Monday, April 1, 2024

Simpson’s Bridge Collapse Prediction

 I didn’t even know about this Simpson’s prediction until yesterday when I read a comment from one of Zach’s long time easily manipulated followers.  “The Simpsons nailed tue prediction again!”  Maybe not an exact quote, but certainly in the ballpark of the sentiment intended.

https://www.news18.com/amp/viral/did-the-simpsons-predict-baltimore-bridge-collapse-heres-the-truth-8831330.html

Internet weirdos, yes I know I shouldn’t call them that but I’m having a rough few days, so what the hell, love the ongoing trope and meme of Simpsons predictive programming.  That operates on the same math as gematria.  The Simpsons is notoriously loaded with a ton of fast paced sight and audio gags in a short running time per episode.  And since it’s been around forever there’s a lot of content that’s out there.  Instead of analyzing a Simpsons episode and making a bold claim that for example, “I think ants on the International Space Station will be a problem on the future date of xx/x/xxxx.”, the reporting after the fact formula always magically finds tiny bits and pieces that make sense and ignore the vastly larger number of misses.  For the record, I’m referring to this episode.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Homer

Like I said, the Simpsons predicting a conspiracy story is so old that it’s as tired as the show itself.  It’s so old that even predicting some jackass would take the time to fake it, and try to pass it off as a real episode.  And that at least for awhile there would be long time die hard conspiracy theorists and grifters willing to spread it around as if it was genuine.

I’ve seen the majority of Simpsons episodes.  Having my interest fall off in recent years to hardly ever worrying about it.  I have a really good memory, especially for useless trivia.  I figured since I hadn’t heard of it, the claim was BS, the evidence was faked, and especially considering the source fact checking it was a waste of time.

Yet I still spent the time to look it up.  That nagging suspicion that I might be wrong and it was one of those lucky hits that pops up.  But at least I did check before saying anything about it like a lot of people refuse to do even though misinformation is par for the course these days.

The fake image was over the top.  They went for the spectacular coincidence instead of just a little tiny bit of detail.  If it had been older, I surely would have had it jump to my mind right away.  If it was newer a not conspiracy theory source would have latched on to it right away.  Somebody’s memory good enough to fade back a couple of years and dredge up that factoid.  The mistakes in Lisa and Homer’s hair?  Intentional?  Wrong because it’s a rush job?  Somebody’s got their internet 15 minutes of fame.

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