# Community Community is an American sitcom created by Dan Harmon that premiered on NBC on September 17, 2009 and became a cult favorite for its dense meta-humor, pop culture parodies, and the fan rallying cry of "six seasons and a movie." The show, set at fictional Greendale Community College, spawned meme catchphrases like #darkesttimeline and helped define online fandom activism during the early 2010s. ## Overview Community is a half-hour American sitcom created by Dan Harmon that first aired on NBC on September 17, 2009 and ran for six seasons across two networks[1]. The show follows disbarred lawyer Jeff Winger, played by Joel McHale, who enrolls at the fictional Greendale Community College and ends up in a study group of misfits including Britta, Abed, Troy, Annie, Shirley and Pierce[2]. Its style leans hard into meta-humor, breaking whole episodes into parodies of action movies, documentaries, Christmas specials and video games. Beyond the show itself, Community became one of the earliest examples of a TV series where the fandom's inside jokes turned into full-blown internet memes. Catchphrases from specific episodes, most famously "the darkest timeline" from the Season 3 episode "Remedial Chaos Theory," spilled off NBC and onto Twitter and Tumblr as shorthand for any real-world disaster[3]. The show also popularized the fan rallying cry "six seasons and a movie," originally a joke line from Abed defending a bad show, that fans then chanted through cancellations, revivals and streaming deals. The cast that Harmon assembled included E! host Joel McHale, Mad Men's Alison Brie, Danny Pudi, Gillian Jacobs, Donald Glover, Ken Jeong from The Hangover and Oscar winner Chevy Chase[4]. Danny Pudi's Abed, an aspiring filmmaker who narrates his life like a TV show, gave the writers a built-in excuse to break the fourth wall, which is a big reason Community keeps getting cited as one of the most meme-ready sitcoms of its era[5]. ## How It Spread In September 2010, ahead of the Season 2 premiere, the show's team seeded 14 fictional Twitter accounts written in the voices of the main cast, whose scripted back-and-forth acted as a prequel to the new episodes[5]. By July 2012 the official Community Facebook page had passed 1.2 million likes and the show's Twitter account sat above 120,000 followers, unusual numbers for a low-rated network sitcom at the time[5]. Sony Pictures Television fired Harmon as showrunner in May 2012 and replaced him with David Guarascio and Moses Port, a decision Harmon said he first learned about through social media before publishing a Tumblr post that racked up more than 12,000 notes and pushed his name to the top of Twitter trends[5]. Fans revolted against the Harmon-less fourth season, and when he was reinstated for Season 5, the premiere aired on January 2, 2014 with the finale following on April 17, 2014[5]. NBC announced the cancellation on May 9, 2014, and within an hour fans had tweeted the hashtag #darkesttimeline more than 8,000 times as an in-joke protest[5]. On June 30, 2014, Yahoo Screen tweeted #CommunityLives and picked the show up for a 13-episode sixth season, finally getting the fandom halfway to their "six seasons and a movie" chant, with Sony president Zack Van Amburg telling The Hollywood Reporter that a movie was a real possibility[5]. The revival cemented Community's status as a template case study for online fan campaigns and turned its slogans into recurring memes about cancelled shows in general. ## How to Use The Community meme surface is basically its stock of quotable in-jokes. People typically drop "we're in the darkest timeline" as a caption on screenshots of bad news, election results, sports upsets or general everyday chaos, often paired with a still of Abed in his felt goatee[3]. "Six seasons and a movie" gets recycled every time a fandom starts a campaign to save a cancelled show, and reaction GIFs of Troy walking into an apartment full of pizza fire, Annie surprised, or the entire cast air-conditioning school paintball war are common on Twitter and Reddit threads about any absurd escalation. ## Cultural Impact Community pioneered the modern TV fandom cycle where fans turn scripted lines into hashtags and organize save-our-show campaigns online. The Harmon firing and reinstatement was covered as a live social media event, with his blog response driving the show back into the news cycle and 12,000-plus Tumblr notes acting as proof-of-fandom[5]. The Yahoo Screen deal in 2014 was one of the earliest and most-discussed streaming resurrections of a broadcast comedy, prompting outlets to point to Community as evidence that engaged Twitter fandoms could keep a cancelled show alive[5]. The show's legacy is also tied to a 2018 public reckoning between Harmon and former Community writer Megan Ganz. On December 31, 2017, Harmon tweeted that 2017 had been "the Year of the Asshole" and Ganz quote-tweeted back the next day asking him to "be more specific," adding "redemption follows allocution"[7]. Harmon apologized on Twitter for treating Ganz "like garbage" during her time on Community, and later recorded a longer apology on his podcast Harmontown that Ganz publicly accepted, an exchange Vice and The AV Club both covered as a rare example of an accountability conversation playing out on the same platform where the misconduct's aftermath first surfaced[8][9]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Community? Community is an American sitcom created by Dan Harmon about a study group at fictional Greendale Community College, and it doubles as a fandom meme famous for lines like "six seasons and a movie" and "the darkest timeline"[1]. ### Where did Community come from? Dan Harmon based the show on his own community college study-group experience, developed the pilot in 2008 and premiered it on NBC on September 17, 2009[4]. ### What does Community mean? In meme use, "Community" is shorthand for the show's meta jokes, especially "the darkest timeline" from the Season 3 episode "Remedial Chaos Theory," which fans now drop into any bad-news post[3]. ### How do you use Community? People typically caption chaotic real-world events with "we're in the darkest timeline" or use "six seasons and a movie" whenever they campaign to save a cancelled show[5]. ### Is Community still popular? Yes as a cult classic, streaming on Hulu and other platforms with a devoted fandom that still quotes it years after the finale aired[2]. ### Who created Community? Writer and producer Dan Harmon created Community and served as showrunner for seasons 1 through 3 and then again for seasons 5 and 6[4]. ### Why was Dan Harmon fired from Community? Sony Pictures Television removed Harmon as showrunner in May 2012 and replaced him with David Guarascio and Moses Port, a decision Harmon said he learned about through social media[5]. ### What is the darkest timeline? It is a plot device from the Season 3 episode "Remedial Chaos Theory" where the group rolls a die to see who fetches a pizza, and the timeline where everything goes wrong is nicknamed the darkest one, later reused by fans as internet shorthand for real-life disasters[3]. ### What happened with Dan Harmon and Megan Ganz? On January 2, 2018, former Community writer Megan Ganz replied to Harmon's "Year of the Asshole" tweet asking him to be specific, prompting Harmon to publicly apologize on Twitter and later on his podcast for treating her poorly while she worked on the show[7][8]. ### How many seasons of Community are there? Six seasons total, with the first five airing on NBC and the sixth airing on Yahoo Screen in 2015 after the show was revived by the streaming service on June 30, 2014[5]. ### Where can I watch Community? Episodes are available on Hulu, which streams the series' full run starting with the Season 1 pilot in which Jeff Winger forms the study group at Greendale[2]. ## References 1. [https://www.hulu.com/watch/97950]() 2. [https://www.hulu.com/watch/122944]() 3. [https://www.hulu.com/watch/143515]() 4. [https://www.metacritic.com/tv/community/season-2]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/community]() 6. [https://www.themarysue.com/megan-ganz-dan-harmon-community-abusive/]() 7. [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d34d5y/dan-harmon-admitted-treating-a-female-community-writer-like-garbage-vgtrn]() 8. [https://www.avclub.com/former-community-writer-megan-ganz-calls-out-dan-harmon-1821754073]() 9. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Community]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/community Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library