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South Park raised a generation of trolls (The AV Club)

T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Slayven said:
Proof?
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I guess it's less denial and more criticism of caring about climate change. Which is basically their commentary about freaking everything, and honestly is a form of denial given them only ever criticising people trying to do something about it, and ignoring the damage of famine and dislocation in the most optomistic of scenarios that people will cause by not doing anything about it. If they were smart about it, maybe they'd have something more to say than a "maybe there's a chance you guys are right, but stop talking about it so much", which is a criticism they repeatedly come back to.

Sources: ManBearPig, Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow, and Smug Alert.
 
N

Neece

Member
Slayven said:
The most annoying thing is it fostered apathy and antagonism to people that actually give a damn about something.

The episode that i tapped out was the one were Stan just said "Everything is shit, why care?"
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But...that's not what that episode was about -nor was it endorsing the cynicism that Stan was experiencing. It actually mocked Stan's growing apathy and condescension (and thus mocking the culture of it) as him being a fucking cynical asshole. And of course it was also a commentary on the repetition of creating South Park over and over again, and how difficult it can become as a creator to produce work for an audience that is constantly changing.

Like I'm not one of those people that constantly talk about how critics of South Park miss the point, but I think it applies to that specific episode if the take away was that apathy is a good thing. There are plenty of other episodes that would imo serve as a better example. The Growing Old Episode actually attempted to tackle the lack of passion, but beyond that, it had nothing to do with apathy towards social issues.
 
S

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
wrowa said:
I didn't like the last couple of seasons and I can totally understand people who feel like the show is pandering to the alt-right these days. I also think the decision not to cover Trump is uttery ridiculous and reeks of an attempt not to piss off that part of their audience. If you are creating satire in America, you have to cover what might be the world's most influential clown, period. "Reality is more fucked up than whatever we can think off" is indeed a lazy copt-out.
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Uh... it did cover Trump?
 
E

EdibleKnife

Member
miller.skippins said:
I am a big fan of George Carlin and i knew alot of Gaffers am as well. And I am sure George mocked fat people that same way South Park did too. So what's your stance of George Carlin, gaf?
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He's a comedian that shouldn't be used as an exemplar of how things actually work or how people should be treated.

I don't like South Park. I have many friends who do though. What separates them from the people in the article is the willingness to A) be self aware and B) not base the entirety of their philosophies on life off of a cartoon or comedian due to the fact that the nuance of actual life supersedes the weak exaggerated opinions and depictions of something like South Park.

If you want to laugh at a fat joke, go ahead. But what Carlin or South Park says about fat people isn't actually the final word.
 
H

His Majesty

Banned
wrowa said:
I didn't like the last couple of seasons and I can totally understand people who feel like the show is pandering to the alt-right these days. I also think the decision not to cover Trump is uttery ridiculous and reeks of an attempt not to piss off that part of their audience. If you are creating satire in America, you have to cover what might be the world's most influential clown, period. "Reality is more fucked up than whatever we can think off" is indeed a lazy copt-out.
Click to expand...
south-park-trump-2.gif
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uhu
 
T

Triteon

Member
excelsiorlef said:
Some rap is misogynistic and some black metal is nationalistic
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True, and some people listen to both because they are those things, some people listen in spite of it and some teenagers/trolls listen to it to annoy their parents.

Authoritarians both right and left will try to police that which they find offensive. Which just makes it more inticing to the teenager/trolls out there.
 
M

miller.skippins

Banned
ReplacementPelican said:
Somewhat mirrors an argument I jumped into from the Season 20 thread:



Though this article finds more hostility to the apathy than me. I think this article kind of speaks to a phenomena I've seen with my brother. He's by no means 'alt right', hates the idea of Trump but also really hates SJWs (he had to tell me what those were) and shows me funny videos of SJWs being taken down, sometimes a South Park joke, a recent episode of The Simpsons where Burns goes to College and they're all 'SJWs', we argued once before that I think alt-right sites are dangerous for young people because they essentially foster a kind of neo-white supremacy but he disagrees and thinks twitter and tumblr are far more dangerous because they teach kids bullshit and convince them its vogue to be a-sexual or pan-sexual or whatever (he couldn't explain the actual damage, mind).

