By Ethan Tait
So, I was recently on social media, and came across a video entitled something of the variation: “Uncanny predictions made by The Simpsons?!?!”. Now, I must please ask, STOP SAYING THAT THE SIMPSONS PREDICTED THE FUTURE! All these ‘predictions’ aren’t actually predictions and instead are just absurd jokes taken out of context. I’ll explain some of the jokes to you to prove my point.
What is The Simpsons? The Simpsons is an animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Network in 1989. It is a satirical depiction of the average American life, as portrayed by the Simpsons family. The family includes Homer (the patriarch of the family and husband to Marge), Marge (the wife of Homer and mother of their 3 children), Bart (the troublemaker), Lisa (the child prodigy), and Maggie (the baby). Over the years, it has entered the realm of Pop Culture, being one of the most famous TV shows.
The Simpsons‘ reputation for foretelling events was germinated by a blog writer named Sam Greenspan on the website Eleven Points, in the article “11 Predictions About 2010 The Simpsons Got Right”. He was inspired to write the article after watching the famous episode Lisa’s Wedding. The episode was released in 1995 and took place 15 years into the future, 2010. It also contains futuristic technology based on comedic 90’s jokes. Greenspan wanted to see how much of the comedic futuristic technology jokes would be true by the actual 2010, where a couple of the technologies in that episode were actually invented in real life.
In 2013, an article on the popular online media website Buzzfeed written by Jen Lewis titled “21 Times [‘]The Simpsons[’] Bizarrely Predicted the Future” where she compiled a set of 21 news articles that somewhat correlated with a joke that was in The Simpsons. For example, there is an article reporting on the opening of a chocolate-themed amusement park in China and claiming that The Simpsons predicted it. The ‘correlation’ between a chocolate theme park and The Simpsons is that in one episode, Homer had a dream on a fantasy chocolate land.
In 2014, The Simpsons took credit for their ‘prediction’ by claiming that Denver would win the 2014 Super Bowl Cup against Seattle. In reality, Homer was watching a Football game between Seattle and Denver that was not the Super Bowl.
However, as illustrated by the general trend in the graph below created by Youtuber J.J. McCullough, stories of ‘predictions’ made by The Simpsons skyrocketed in 2016. This is due to Donald Trump being elected as president. On Twitter, many netizens retweeted a clip of The Simpsons supposedly predicting Trump’s presidency in an episode where Lisa (as the president of the USA) noted that their administration had “inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump”. That quote single-handedly sparked The Simpsons ‘ ‘predictions’ out of control. What was once an article on technologies, turned into ‘anything on The Simpsons is a prediction of some event’. Some even claimed that The Simpsons predicted events such as 9/11 or COVID-19.
Many of these ‘predictions’ aren’t actually predictions, because they never explicitly stated that these events would occur. They were simply absurd jokes taken out of context. Okay, what about Trump’s presidency?
When writing the episode featuring the Trump gag, it was the 2000 Presidential Election. Back then, the American media treated the Election as a three-party system instead of the usual Democrats vs. Republicans, the third Party being the Reformed Party, which was led by Ross Perot. After Perot’s resignation, the members running to be head of the Reform Party believed that they needed a common ground. One of these members who believed in the Centrist ideology was Donald Trump. However, he was seen as a pathetic, washed-up candidate who was running as President to promote his manifesto on Centrism, hence why The Simpsons chose Trump as the President.
Nowadays, people are claiming that The Simpsons have predicted countless different events. So, I’m going to do a quick lighting round debunking a few of them. Curious George and the Ebola Virus in 2014 ‘predicting’ the actual Ebola Virus? Well, Ebola was discovered long before 2014. Disney buying Fox in the future? Fox was in a rivalry with Disney and the idea of someone sucking-up to their rival was seen as comical. USA winning an Olympic Gold medal against Sweden in curling? Well, the idea of someone bad at curling winning against their rivals who are skilled at curling was also seen as comical. The point is, The Simpsons’ predictions are just absurd jokes taken out of context. Maybe one day we’ll be able to ascertain the truth behind all these coincidences. But for now, sticking to common sense seems the wisest thing to do.