The Future Is Now, Old Man

Confirmed 98,522

About

The Future Is Now, Old Man refers to a reaction image taken from the American sitcom Malcolm in the Middle in which the character Dewey says the line. The still has been used primarily on Reddit as a reaction to captions describing futuristic scenarios.

Origin

The image comes from the Malcolm in the Middle episode "Lois' Makeover", which aired January 27th, 2002.^[1] Dewey says the line in a game of basketball while stacked on his brothers' shoulders.

[This video has been removed]

Spread

On December 10th, 2016, the image was posted to 9GAG ^[2] with a caption about the Indestructible Nokia 3310, gaining over 160 points (shown below, left). On February 25th, 2017,^[3] the image appeared on /r/MemeEconomy,^[3] gaining 230 points (shown below, right).

Following its appearance on Reddit, the image became a popular meme template over the following two years, appearing in multiple subreddits and sometimes edited to fit different subcultures. For example, a January 16th, 2018 post in /r/forhonor^[4] gained over 430 points (shown below, left). Twitter user TheYearIs20BC^[5] made a joke about Lucina in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, gaining over 590 retweets and 2,700 likes (shown below, right).