His main issue with SJWs seems to be that they're self-righteous and smug. He doesn't mind that you can ignore these people - he claims you can't because they're 'everywhere' but he clearly goes out of his way to find them or sees them re-posted on reddit or wherever - but just that they exist. That kind of 'despite what you believe or do, I hate you because I'm projecting that you think you're better than me' is very South Park but South Park at least controls its own narrative. If you foster a way of thinking and then it becomes loose and unfocused then people slowly start letting some of the bullshit seep into your brain. Its not longer just 'funny' to wind up 'SJWs' but you hate them, you think they're dangerous.


What an absolute cop-out.

Look, I get it. You can't win an argument, you can in here to defend your favourite show and when you were asked for hard facts you just ended up being the caricature of something you tried to argue against. You have to actually reason with people, try and make an argument, not just go 'triggered, triggered, triggered.' Like, if that's where you want to be, why bother posting?

Maybe if you wanted to defend South Park you should actually try, make some arguments, think about it for just a little bit.

If you get banned, its not because people were 'triggered', its because you're not contributing anything and just being belligerent for - apparently - the sake of it.

Nobody here - nor the article - is saying the show should be cancelled or the show is evil, we're talking about the effects of a pop-culture phenomena and how people can interpret art. You, however, are just saying 'triggered, triggered, triggered' and that gap in dialogue makes people more reluctant to disagree with the article.
Click to expand...


They are not saying the show is 'evil' perse but rather, the article is proposing that South Park raised a generation of cynical and uncaring audience and as a result, our current less than empathetic generation.

The thing is....South Park is a parody. For adults. Most, if not all of SP audiences understand that Eric Cartman is NOT a role model. He is a jerk. And the show is purposely trying to make a mockery out of him........where he most definitely got his retribution.

In the earlier seasons, Stan will always said something like a 'lesson of the day' summary to tell the audience of 'what's right or not'.

If someone actually think that audiences of SP really believes in the philosophy of SP, then you are not really understanding what SP is.

I swear it's only the last 2 season of SP that the MSM started to 'turn on' SP as it started to mock the PC culture. (where it used to mock the right for the past decade)....
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
Triteon said:
True, and some people listen to both because they are those things, some people listen in spite of it and some teenagers/trolls listen to it to annoy their parents.

Authoritarians both right and left will try to police that which they find offensive. Which just makes it more inticing to the teenager/trolls out there.
Click to expand...

Criticism is not policing.

Most of what the left does is criticism
 
M

miller.skippins

Banned
EdibleKnife said:
He's a comedian that shouldn't be used as an exemplar of how things actually work or how people should be treated.

I don't like South Park. I have many friends who do though. What separates them from the people in the article is the willingness to A) be self aware and B) not base the entirety of their philosophies on life off of a cartoon or comedian due to the fact that the nuance of actual life supersedes the weak exaggerated opinions and depictions of something like South Park.

If you want to laugh at a fat joke, go ahead. But what Carlin or South Park says about fat people isn't actually the final word.
Click to expand...


of course it isn't. I used to be FAT as well. I laughed because the stereotype that both SP and Carlin quoted were 'funny' to me in way that i can relate...And also saying things as it is.........like Fat people should blame OTHER people for their obesity.....it's not anyone's fault but their own..but i digress.

The thing is, that's the thing about humor. How can we determine what's 'safe' to make fun of and what's not?
 
M

Magwik

Banned
I do find it odd people bring out George Carlin as if he will end the conversation.

Do they even listen to what Carlin says or what he tries to convey outside of just being a funnyguy?
 
S

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
excelsiorlef said:
Most of what the left does is criticism
Click to expand...

I'd like to think that's the case, but it's hard to support.

