Matt Groening decided to make the characters in The Simpsons bright yellow specifically to manipulate people who were rapidly flipping through television channels.

A closer look

Matt Groening decided to make the characters in The Simpsons bright yellow specifically to manipulate people who were rapidly flipping through television channels. Back in the ancient era of the late 1980s, before streaming existed and people actually had to use a physical remote control to blindly surf cable networks, Groening figured a sudden flash of aggressive yellow would confuse viewers just enough to make them stop and watch. It was essentially a prehistoric, brightly colored clickbait strategy that tricked millions of unsuspecting Americans into watching a dysfunctional family for decades. What started as a cheap psychological gimmick to hack human attention spans turned into the longest-running American animated series, proving that you do not need profound artistic vision if you just understand how easily distracted the average consumer really is!