And Nothing Of Value Was Lost

About

And Nothing Of Value Was Lost refers to a scene from a 1995 episode of The Critic where a fire causes a theatre hosting a production of Cats to burn down, resulting in the protagonist Jay Sherman saying, "and nothing of value was lost," implying Cats is a valueless production. The catchphrase became popularized online in the 2000s as a way of criticizing things as valueless and also inspired an image macro format using a screenshot from the scene along with the phrase.

Origin

On April 23rd, 1995, season two episode six of the animated series The Critic^[1] aired on television. The plot sees the character Duke try and run for president. At one point in the episode, an unfinished parade float catches fire and rolls into a theatre holding a production of the musical Cats, often joked about as being one of the worst Broadway musicals. The theatre goes up in flames and Jay Sherman says from afar, standing with Marty, "and nothing of value was lost" (shown below).

It is unknown exactly when the phrase was first used online, but it started to become popular on 4chan between 2008 and 2010 as a way of criticizing various things as without value. One of the earliest memes using the phrase is an image macro posted to My Confined Space^[2] by epifaniamendis1 on July 26th, 2009 implying that 4chan itself is nothing of value, showing a man giving a thumbs up in front of a burning shed labeled "4chan" (shown below). The earliest available archived 4chan^[3] post using the phrase was posted to the /tv/ board in February 2010.

Spread

The phrase became increasingly popular on imageboards like 4chan over the course of the 2010s. A 4plebs^[5] archive search shows over 20,200 uses of the exact phrase as of November 2021. Numerous image macros featuring the phrase have been uploaded online over that course, many taken from image boards and made on QuickMeme^[6][7] (examples shown below, left and right).

The phrase still sees occasional use in the 2020s, along with a template using a screenshot of Sherman watching the theatre burn. On August 30th, 2021, Instagram^[4] page realmemebae posted a version of the meme in response to the news that Ellen DeGeneres is ending her talk show, gaining over 1,400 likes in three months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References