me, when it was and what it entailed, from his perspective, which I think more or less vibed with what most fans say. After he explained it, I could kind of sort of see it that way, at least to understand why a person might hold the 'decline opinion'. But I wouldn't have made that judgement on my own. It still doesn't seem notable enough to me to have turned into "what everyone says". Oh well. More chuckles for me!

dwringer 4y ago

You're right about the meme but "Simpsons being bad is just a meme, the last few seasons are actually good" is also a bit of a meme at this point. I don't think there's ever an end to it and I think everything in pop culture gets the same meme treatment. You can always find people who are for or against something, but past a certain threshhold, shared identities seem to form around these kinds of memes. For example, The Big Lebowski turned hating The Eagles into a meme. Plenty of people didn't like them already, but the movie provided something to rally around. I can only presume lots of people got burned out on The Simpsons for one reason or another and started amplifying each others' voices online, leading to the meme. The interesting thing to me is how people with little-to-no firsthand experience on which to base an opinion in the first place then simply adopt these meme opinions and identities.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> For example, The Big Lebowski turned hating The Eagles into a meme. The Big Lebowski might have been the nucleation site that started the crystallization of that meme, but I think the public was well primed for it. Hotel California was (maybe still is?) getting an absurd amount of radio playtime. They played it so often, I think backlash was bound to happen sooner or later. I don't dislike the band generally, Journey of the Sorcerer is still one of my favorite songs ever. But I've heard enough Hotel California for three or four lifetimes already.