I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers

Q: What is I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers?

It's a catchphrase from the 1999 Futurama episode 'The Series Has Landed,' used online as a fill-in-the-blank template for reacting to rejection or dissatisfaction.

Q: Where did I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers come from?

Bender the robot first shouts the line after getting kicked out of a lunar amusement park arcade in Futurama's April 4, 1999 episode 'The Series Has Landed'.

Q: What does I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers mean?

It's ironic bravado, the reaction of someone who just got rejected and now claims they will build a better version of whatever kicked them out, capped with the tag 'in fact, forget the [X]'.

Q: How do you use I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers?

Swap the theme park for whatever platform, group, or tool you're frustrated with, then drop the 'with blackjack and hookers... in fact, forget the [X]' tag at the end.

Q: Is I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers still popular?

It's a classic Futurama quote that peaked in early Reddit and forum culture, and the Bender-in-fur-coat image macro built up over 10,000 captioned submissions on Meme Generator by 2013.

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Published August 31, 2026

When Bender the robot got kicked out of a lunar amusement park in a 1999 Futurama episode, he stormed off shouting 'I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers.' The line turned into a widely quoted Futurama catchphrase on the early web, spawning a phrasal template used across forums, subreddits, and image macros for years.

catchphrase memes snowclone memes movie quote memes late 1990s memes forum era memes

Overview

'I'm Going To Build My Own Theme Park With Blackjack and Hookers' works as a fill-in-the-blank template: someone gets rejected from a group, tool, or platform, then declares they will make their own version 'with blackjack and hookers... in fact, forget the [X].' Urban Dictionary logged that exact structure in November 20033. Programming forums, gaming boards, and mobile-OS blogs plugged their own gripes into it through the late 2000s2.

By late 2011, the phrase attached to a specific image: Bender in a white fur coat and gold rings from the February 27, 2000 Futurama episode 'Raging Bender'6. That image became the base for two Meme Generator pages that held over 10,000 captioned submissions combined by 20137.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Futurama (TV) / Reddit and forums (viral spread)

Key People

Futurama

Date

1999

The line first aired on April 4, 1999, in the second episode of Futurama's first season, 'The Series Has Landed'8. During a trip to a moon-based amusement park, Bender reaches into an arcade claw machine to grab lost keys, gets caught, and gets ejected onto the lunar surface. He yells, 'I am going to build my own theme park, with blackjack and hookers!' then delivers the line again when he thinks the Planet Express crew is leaving without him, this time promising to build his own lunar lander.

How It Spread

The earliest tracked online use is an April 2003 Prince.org forum thread, where a poster shortened it to 'In fact forget the park'1. Urban Dictionary documented the template that November3. In October 2007, graphics programmer Arseny Kapoulkine titled a blog post 'My Own Lighting Shader (With Blackjack and Hookers)' after being told a certain pixel shader was impossible2. A January 2008 Reddit post from a Ron Paul opponent joking about a Ron-Paul-free version of Reddit marked the site's earliest known use8.

The subreddit r/BlackjackAndHookers launched in January 2010 and reached almost 400 subscribers4. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days shipped that year with an Xbox achievement titled 'Blackjack and Hookers'5. Between 2010 and 2011, users deployed the template for imagined mobile operating systems, forum art threads, and Minecraft taverns built from scratch8.

How to Use This Meme

Pick something you got rejected from or something that annoys you: a subreddit, an app, a company, a group chat. Frame the response as 'Fine, I'll build my own [X], with blackjack and hookers... in fact, forget the [X].' The Bender-in-fur-coat image is the common visual pairing, but the pure text version still shows up on its own6.