Simpsons Shitpost of Bart Simpson sipping lean.
When I was a teenager, I asked some people on a message board about a strange Simpsons-related phenomenon that would occur to me almost daily. I would be living my normal life at school or hanging out somewhere or at home then I would see a small detail somewhere. That detail would remind of a similar detail in an episode of the Simpsons, and then when I got home, that episode of the Simpsons would be playing on TV. I came across a handful of people across the country who suffered from the same phenomenon. Years after conducting this unscientific study, I realized that I had gotten it all wrong. There was no Simpsons-psychic-superpower that I and a few others across the country possessed. The answer was much more simple: we were just a bunch of losers who thought everything reminded us of the Simpsons.
If I see a lemon in a bowl of fruit on a dining room table, I can immediately think of three Simpsons jokes that can somehow be made about it. The first one is about how "all this talk is making me hungry" and then pretending to take a big bite out of it. Another is saying that it's a lemon-shaped rock. The last is saying Country Time lemonade doesn't have anything close to a real lemon in it.
If someone says the word "hamburger," I immediately think of the phrase "steamed hams."
If I see someone swinging a hammer, I internally tell them to "crack those atoms."
The average person probably has no idea what any of those examples have to do with anything, or maybe they can pick one or two out from an episode of the Simpsons, but this is what it's like to be a Simpsons-obsessed shitposter. The most innocuous, insignificant, mundane detail of daily life can be somehow related to the Simpsons. This actually isn't that hard, considering the Simpsons has been on air for 30 years and has easily satirized nearly every aspect of American contemporary culture and the ennui of living in the 20th & 21st centuries (though true Simpsons shitposters consider seasons 1 through 8 to be true canon, with seasons 9 and 10 to be acceptable for minor use, and everything after that to be shit). Though this encyclopedic knowledge of the Simpsons may seem like a useless talent, it is the most important skill to have in order to create quality shitposts through the use of the Simpsons shitposter's most valuable tool: the Frinkiac.
The Frinkiac Supercomputer introduced by Professor Frink from the Simpsons season 7, episode 23 ("Much Apu About Nothing")
Launched in 2015 and named after the supercomputer created by the Simpsons' resident mad scientist Professor Frink, the Frinkiac is an index of still frames from every single Simpsons episode from season 1 through 17. Each still frame corresponds to the quote that is said during that specific scene. This is the Rosetta Stone for Simpsons Shitposters. Like a hammer hanging on a pegboard in every carpenter's workshop, the Frinkiac is prominently displayed in every shitposter's bookmark bar in their browser.
However, technology can only go so far. There is only one way to accurately use this tool and it's not easy: you must watch every Simpsons episode and memorize as many lines and scenes as you can. That's it. That's the only way to use this tool. If you want to be a decent shitposter, you have to sacrifice time that could be spent at your job, at school, with family, with loved ones, and dedicate as much time as you can to watching the nearly the nearly 300 episodes of the first 12 seasons of the Simpsons with Rain Man-like memorization, accuracy, and precision just to use the tool necessary to make a shitpost. There are still other skills and knowledge necessary that you must possess, and those skills are photo editing, video editing, and pop culture knowledge.
Let's use the video at the very beginning of this article as the first example on how a shitpost is born. I created that shitpost a few years ago to prepare for June 27th, the annual Houston holiday celebrating the legacy of DJ Screw, the Screwed Up Clique, and the 35 minute freestyle released in 1997. How did I come up with it?
Codeine Promethazine fountain created for the solo art show "Carbonation" at Gallery HomeCORE in collaboration with Gallery HomeLAND in 2016.
I was in my house in Houston smoking weed and looking at the codeine promethazine fountain I had made for an art show and then later installed in my house. I had made some Simpsons shitposts before where Homer smoked weed, but I specifically remembered an episode of the Simpsons where Bart drank a Squishee out of a styrofoam cup (coincidentally, the same iconic vessel used to indulge in purple drank). I also know of a separate episode where Bart gets drunk and stumbles around. Then I remembered an episode where Homer pours cough syrup into a blender to make a Flaming Homer cocktail. With these images in mind, I'm thinking I can get a clip of Bart drinking a Squishee, change the Squishee from green to purple, add some chopped and screwed music after the "codeine" starts kicking in, and then cut in some clips of Bart walking around drunk and Homer making a Flaming Homer cocktail with cough syrup in it. Now all I need to know are the names of the episodes so I can get the video and cut the clips out. That's where the Frinkiac comes in.
