Old Man Yells at Cloud

About

Old Man Yells At Cloud is an exploitable image of a gag headline featured in a 2002 episode of The Simpsons. On the Internet, the newspaper clip of Abe Simpson angrily raising his fist under the literal headline "Old Man Yells at Cloud" has been repurposed into a series of reaction images for commentaries on various topics based on the phrasal template (X) Yells at (Y).

Origin

The newspaper headline was originally introduced as a sight gag in a scene from "The Old Man and the Key,"^[1] Episode 13, Season 13 of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons originally aired on March 10th, 2002. In the episode, Abe, the father of the protagonist character Homer Simpson, pays a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to get his driver's license issued and convinces his co-in-law Patty Bouvier to use a photograph of him that was once featured in a local newspaper in lieu of an official license photograph on the spot. Upon obtaining his newly issued driver's license, Abe walks over to a window and yells "who's laughing now?" at a cloud while holding the card in his hand.

The first known wordplay on Abe Simpson's image can be traced to a humorous commentary on cloud computing technology posted by mobile tech blogger Joey deVilla^[10] on September 30th, 2008.

Spread

On November 11th, 2009, Halolz^[5] user Shawn Handyside submitted a photoshopped parody of the newspaper image in which the Final Fantasy VII protagonist Cloud Strife can be seen behind Abe Simpson, which went on to garner 401 votes, with an average score of 4.64 out of 5, and 86 comments. That same day, deviantART user Badonk^[8] submitted a similarly photoshopped parody combining Abe Simpson's image with a sullen-looking Cloud Strife.

On December 7th, 2009, deviantART user Mariobros123 submitted a photoshopped image featuring Abe Simpson and Lakitu's Clouds, a recurring enemy character in the Super Mario video game series.

On January 8th, 2011, a Facebook page titled "Old Man Yells at Cloud" was launched to curate a variety of photoshopped parodies based on the original image. As of November 2015, the page has accrued more than 3,800 likes.

On March 31st, 2011, deviantART user Amaya-Zorifuki uploaded a demotivational poster rendition of the original image accompanied by the caption that reads "to be fair, the cloud started it" (shown below).

On April 11th, 2011, Tumblr user JazzFuneral submitted a compilation post of gag newspaper headlines as featured in The Simpsons, which included Abe Simpson's "Old Man Yells at Cloud" image as one of the examples.

On August 31st, 2012, FARK user furiousxgeorge^[4] submitted a photoshopped parody in which the image of Abe Simpson is replaced with a caricature of Clinton Eastwood as featured in another episode of The Simpsons, accompanied by the modified headline that reads "Old Man Yells at Chair," in response to the renowned American actor and filmmaker's puzzling empty chair speech he gave at the 2012 Republican National Convention on the day before. In the following days, a number of derivative images mocking Eastwood's speech surfaced on deviantART and Reddit (shown below).

On November 10th, 2015, Redditor Manfrenjensenjen^[11] submitted a parody image of the newspaper clip featuring Abe Simpson angrily raising the American coffee shop chain Starbucks' red holiday cup with the caption "Old Man Yells at Cup" in response to the online backlash surrounding the cup's secular design (shown below), which garnered over 4,700 upvotes prior to being archived.

Search Interest

External References