I know the question “What would Jesus do?” was first asked in an 1896 book. I also know that it experienced a brief popular revival a while ago, with kids wearing WWJD bracelets and such.
What I can’t remember is when WWJD was trendy again. Was it ten years ago? Twenty? I don’t need an exact date, just a rough idea.
Anyone remember?
Mid to late 90’s
I thought it was still in among Christians.
This is what Google Ngram says:
A little bit of the use of it in the 1870’s and 1880’s, a big burst in the mid-1890’s (because of the book, I assume), more short periods of the use of it in the mid-1930’s, the late 1940’s/early 1950’s, and the mid-1960’s/early 1970’s. Then there’s been a steady increase in its use since the mid-1970’s. So it never dropped completely out of use. You can click on the links in that webpage that allows you to see what books it appeared in for various time periods. This will allow you to see if it’s really a use of the phrase or just an accidental case of the words coming together (which may be the case for some of the books cited).
I’ve seen jokes and “memes” on WWJD fairly recently,but they do seem to have dried up as of this year.
I remember that the bracelet meme was fairly active in the late 1990’s in the US, perhaps around 1997 or 1998. At that time there were a fair number of kids running around wearing them. I think the principle of the meme (consider what Jesus would have done before you do something) is still active in Evangelical circles, but fewer people wear the bracelets nowadays.
“If someone asks you, “What Would Jesus Do?” remind them that flipping out and overturning tables is a viable option.”
Did the WWJD bracelets predate the Livestrong bracelet, because those yellow bracelets only appeared in 2004. I could have sworn the Livestrongs came around closer to the beginning of Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France run (beginning in 1999) but the Internet tells me it was 2004.
I think the popularity of Wriststrong bracelets brought back the whole practice.
WWJD bracelets were being worn in the US in the late 1990’s. I don’t recall them being yellow plastic, though, so that may have originated with Armstrong.
There was also supposedly a practice where if someone asked what the WWJD bracelet meant, you were supposed to give it to them, ostensibly as a form of evangelism.
Also, the late 1990’s was the time when South Park first came out, and one of its very first memes was “What Would Brian Boitano Do?”. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
I’m sure he’d kick an ass or two, that’s what Brian Boitano’d do.
You see I was living in the godless California Bay Area in the late 1990s so that WWJD trend apparently escaped my noticed almost entirely. 
Don’t worry…the whole point of the WWJD thing escapes the notice of millions of the people who actually wear those bracelets every day…
I was going to get one of those bracelets, but then I thought to myself “What would Jesus do?” and I decided to condemn the person selling them to an eternity of pain and suffering instead.
I did a date-based search on Google Groups (Usenet) for WWJD. Hardly anything at all until 1997 then kablam, hundreds and hundreds of hits.
According to NGRAM the use of the initials “WWJD” (contrasted with the phrase spelled out) didn’t start to appear until the mid-1990s: WWJD.
A couple of years ago I bought a button that read
WWJD?
JWRTFM
This may be a bit of a Rorschach test, but the first thing that came to mind is ‘Jesus would rock the fucking mike’. :dubious:
I laughed.
I like to answer their question with a question. “For a Klondike bar?”