About

What An Odd Thing To Say is a catchphrase spoken by Bart Simpson as an understanding of the meta-context of something that was spoken. The line, coming from an earlier episode of The Simpsons, has changed in its meaning over the decade to its current usage as a conspiracy theory signifier in conversation. The meme is typically used as a reaction image, commented or added under something the creator or poster perceives as strange.

Origin

The catchphrase comes from the seventh episode of the fifth season of The Simpsons during a scene in which Homer explains to the audience what the setup for the scene is, but Bart noting it as odd to repeat within the universe. This scene was uploaded to YouTube by the channel ThingsICantFindOtherwise^[1] on December 19th, 2015, as a reupload of its original airing date of November 11th, 1993 (shown below).

On October 24th, 2012, the scene was uploaded to Reddit in a two-panel format by a now-deleted Redditor^[2] to the /r/TheSimpsons subreddit, earning over 150 likes in 11 years, with the meta-context being the force behind the meme (shown below).

Spread

The quote and meme remained in obscurity until it was reused for its original purpose on December 1st, 2021, with the Twitter user @iresimpsonsfans^[3] posting a controversial lyric sung by Bono in the song "Do They Know It's Christmas," calling out how odd the line is compared to everything else, earning over 9,000 likes in two years (shown below).

On May 25th, 2022, as part of the Uvalde School Shooting, reporter Tom Winter tweeted out the report that the police believed that all children shot and killed were only as a result of Salvador Ramos, prompting the image to surface for the first time as a standalone reaction image, posted by Twitter user @highlyarcane^[4] and earning over 2,000 likes for pointing out how oddly specific the phrasing sounded (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References