About

"It'll Happen To You" is an exploitable object-labeling meme template taken from an episode of The Simpsons featuring a younger Grandpa Abe telling Homer that one day the things he thinks are "cool" will go out of style. Stills from the scene are commonly used to make the point that popular fads and products will one day fade from popularity.

Origin

The scene comes from The Simpsons episode Homerpalooza, which first aired on Fox on May 19th, 1996.^[1] In the episode, Homer has a flashback to when he and his friend Barney Gumble were teenagers and singing a rock song (shown below). Homer's father, Abe Simpson, asks what they're doing, and they respond that he wouldn't understand because he isn't "with it".

Abe replies back with the following quote:

I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was.
Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me.
It'll happen to you!

Spread

The scene was a popular reference online to discuss the phenomenon of falling out of touch with popular culture for years prior to seeing use in memes. For example, a photoset of the scene posted to Tumblr by thesimpsonswayoflife^[2] on July 28th, 2014 gained over 515,000 notes in over nine years on the platform.

Variations began appearing in the late 2010s and early 2020s. For example, on November 11th, 2019, Redditor TwistedAlterEgo posted an OK Boomer variation to /r/memes,^[3] gaining over 40 points in four years (shown below, left). On October 7th, 2021, Redditor Competitive-Clock-86 posted an example to /r/SimpsonsMemes^[4] depicting Facebook addressing TikTok and Snapchat, gaining over 210 points in two years (shown below, right).

Various Examples

External References