You know who you are. You’re the douchebag at parties who quotes long stretches of Monty Python verbatim. You’re the dumbass who still salts his conversation with bons mots fromSeinfeld. You’re the asshole who has a quote from The Simpsons for every occasion. Have you ever had an original thought in your whole life? Do you know how annoying are? What is broken in your head that makes you believe such tiresome parroting makes you appear hip/witty/ironic? Turn it off.
No, seriously. I see all the people that are mightily pleased with themselves for quoting some Monty Python line, and think “are you fucking 12 years old?”
Holmes! Thanks for the personal appearance. Nothing like a type specimen to illustrate my point. Have anything from The Simpsons you’d care to share with us? Maybe even a couple times so that it’s twice as funny?
It’s called referential humor. The skill lies in selecting a reference that is appropriate to the situation and intelligible to the audience. One of my favorite personal moments was when I cracked up a usually stone-faced friend by, after listening to two of our other friends talk about some proposed linguistic changes to some language or other, I whipped out - “That’d be double-plus ungood.”
She just lost it. My reference just happened to strike her brain the right way and she got a huge laugh out of it. Which made me happy.
So, to summarize : Yes, it is wit, thank you very much; just not a kind you are used to or appreciate, but I don’t swim in your toilet, so don’t pee in my pool.
I think it’s funny, most of the time. If someone is using it all the time, every sentence, it’s akin to swearing all the time. Also, you should choose your audience with care. If the person you’re talking to never watches whatever show it’s obvious they won’t get it.