This is a topic that I always knew would be a video someday. A Golden Age video is kinda mandatory for a Simpsons YouTube review channel. But I put it off for a long time because I was intimidated by the topic. It's not really the kind of thing you can throw a bunch of research at or measure easily. And there has already been a lot of discourse about the topic, many popular YouTube video essays about it.  I wasn't interested in writing a manifesto declaring which seasons I think are "golden" and which aren't, so instead I framed this more about the question itself. It ended up being one of the more challenging videos to write, because there so few definitive answers. Hope you all enjoy my musings.
(Also, on the video editing front, I hope you like VISUAL PUNS because there are a lot of those in here. Thank god for that Gold Homer joke in Dog of Death.) 🤣

They should just make Homer 12 feet tall and covered in 14 karat gold permanently. Then when people ask when the golden age is, we can say right now and it will be the truth

If you ask anyone from Spain, they will tell you the Golden Age went from seasons 1 - 10. The original voice actors for Homer and Mr. Burns died right after Season 10, and the show was never the same for us. Those voices were too iconic.

The fact there is SO MANY seasons classed as a “golden era” is incredible especially considering most shows only have 1 single season listed as it’s golden era.

It’s actually really simple, The Golden Age is Every Season because the Simpsons are Yellow

The fact that season 20 has a higher percentage than season 19 means either some people chosen only season 20 as the golden age or some people just selected seasons without keeping it as a single age.

For me, I've always considered the movie as my chosen ending of the series, at least until the actual finale in 2042.

Are the Simpson's writers so out of touch? No, it's the fans who are wrong.

"The writers argue against there being a Golden Age" puts me in mind of "Metallica has fiercely defended St. Anger"

I think a show's "Golden Age" is also about the zeitgeist. It was impossible to escape The Simpsons in public during its best seasons. The Office was a similar phenomenon.

"Am I out of touch?....no, it's the viewers that are out of touch"

I was wondering who the 5% were who didn't consider season 6 part of the Golden Age, then I remembered there are a handful of old Simpsons fans who ONLY like season 1 and 2, and think everything after that was a betrayal of the show's original vision or whatever

I stand by that Homer Goes to College has the best culmination of a running gag. Homer’s one sided fight with the dean wraps up with my favorite joke:
Sorry about that prank where I hit you with my car.
Prank?

I think my only issue with the Rose Tinted Argument is I SHOULD be nostalgic for seasons 9 and 10. I grew up with them, and I liked them at the time. But I rewatch the series now and the drop off is both quick and prominent.
The jokes are less layered or "screw the audience"-y, instead going back to on the nose gags that miss more. You also see bad habits take off, like an overreliance on positive celebrity cameos. These are tangible things to point to.

A golden age isnt so much about the episodes themselves, it's more about what was possible and permissible within the episodes, depending on how the characters were situated within it. In S 1-5, it was, as you say, very sentimental - very focussed on one family reacting to a world that they didn't undertsand and it didn't understand them and the small cadre of other oddballs who felt the same way, It was a show driven by the values of the protagonists.  As it became less about story and consequnces and more about the set up and delivery of jokes, this was fine because the jokes were playing the long game with the audience. The "golden age" ended when the jokes became quicker, more obvious, sometimes funnier but were delivered at the expense of characters, not via the characters journey through a situation and we slid into jerkass Homer, a too broad cast of disposable characters who just walk in to say a catch phrase and the celebrities who started appearing as themselves for the sake of doing it. My 2c

one topic i think would be interesting is how well the simpsons fit into modern times. they were designed for the late 80's/early 90's, and even in the 90's John Waters was telling The Simpsons how old-fashioned they seem. I wonder if being stuck in tradition makes it feel archaic, or if they've integrated the modern world/technology into the show as well as they can.

It genuinely shocked me to learn that people dislike season 1. It's finding its bearings but so many of the episodes are so heartfelt with great humour.

Next Mysteries question suggestion: What is the population of Springfield? How big is Springfield really? It has a lot of sport arenas, museum, and things like that but not the kind of bustling high-rises one might encounter in Capitol City. I'd love to hear your thoughts about! #TeamCletusSimpsonsHistories

For us in the Latin American fanbase of the Simpsons, it is generally considered that the Golden Age ended at season 14, since after that, Homer’s voice actor change. The og voice actor (Humberto Velez) made Homer sound hilarious and the way he said things. But the one from season 15 onward just made Homer sound whinny.

1-8 is also where I fall on this. I was at peak nostalgia age starting at about season 9-10, yet it's those earlier seasons which I'll actually sit down and watch. There were shifts in the humor during this time, but as a whole the episodes flowed better and more consistently landed with their end goals (whether that was schmaltz or jokes.) Season 9 was still "good" on the whole but you could feel the fatigue, and after that the humor I loved from The Simpsons seemed to move to Futurama.