There is no show more quotable than The Simpsons. So regurgitated are the gems of early episodes that the quotes themselves have, in many ways, been divorced from the show itself. Just look at “embiggen” and “cromulent,” nonsense words coined by The Simpsons that have since been incorporated into the public lexicon. Something can only be summoned so many times before it begins taking on newer, stranger forms, and such is the case with the Simpsons Shitposting Facebook group, a place where modern meme culture merges with classic moments from the show, changing their chemical formula to create bizarre, oft-impenetrable extensions of the original joke. Its existence has also given way to shit like the oddly artful Scenic Simpsons Instagram account and the head-scratcher that is Simpsonwave.
A new piece from Wired uses Simpsons Shitposting as a means of exploring this evolution in Simpsons fandom, but also tells a pretty fascinating story in the process. It turns out a Facebook page as popular as Simpsons Shitposting caught the eye of some Macedonian scammers, who wanted to buy the page for their own nefarious reasons. Of course, page owner Geddy Johnson didn’t know they were going to be nefarious, so he sold them the page to help pay for what he describes as “dick surgery.”