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Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

Stupid question, and admittedly off topic:

What's with the "terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad" expression I see a lot? It's a reference to something? From googling, it seems to be this [1], but ... why? Why do people reference it?

Usually you reference some work like this because a) the phrase is unusually creative, or b) the work is unusually memorable. Neither is true here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_and_the_Terrible,_Ho...

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This book sold well enough to score a tv series, a disney movie, a musical, and a theater play.

How much more successful do you need it to be? Odds seem very high that a kid growing up in the past 50 years was exposed to this story and phrase

I wasn’t. Or if I was, it obviously didn’t make an impression, and properly so: combining random negative words isn’t creative.

It seems there's some kind of "all your base are belong to us" weird resonance for it. I had my own explanation why it works, but the only proof that's really needed is that it became a meme.

That's just, like, your opinion man.

I immediately recognized the reference. There's no law that says pop culture references need to be to something with X amount of popularity. Chill.

There is a general practice of preferring to repeat stuff that's good, though, or which enhances what it's added to.

A couple points. Just because you personally don't remember or know the book does not mean that it is not memorable. Also, it could be that those who weren't aware of the book used it after seeing it used elsewhere.

It's memorable in that it's a lighthearted way of describing a pretty disastrous event without using expletives, with at least a dash of cultural significance.

I agree it's a lame title.

Congratulations, you're one of the lucky 10,000!

Don't be a sourpuss because you were exposed to a new meme, that's how echo chambers form.

I wasn't exposed to a new meme, I've seen it a hundred times before; the question is why people are so dazzled by it that they keep repeating it when it's not really clever and it doesn't enhance what they're adding it to. It's just a clumsy, extended way of cobbling together negative words to say "very bad".

Those who have read it to insatiable toddlers --- sometimes 5 or 10 readings in a row --- get the reference.

It's unusually memorable because it's from a children's book and little kids will demand their parents read the thing a hundred times. It's either been drilled into you as a child, or as a long suffering parent.

I think they think it's cute and they're attempting to trivialize their loss.

Because sometimes things go wrong and you just want to move to Australia.

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