The Misery of Watching the Simpsons on the Internet

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The Misery of Watching the Simpsons on the Internet

Poor quality video and copyright takedown requests from Fox have plagued the series online.

If you're like me (and you are because you're reading this article) you spend a nonzero amount of time each week  looking for the perfect Simpsons gif, clip, or quote to deploy at a moment's notice, thereby proving to whoever you're chatting with that you're with "it," even if those jerks changed what "it" is.

And, if you're like me, you've probably been frustrated with the internet's infuriating lack of clean Simpsons clips.

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Instead, you rely on clips that have been filmed by people on their cellphone cameras on tube TVs, YouTube videos  started at specific times, weird Russian websites, or audio layered over a static image. One time, in a pinch, I had to use a freakin' MP3 (YOUR BABY IS DEAD, for the record) in order to convey the sentiment I wanted to. This week, I linked someone to a YTMND like it was 2003 or something.

No longer. I think, hopefully.

Yes, it's #EverySimpsonsEver for the next 11 days. Yes, that's cool. But the real win with the Simpsons/FXX deal (beyond on-demand streaming, soon) is that we should presumably be getting clean clips of all our favorite moments to link to, whenever we want them.

Hulu has been doing a decent job of it for a couple years, and bootleggers are trying their damnedest to outsmart Fox's Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests by throwing them up on random ass websites loaded with ads.

That's, basically, how you've had to stream the Simpsons online for the greater part of a decade now (and  sometimes you'd get sued into oblivion for it). Let's be honest, you've got basically every episode on your hard drive somewhere, but there's still something to be said for being able to stream it Netflix-style.

Just look at the number of  Yahoo Answers requests for places to stream the show online. And there were (and are) places to stream it, if you're willing to deal with ads for LiveJasmin and MacKeeper and all sorts of random sketchy stuff.

As my colleague and  fellow Simpsons fanatic Ben Richmond told me of hist own streaming experiences, "there was a lot of closing jumping pop up windows and stuff. A lot of barely working, questionable quality streams and linguistic surprises."

Soon enough,  your EVERYTHING'S OK alarm should start ringing. And that'll be a wonderful day.