Jimmy Hatlo’s They’ll Do It Every Time (1929-2008) was as long-lived and beloved as it was throughly benign. To be fair, this single-panel museum of petty grievance had banality baked into its title and premise. The actual identity of the “they” is kept usefully loose enough to encompass an “other” of our choosing, but most likely all of humanity but us. And their “doing it every time” is by definition rote and predictable. But of course it is the aching familiarity of Hatlo’s observations that gave the strip purchase. Widely praised for poking at the small hypocrisies, human foibles, bombast of everyday existence, the strip had a special populist appeal. Hatlo was inspired by readers who submitted ideas and got daily credit with a “tip of the Hatlo hat” and even their name and street address for millions to see. Indeed, that was a vastly different era when it came to personally identifiable information. And yet, not so ancient. We can see in They’ll Do It Every Time predecessors of both user-generated content (UGC) and observational humor.