Not Today, Old Friend

About

Not Today, Old Friend refers to an image macro from the American TV series The Simpsons featuring character Moe Szyslak looking at a noose and saying "Not today, old friend". The screen capture from the scene has been used as a reaction image in reference to grim situations taking turn for the best.

Origin

On May 5th, 2013, The Simpsons episode "Whiskey Business" aired on the FOX network^[1]. In one scene, character Moe Szyslak is shown looking at a noose in a contemplative manner before saying: "Not today, old friend. But don't worry: holidays are just around the corner".

Spread

On January 23rd, 2014, the screen capture of the scene was used in an article published by UPROXX^[2] (shown below, left). On March 24th, 2014, Redditor^[3] hero0fwar posted a two-panel image created by an unidentified Tumblr user (shown below, right). The post gained 25 upvotes within 6 months.

In 2015, the image was several times posted to various subreddits, including /r/TheSimpsons^[4] and /r/me_irl^[5]. A post made by Memedroid^[6] user davidsealover on November 7th, 2015, gained over 2,300 points.

On December 10th, 2015, an anonymous 4chan^[7] user posted the first known edit of the macro to /co/ board (shown below, left). The edit has subsequently gained popularity on 4chan as a response to "bait" posts^[8]. On February 12th, 2016, Imgur^[9] user FuckYouMeme posted a captioned version of the original macro (shown below, right). The post gained over 1,560 points within 3 years.

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On April 19th, 2016, Redditor^[10] MerkuryNj posted another captioned version of the image to /r/meirl subreddit. The post gained 6,600 upvotes within 6 months.

In the following years, the image macro has seen continuous use on Reddit, Twitter and other social networks. In many examples, the word "not" has been edited out of the macro, reversing the meaning.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References