Neutral Response

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About

Neutral Response refers to a scene from the animated television series Futurama in which an extraterrestrial character reveals he has "no strong feelings one way or the other." Since a clip of the scene was uploaded to YouTube in 2009, viewers have voted its likes and dislikes in approximately equal numbers.

Origin

On November 28th, 1999, Season 2 Episode of Futurama titled "Brannigan, Begin Again" was broadcast, featuring a "Neutral" extraterrestrial reveals that he has "no strong feelings one way or the other." On April 14th, 2009, YouTuber leetag uploaded a clip of the scene (shown below). Over the next seven years, the video gained over 5.6 million views and 26,000 comments, while the like and dislike counts remained approximately equivalent.

Spread

On October 18th, 2011, Redditor fenshield submitted a screenshot of leetag's YouTube upload titled "I see what you did there, YouTube users," which highlighted the like and dislike counts (shown below, left). Prior to being archived, the post gained over 2,400 points (85% upvoted) and 170 comments on /r/reddit.com.^[2] On August 1st, 2012, Tumblr^[7] user lazarus-james posted another screenshot of the video's equivalent likes and dislikes (shown below, right).

On July 27th, 2013, Imgur^[8] user chairmanmow submitted an image macro of the Neutral character, along with the caption "I have no strong feelings / one way or the other" (shown below).

On August 3th, Redditor zlypher submitted the YouTube video to /r/mildlyinteresting,^[1] noting that the "like/dislike meter" was "completely neutral." On August 18th, 2015, Redditor ompan submitted leetag's video to the /r/videos^[3] subreddit, noting that it still had an equal amount of likes and dislikes after six years. Within eight months, the post garnered upwards of 7,200 votes (83% upvoted) and 970 comments. In January 2016, a question asking if the likes and dislikes counts were "legit" or an "Easter egg" was submitted to Quora.^[6] On April 14th, Redditor impressive_speciment reposted the video, noting that the video held equal likes and dislikes for seven years. In five days, the post gained over 7,700 votes (77% upvoted) and 460 comments on /r/videos.^[4]