What is The More You Know?

It is an NBC Universal public service announcement series launched in 1989 that pairs celebrity-delivered educational messages with an animated rainbow comet-trail logo, and it became an image-macro and catchphrase template online.

Where did The More You Know come from?

The first spot aired on NBC on September 9th, 1989, with Tom Brokaw talking about education; parodies started showing up on sitcoms in the 2000s and on YouTube by March 2007.

What does The More You Know mean?

Online it is used as a sarcastic tag after a useless, obvious or made-up 'fact,' leaning on the earnest tone of the original PSA for ironic effect.

How do you use The More You Know?

People typically overlay the comet-trail logo and the phrase 'The More You Know' on a joke fact, or just type 'the more you know' or #themoreyouknow after a throwaway bit of trivia.

Is The More You Know still popular?

The PSA series is still produced by NBC Universal, and the parody format was still being tagged tens of thousands of times a month on Twitter as of October 2013.

The More You Know

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Published October 1, 2026

The More You Know is a long-running NBC public service announcement series that debuted in September 1989 with a Tom Brokaw spot about education1. Its celebrity-led format and signature rainbow comet trail logo became a parody target through the 2000s, eventually spawning an image macro template built around fake, absurd or sarcastic 'facts.'

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Overview

The More You Know is an NBC Universal public service announcement campaign that pairs a brief educational message, usually delivered by a celebrity, with an animated rainbow comet-trail logo designed by Paul Johnson2. The spots have aired on NBC since 1989, which makes the series one of the longest-running network PSA campaigns in American TV2.

As a meme, the format works by hijacking the earnest PSA structure. Image macros slap the comet-trail logo and the phrase 'The More You Know' onto a joke 'fact' that is either wrong, cynical, obvious or crude, letting the mismatch between the wholesome branding and the dumb payload do the work2. The phrase itself also functions as a standalone sarcastic tag online, often attached to pointless trivia with the hashtag #themoreyouknow3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

NBC television (origin) / YouTube and deviantART (parody spread)

Creator

NBC Universal; meme parodies by unknown users

Date

1989

The first The More You Know spot aired on September 9th, 1989, with NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw delivering a message about the value of education2. Hundreds of NBC-affiliated celebrities followed, including Jennifer Aniston, Zach Braff and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, along with sitting presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama2. The series collected a Peabody Award, a Gracie Award and a Special Christopher Award between 1993 and 20072.

Parody of the format started on television well before the meme life. Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Family Guy mocked the spots during the 1990s, and in 2006 both The Office and Scrubs ran their own send-ups within roughly two months of each other, a run that Adweek flagged as a sign the gag was becoming an easy sitcom crutch4.

How It Spread

Video parodies of the PSA started showing up on YouTube by March 2007, with similar clips appearing on MetaCafe, CreativeCow and Funny or Die later that year2. One of the earliest known fan-made parodies was shared in 2006 by Usenet user Perkoff on the rec.music.beatles newsgroup, though the YouTube upload has since been removed2. An example of the YouTube parody wave, a compilation of Conan O'Brien 'More You Know' spoofs, is still viewable on the platform5.

In September 2007, a 'Plz Account' built around the comet-trail logo was created on deviantART, giving users a reusable asset to drop into their own art and reaction images2. From the late 2000s, the logo started appearing in image macros of fake or joke facts collected on humor sites like Memebase and We Know Memes2. Urban Dictionary entries from around the same period described the phrase as a sarcastic tag used after reciting something useless or obvious, confirming its drift from PSA tagline to generic internet punchline3.

By October 2013, Know Your Meme counted more than 3.8 million YouTube search results for 'The More You Know Parody' and tracked over 33,000 uses of #themoreyouknow on Twitter in a single month2. Scrubs' own 'The More You Know' bit was called out directly in Adweek's 2006 column about sitcoms leaning on ad parodies4.

Timeline

1989-09-09

The first The More You Know PSA airs on NBC, with Tom Brokaw delivering a message about education.

2006

The Office and Scrubs both run 'The More You Know' parody bits within about two months of each other, flagged by Adweek.

2006-11-09

Usenet user Perkoff shares a self-made The More You Know parody via the rec.music.beatles newsgroup, one of the earliest known fan parodies.

2007-03

The More You Know parody videos start appearing on YouTube in volume.

2007-09

A Plz Account using the comet-trail logo is created on deviantART, standardizing the parody asset.

2013-10

Know Your Meme logs 3.8M+ YouTube hits for 'The More You Know Parody' and 33,000+ monthly uses of #themoreyouknow on Twitter.

How to Use This Meme

The usual image-macro build is a screenshot or recreation of the rainbow comet-trail logo with the words 'The More You Know' set over or beside a short 'fact.' Common conventions include stating something blatantly false, darkly cynical or painfully obvious, so the mock-educational tone clashes with the content2. Online, people often skip the image entirely and type 'the more you know' or #themoreyouknow after a throwaway comment to flag it as sarcastic trivia3.