Bart the General

The summer months of 2006 were famous for viral videos that would be plastered on YouTube and all over the World Wide Web. They would promote anything from mediocre action films to whatever the fuck anyone would ever want to milk for all its worth. But around this same time, Something Awful founder Lowtax came up with a ploy to take one video and turn it into an overnight sensation. Thus, the legend of Bart the General was born.

History

The video first popped up on Youtube at some point in 2006. On August 5th of that same year, Lowtax made a post and alerted his goons to take note of the brilliance that was Bart the General. Like a disease, it expanded across SA’s many forums and affected YTMND and 4chan with links and image macros featuring the clever dialogue that was used throughout the cartoons. Within three days, the original SA thread went over 50 pages and Youtube took down many of the vids that were uploaded, with over 100,000 views of the original video. Impressive, no?

Original Post

	“	I've had this idea for a while, but had no motivation or inclination to actually act upon it... until now. In regards to the completely idiotic and played out "Snakes On a Plane" obsession, which all started with a couple people updating their Livejournals, I was curious to see how difficult it would be to artifically manufacture a viral Internet fad (ie, All Your Base, Snakes on a Plane, etc etc). I didn't really have any target until I saw this video: This is one of those things so completely random and messed up that, I figure, it'd be the LEAST likely to ever turn into a meme or successful viral Internet fad. Basically, it's a parody of "The Simpsons" done in a completely bizarre, incomprehensible fashion. Homer sounds like Chewbacca giving birth to a dinette set. Mr. Burns is Indian. Flanders says "woogidy woogidy neighbor." The theme song will give you nightmares. In summary, it's incredible. So I was wondering if the power of the SA Forums could be used to turn this seemingly unpopular, random video into a meme, into some viral Internet sensation which will immediately become played out and obnoxious. Here's the general outline of how these things happen: Video is linked The link is passed around through blogs, emails, and IMs. Photoshops and parodies of catchphrases from the video start popping up. Video collections of the photoshops and parodies pop up. News media outlets catch wind of it and talk about it in their "lighter side" part of the newscast, before "panda gives birth" and after "cute kittens play with yarn" Merchandise cashing in on the original media starts coming out. Everybody associated with the original media expresses their desire to kill themselves for ever being involved. We're obviously on step #1 here, and trying to move to step #2. The first thing we have to do is rack up the pageviews, popularity, and rating of the video, so it's a YOUTUBE HIT. So if you can, please head here, watch the video, and rate it 5 stars or gold or whatever the hell you rate things on Youtube. Add it to your favorites. Pass it around. Let's try to propel this thing to stardom. That will take care of step #2. After a couple days, let's move on to step #3. I suggest some good catchphrases / Photoshoppable memes to be along the lines of "MARGE, YOU'RE BREAKING MY HEART" (if you watch the video, you'll see where it's from). We can discuss this later; for now, let's work on steps #1 and #2. Oh, and if anybody out there has any other suggestions, ideas, or comments, post 'em here. I want to see if this forum has the power alone to jumpstart a "Snakes On a Plane" bandwagon in a completely forced, artificial fashion.!	„
	—Lowtax, your voice for evil.

The Cartoon

Bart the General was a crudely animated Simpsons parody that was created by a British site known as Famicon. If you've ever watched the videos without being offended by the seizure inducing opening and ear grating music, then you should consider yourself a dangerous, subhuman freak of nature. As of 2010, there are four episodes of this crap, each one more harrowing than the last.

Episode 1

Some Australian guy named Toadfish (who’s actually a character from an Australian soap opera called Neighbours) kicks Flanders out of his house and then takes Marge from Homer. Bart throws a brick into Homer's face and then he comes home to find Toadfish having sex with Marge, prompting Homer to utter his “famous” line.

	“	MAAAAAAAAAARGE! YOUR’RE BREAKING MY HEAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRT!!	„
	—Omarn

Episode 2

Do you live an innocent life? House makes his debut as himself but wearing clown makeup. After freefalling from a shitting plane, he finds Homer and decides to offer him advice. Meanwhile, Marge is crooned by Toadfish's new briefcase and Bevis Bart Burton, who’s more like a man now, goes bunging from that plane to take House away from Homer. Later, Homer receives a call from Toadfish's brother Stonefish, who has the ability to teleport through phones. And be sure to listen carefully to the scene where Marge is talking to Toadfish at the bar. You may recognize the music.

Episode 3

Needlessly long by almost thirty minutes, the third installment of this train wreck has Homer Omarn being confronted by Stonefish, while some guy whose nose looks like Toucan Sam's beak defends him. Later on, Burton uses all his money and everything he owns and buys a race car and goes driving around in it, then films a sex tape with his mom and black person having sex in the shower. A group of purple lions dressed as terrorists in bath robes want to search for Burton since they're jealous of him driving a race car and selling these videos. They find Marge and some other chick getting raped by Toadfish and Stonefish. As the furries interrogate them, the one girl has ants crawling out of her vagina, then they proceed to kill her and leave, unsuccessful at finding Burton. House is stuck in a well with some magic midget who finds a way to get him out of the well after so many wasted moments. Then there's a conzakulations party and House climbs up a water tower for some reason and Burton sucks off his dad. If any of this is making sense to you, then you must be on mad crack.

Episode 4

Flanders gives Omarn a gun which he never uses and then he goes back to his house to reunite with Marge, since Toadfish was out.

Effect on the Internet

Since Bart the General was a failed forced meme, it had little impact on the Internets as a whole and faded into obscurity after noone else seemed to have cared about it.

Quotes from the cartoons

	“	Woogity whoop-dee, neighbor!	„
	—Flanders.

	“	Hey! I'm Mr. Burn! Get out of the way!	„
	—Mr. Burn after he ran Lisa over.

	“	WWWWHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAHHH!!	„
	—Omarn.

	“	Everyone abandons me!	„
	—Omarn.

External Links

• Detailed timeline of the madness
• Unfunny YTMND parody
• And another one
• TOW's ripoff parody
• One of Famicon's video sites containing BtG and other messed up shit

Bart the General is part of a series on Memes Visit the Memes Portal for complete coverage.

Bart the General is part of a series on Media Visit the Media Portal for complete coverage.