SpongeBob at 20: how the pineapple-dwelling fry cook endured
Ever since his debut in 1999, the cartoon has remained a constant in popular culture, inspiring impassioned fandom and endless memes
Until Esperanto catches on, the closest thing the millennials have to a universal language is SpongeBob SquarePants. In the 20 years since Nickelodeon first ran the cartoon about a congenial sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea, it has spawned a pictorial shorthand that children of the 90s and early 00s understand with native-tongue fluency. There’s no form of mockery more withering than the chicken SpongeBob, stating your own words back to you with haywire capitalization as if in a nasally tease. The screenshot of cranky cephalopod Squidward gazing through his window blinds at SpongeBob frolicking with starfish buddy Patrick captures 21st-century yearning and isolation just as Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks captured them for the 20th. For every occasion, for every emotion – exhaustion, indifference, malevolence, anxiety – a SpongeBob mot juste.
Related: Stephen Hillenburg: the naive genius who made SpongeBob a cultural titan