How the Internet Created the Graggle Simpson
There is ample evidence that Homer Simpson was, was, and always has been a character The Simpsons. Sure, there’s footage of Homer going through his d’ohs and donut days, but there’s also toys, dusty VHS tapes, and video games, not to mention Homer’s eternal existence in the popular consciousness.
Likewise, there is plenty of evidence that Grapple Simpson was, was, and always has been a character The Simpsons. There is In the video, of course. There are also toys, dusty VHS tapesand: the advent of video games. And Gragle is a favorite. In recent weeks, the lizard-like yellow boy has been appearing on viral tweets and TikToks. people lament the character’s disappearance from the show and campaign for his return with hashtags like #BringBackGraggleSimspon.
There is only one obstacle in Grag: he is not, has not been and never has been a character. The Simpsons; he did not appear once in all 728 episodes. Where did Grapple Simpson really come from? Why is he everywhere now? And how are there so many proofs of his existence?
Graggle Simpson was spoofed on the imageboard 2chan fires back in October 2015. An anonymous user added the character to The Simpsons screenshot, and it stayed there until January 2021. Then another anonymous user, this time on 4chan. science posted for a stretched blob. He called him “Yellow Matt” and said he was a “self-absorbed character” from The Simpsons creator Matt Groening.
That’s when the YouTuber is known as Simian Jimmy stumbled upon the post. He took the image to Twitter, renamed the character “Gumbly” and claimed the character was a new addition. The Simpsons – concrete proof that the show has jumped the shark. “I don’t know why Gumble was the first name that came to mind, but I could subconsciously relate to the character’s design. Gumby because they’re both just naked, skinny, one-colored guys,” says Simian Jimmy, now an Iowa resident. His post blew up and people started doing more and more photoshops with Gumbly The Simpsons scenes.
“I didn’t put a lot of time or effort into it. when I look at it, I feel like it’s obviously fake, but I’ve seen my picture all over the internet now,” said the 21-year-old from Florida. who used Paint 3D to add Gumbly to the Season 13 scene The Simpsons. In response to Simian Jimmy’s tweet, he shared the image from his Twitter account @RayDibb and ended up earning more 4000 likes. From there, Gumble then quickly spread to YouTube, where 21-year-old California creator Aaron Murphy, who runs the Nightbane Games channel, brought him in The 2003 video game The Simpsons. Hit & Run:.
“The Graggle meme is kind of like a game. try to fake it as much as you can,” Murphy says. her Hit and run earned video over 40,000 views. Murphy believes that Graggle is popular because of our cultural fascination with lost media and creepy pasta stories. “The idea that The Simpsons originally there was a character called Gragle, but soon he was completely wiped off the face of the Earth to the point where no one remembers him, it’s really funny and thought provoking,” he says.
But that, Simian Jimmy, @RayDibb and Murphy thought it was. A good, quick, clean joke shared with strangers on the internet. The end. For over a year, Gumbley rested in the quiet corners of the Internet. Then came Facebook.
This May, Gumble was resurrected and rebranded as “Graggle” by a 26-year-old Australian who goes by the Facebook username Yeliab Ressap. After browsing the internet and seeing a picture of alleged concept art for Yellow Matt, Eliab Resap posted a picture “THE NEW MANDELA EFFECT HAS JUST BEEN NOTICED. THIS SHOW DOESN’T HAVE A GRAGLE SIMPSON’ character. (The “Mandela effect” is a false memory shared by several people).
“I just wanted a silly word, and that was the first thing that came to mind,” says the Facebook user of creating the name “Graggle” (he hadn’t actually heard the character was nicknamed Gumble when he came up with the name.) : Within a week, his post had a thousand shares. Then it turned. “A few people accused me of being a government agent because it came out so fast and so fast, but here I am saying that I am not a government agent. It’s just the nature of the internet.”
Eliab Resap’s post was screenshotted and shared on Instagram and Twitter. on the latter’s website, it has garnered more than 70,000 likes. When Jackson (AKA: @CalmDownLevelUp), 25-year-old from Seattle, saw this tweet, he knew it was his time to shine. He first saw Gumbly in 2021 and thought the meme was so funny that “I made a folder on my phone called Gumbly Evidence.” When he saw Eliab Resap’s post, “it had been a year since I’d seen him. And I said: “Oh my god, Gumbley!” This is my chance to respond with all my images.”
One of Jackson’s tweets, is featured Four of the photoshopped images he had racked up more than 3,500 likes by the end of May. He began to pretend that he genuinely believed that Gragle was real The Simpsons character. “I just think it’s funny that people get mad, it’s just funny to gaslight people,” Jackson says. “You hear so much about fake news and Russian disinformation in the news … It’s very ironic that this stuff is in the news all the time.” At the end of our call, Jackson admits: “I was trying to think of a lie to tell you, I was going to try to gas you, but I couldn’t think of anything.”
Yeliab Ressap’s post changed the fate of Graggle née Gumbly, but TikTok is the app that gave her wings. People took Jackson’s collected pictures, along with @RayDibb’s photoshop, and started creating video montages. The video “recovered footage418,000 character views; a to tear Murphy’s Hit and run In the video has almost a million. As Gragle becomes more and more mainstream, and as evidence of its existence mounts, some people seem to be genuinely falling for the gag. One TikToker took it upon themselves destroy its existence (though of course they might just add another meta-layer to the joke).
Although Gragle is, in one way or another, now seven years old, no one I talk to thinks he’s a dying meme. “I actually think it’s still very much underground,” Jackson says. Eliab Resap believes that Graggle’s simplicity is important. “It allows people to take it, make it their own and run with it.” “I feel like he’s going to be around for a long time The Simpsons are close,” Murphy says. “Who knows, maybe he’ll be back in 2023 under a new name, something like Grunky.”
