To reach a point where something that was once popular or successful begins to decline in quality, often by becoming ridiculous or desperate for attention.
This phrase comes from a 1977 episode of the TV show 'Happy Days' where the character Fonzie literally jumps over a shark while water-skiing. Critics and fans saw this as the moment the show became absurd and started declining, and the phrase was popularized by writer Jon Hein in the 1990s.
What's fascinating is how a single television moment created a phrase that perfectly captures the lifecycle of pop culture phenomena. The specificity of the original reference has been completely forgotten by many users, yet the phrase remains incredibly useful for describing that precise moment when something good goes irreversibly bad.
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