Just by pure memory, I know the scene of Bart drinking a Squishee contains the line "That's good Squishee." I type that line into the Frinkiac and this comes up:
Boom, I got the episode name, season, and number. I track down that episode using various internet video searches, download the video, cut the clip I need, and save it into a folder specific for this particular shitpost.
Now I need the scene of Bart stumbling around drunk. I vividly remember the scene consisted of Bart looking into a news camera and saying, "What are you looking at?" Let's plug that into the Frinkiac and see what happens.
Bingo, we got another one. Now we can repeat the same process to find all the other clips that I need. After I get all the clips, I had to have learned how to use video editing software to splice all the videos together, replace some of the audio with the chopped and screwed Point Blank song "My Mind Went Blank" by DJ Screw (ft. a sample by Convicts), and then change the color of the Squishee from green to purple.
I watch a draft of it and it's missing something; it needs just a small clip of Bart looking cool with his eyes faded after sipping the lean. Thankfully, I remember an episode where Bart feels good about asking a girl out on a date and walks around like a pimp. He says just one word in the scene: "Strut." I type that in Frinkiac and see what pops up.
Perfect. Splice that into the video editing bay and this comes out the other end:
All that fucking work goes into making a 52-second shitpost video. All that effort for an enormous worthless and pointless task. Let's quantify it and see the specific skills needed just to make that ONE shitpost:
- Encyclopedic knowledge of Simpsons episodes, scenes, and quotes. This one 52 second video contains clips from at least 4 entirely different episodes.
- Knowledge of Houston rap and DJ Screw
- How to rip audio and video from various sources
- Video editing skills
- Comedic timing
Remember, people like me know all these episodes from memory and that allows us to create these shitposts. We are not healthy. There's no reason anyone should have this kind of knowledge. But me and at least 121,000 other people share these skills; that's how many members there are in a popular Simpsons shitposting group on Facebook called Simpsons Bortposting.
Now let's analyze a few other different shitposts I've made and the skills required to make them.
This one is a Futurama themed shitpost about the infamous episode about Fry's dog. It's very simple and only required tertiary knowledge of Futurama, knowledge of the Simpsons to find the original scene of Itchy, Scratchy, and Poochy, some minor photo editing skills to erase the characters of Itchy, Scratchy, and Poochy from the original Simpsons frames, and minor photo editing skills to add Fry and Seymour the Dog.
This one required the most minuscule amount of relevant contemporary pop culture knowledge. Shortly after Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's released "WAP" in early August 2020 and then Ben Shapiro read the lyrics on video and admitted to the entire internet that he makes his wife's pussy dry as a Popeyes biscuit unless she has a vaginal infection, I immediately remembered a scene in an episode where Homer gets repulsed by a gay steelworker walking past him with a cauldron of molten metal while saying "HOT STUFF, COMING THROUGH!" I immediately got to work.
This is one is a classic type of shitpost called an amalgamation: combining two or more different jokes from two or more separate episodes to make one new joke. The base of the joke is the famous "Steamed Hams" joke from the vignette episode titled "22 Short Films About Springfield". The "Steamed Hams" joke is possibly the most shitposted Simpsons shitpost of all time with literally thousands of variations. This specific one I made required me to grab still frames from the original Steamed Hams clip, edit the photo so Skinner is crawling into the kitchen window from another episode, edit Skinner into ANOTHER episode where Bart makes a dog-food based, USA themed appetizer, and then edit that dog food joke back into a still frame the ORIGINAL clip about steamed hams. Three different episodes all cut up in order just to make one shitpost.
This type of shitpost goes in and out of fashion over the years and is called a sadpost, in which the creator attempts to be as sad, serious, and humorless as possible. This one contains still frames from 4 different episodes and minor photo editing to make Bart a ghost in the 10th frame.
I've made hundreds of shitposts throughout the years and have absolutely no plans to stop. In fact, I plan to hone my skills in photo and video editing in order to make more complex, intricate, and advanced shitposts; shitposts that are so good that the average viewer cannot tell if it is a shitpost or just a very strange episode of the Simpsons. Until that day comes, I just want every reader to know that there are Simpsons shitposters everywhere. They have trained themselves to blend in with society and resist every urge to say a Simpsons reference in every day conversation; these urges come to them multiple times a day. And if you see a stranger, coworker, family member, or even your spouse staring off into the distance, they may very well be planning out how to execute a Simpsons shitpost of their own.