The Future From the Past

Corrie was watching an episode of Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz's show "Bones" the other day. Strong, no-crap-taking female lead character? Corrie's all over it. Anyway, in this particular episode of the cop-procedural, the murder victim was a short man with a Napoleonic complex. His son had started a fight with a girl who had martial arts training and lost. This father approached the girl and acted in a threatening manner, subsequently getting smacked down.

The "fight", between an adult man and a middle school girl, had been filmed by a friend of the girl and uploaded onto the show's YouTube facsimile. This episode aired at a time when you'd need a facsimile for YouTube, but now you probably wouldn't.

In the show, the investigators were able to trace the views from the footage as it traveled from the girls' little circle to a wider area, specifically a bar where the victim had last been seen alive. (The little girl had nothing to do with the murder of the guy.)

Anyway, here was a scene of "Internet fame" getting the best (or worst) of a person and humiliating them. How suave and "with-the-times!"

Then...

Getting dinner ready the other night, I flipped on our lone Simpson airing and was surprised to see a very old episode. It turned out to be "Homer's Night Out" from Season 1, airing on March 25th, 1990.

1990!

In it, Homer heads out with the fellas for a stag party and eventually gets photographed by Bart with his tiny spy-camera. Here's the picture:

Upon developing them, he shares it with Milhouse, who shares it with Wendell. Someone asks Bart why he didn't share the picture with them, and on it goes, until everyone at Springfield Elementary has a Xerox of the picture. At that point a father finds it, admonishes his kid, then giggles and it gets sent out to everyone at his job. Soon enough, Marge stumbles across it.

I remember thinking, Holy cow! They predicted Internet infamy! I love how they showed the process itself (no public Internet at the time) and the realistic ramifications: Marge is only really upset that Bart saw Homer treating a woman as an object, and forces him to take Bart to find this girl so he can be a man and apologize.

One topic lost in all of this is how many strip-clubs, gentlemen lounges, and cabarets exist in Springfield, but whatever...

Remember: this was in 1990.

Also, this was the first episode with a special guest star, the first-ever Simpsons guest star: Sam McMurray, who voiced the lounge singer near the end.