Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children

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About

Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children is a catchphrase popularized by the 1997 episode of The Simpsons "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment," where Helen Lovejoy yells the phrase while voicing her support for prohibition in Springfield. The phrase became increasingly popular online throughout the 2000s on sites like 4chan and Twitter as a way of expressing concern, often ironic, for children over a given topic. It was also popularized through image macros depicting Helen Lovejoy yelling the sentence.

Origin

On March 16th, 1997, The Simpsons season 8 episode 18, titled "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment," aired. In the episode, residents of the town of Springfield rally to enact prohibition after Bart accidentally gets drunk during Saint Patrick's Day. In one scene, Helen Lovejoy, supporting prohibition, yells, "Won't somebody please think of the children," a well-known rhetorical tactic and cliche phrase.^[1]^[2] On November 8th, 2008, YouTuber^[3] whatdafuhk posted a video titled "children" consisting of the clip, garnering over 1.6 million views in 14 years (shown below).

The exact phrase, "won't somebody please think of the children," became increasingly popular online throughout the 2000s. One of the earliest known uses of the phrase online was posted by X,^[4] formerly Twitter, user @dom on April 5th, 2006, writing, "hoping that our credit is good – won't somebody please think of the children!" garnering around 100 likes in 17 years. The phrase became increasingly popular on 4chan^[5] as early as 2010, where it is often used ironically (example shown below).

One of the earliest available image macros referencing the phrase was posted to Know Your Meme^[6] by Zeligno on June 23rd, 2011 to the 60's Spider-Man entry, garnering over 800 views in 12 years (shown below).

Spread

The meme continued to prove popular throughout the 2010s and 2020s. On April 5th, 2017, Facebook^[7] page Australian Law Memes posted a version of the meme that gained over 2,500 reactions in six years. On April 4th, 2021, u/Inverse_Duckmelon posted a political compass version of the meme to /r/PoliticalCompassMemes,^[8] garnering over 3,400 upvotes in two years (shown below, left). On March 11th, 2023, Instagram^[9] user stuffchristianculturelikes posted a meme using the format, garnering over 2,900 likes in seven months (shown below, right).