Here Are the Funniest YouTube Commenters Who Took ‘Family Guy’ Way Too Seriously
For a silly animated comedy series, Family Guy is pretty deep, so long as you study the academic analyses found in scholarly forums of the YouTube comments section.
Ever since it first premiered on January 31, 1999, Seth MacFarlane’s flagship series has been up against constant derision from Family Guy’s contemporaries who perceived the show to be a comparatively shallow and gimmicky approach to the adult animated sitcom format. The Simpsons had its famous, long-standing cold war with Family Guy as the two shows traded barbs from across the Fox schedule. Trey Parker and Matt Stone delivered a scathing South Park parody of their least favorite cartoon that still ruffles the feathers of some Family Guy fans. But as so many YouTube users understand, the brilliance of Family Guy is no joking matter, and underneath every 15-second, 144p clip of a Family Guy scene, these fans treat the show like Peter, Brian, Lois and “qoumire” are real people whose struggles are of dire importance.
Don't Miss
Recently, Family Guy lover and YouTuber @SonicAndSimsFan started a viral Twitter thread where fellow fans of adult animation could share their favorite screenshots of YouTube commenters treating Family Guy like it’s a live-feed of their own family, and the responses remind us that the internet is full of the strangest people with good old-fashioned values:
This style of cringey, sub-intellectual over-analysis isn’t unique to the Family Guy fandom, but there is something about MacFarlane’s masterwork that attracts cartoon-obsessed overthinkers like no other show. For instance, a fan in the Family Guy subreddit recently wrote a dissertation-level essay about how the show supposedly depicts male sexuality with more raw accuracy than any other series, only to find that not everyone is quite as turned on by the wax sculpture of Gwyneth Paltrow doing Harriet Tubman as he and Peter are.
With a small handful of exceptions, Family Guy episodes are mostly just surface-level fun with no larger statement to make on abuse, addiction or any of the other heavy topics that MacFarlane tackles with the subtlety and nuance of Quagmire sexually assaulting and murdering the Simpsons family. Nevertheless, that won’t stop surface-level thinkers on YouTube from deriving deep meaning from such a silly sitcom.
Personally, I find such analyses to be shallow and pedantic.
