old man yells at cloud

English

Alternative forms

• old man yelling at a cloud, old man yelling at cloud, old man yelling at clouds, old man yelling at the clouds

Etymology

From a scene in the 2002 episode "The Old Man and the Key" of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons, in which Grampa Simpson, applying for a driver's license, produces a newspaper clipping with this headline for identification.

Phrase

old man yells at cloud

1. (humorous or derogatory) Refers to a person who expresses a trivial, out-of-touch, or idiosyncratic grievance; especially, with an implication of aged crotchetiness.
   • 2018 February, Liz Cook, “Check-in Time”, in The Pitch, page 26:

     I'm incessantly railing, in the old-man-yells-at-cloud tradition, against Big Beautiful Burgers stuffed into wispy buns that leave nothing to the imagination.

   • 2020, Matt LeMay, Product Management in Practice, page 148:

     If you will allow me an “old man yells at cloud” moment...back in my day, the only tools we had to make documentation were plain ol' spreadsheets, slides, and Word documents.

   • 2022, Ruby Tandoh, Cook As You Are: Recipes for Real Life, Hungry Cooks, and Messy Kitchens: A Cookbook, page 131:

     Everyone has their own Old-Man-Yells-at-Cloud gripe that they just can't let go. Some people can't get over the fact that some people do (or do not) keep their ketchup in the fridge; other people can't stop themselves ragging on pineapple-topped pizza.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:old man yells at cloud.