In any online discussion on social issues (especially on GAF), there is a very vocal faction of the Left (minority or not) that tend to righteously shout down and snark rather than engage in actual criticism. I'd probably label that group 'authoritarian', if I were feeling particularly unkind.
 
T

Triteon

Member
excelsiorlef said:
Maybe just admit this isn't a both sides thing.

We are not now just as bad as conservatives
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I dont think both sides are the same and i come firmly down on the left.

In regard to where trolls come from and their attachnent to the alt right i think that its always been cool not to care about shit, and alot of the left earnestly cares so its easy to hit their buttons.
 
S

Spieler Eins

Member
What the hell am I reading? They loved Bush? They went out their way to make an entire sitcom to shit on him. Then they went out their way to shit on Trump and his supporters were not happy for being portrayed as ultra-stupid. Cartman is the blatant villain of the show (everything he says is supposed to be wrong and he always takes the L), so his racist troll behaviour is actually portrayed as false since the beginning of the show.
 
S

Sesuadra

Unconfirmed Member
Azoor said:
Kids should not be watching South Park...
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but they do. and some of those children either ignore the parody/sarcams whatev. or don't get it.

a classmate of mine LOVED Cartman during high-school and wanted to be like him so bad, he was his absolut idol.
 
P

patapuf

Member
thepotatoman said:
The article seems to argue that exact belief is what causes trolling. That trolling is nihilists making fun of people that commit the sin of caring.
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Yep.

"dont't feed the troll" is common wisdom precisely because of that . These people don't care, they want to make you upset. Arguing with them is fruitless.

Though i feel the waters have become more mudied lately. People have started to believe in the "joke".
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
miller.skippins said:
They are not saying the show is 'evil' perse but rather, the article is proposing that South Park raised a generation of cynical and uncaring audience and as a result, our current less than empathetic generation.

The thing is....South Park is a parody. For adults. Most, if not all of SP audiences understand that Eric Cartman is NOT a role model. He is a jerk. And the show is purposely trying to make a mockery out of him........where he most definitely got his retribution.

In the earlier seasons, Stan will always said something like a 'lesson of the day' summary to tell the audience of 'what's right or not'.

If someone actually think that audiences of SP really believes in the philosophy of SP, then you are not really understanding what SP is.

I swear it's only the last 2 season of SP that the MSM started to 'turn on' SP as it started to mock the PC culture. (where it used to mock the right for the past decade)....
Click to expand...

I don't know how old you are, but South Park was definitely huge with my generation while we were all very young. Maybe you shouldn't blame the creators for that, and instead the parents or marketers, but the result was still the same. A lot of young people learned their politics and philosophies from south park, and most weren't smart enough to pick up on a lot of the nuances because they were too young. Even the ones that could pick up on the nuances were still getting a very nihilistic view of the world.
 
N

Nanashrew

Banned
miller.skippins said:
I swear it's only the last 2 season of SP that the MSM started to 'turn on' SP as it started to mock the PC culture. (where it used to mock the right for the past decade)....
Click to expand...


I think that's because the last few years we had GamerGate, black lives matter, and an election and the worst types of people constantly used memes from South Park and /b/ rhetoric and often aimed at journalists, MSMs, and so many more. South Park is a contributing factor, just as much as 4chan's metamorphosis from what it used to be back in the day, to current day YouTubers like PewdiePie and others expressing their terrible views to kids. Even Trump is a large contributing factor.

It's caused many journalists to dive deeper into how this culture of apathy, trolling, and overall mean-spiritedness and anything goes attitude began.

Take this one for example on Old Man Murray:
https://mic.com/articles/180888/eri...-of-gamergate-harassment-abuse-gaming-culture

This one is about gaming culture in particular. But again, a contributing factor.
 
S

Sesuadra

Unconfirmed Member
SpaceWolf said:
Fuckin' Gambit, man.
Click to expand...

as far as I can tell from his facebook, he became exactly that kind of grown up this article is talking about btw.

but of course anecdotal and stuff. it's just the first thing and the first person that came to my mind reading it.
 
H

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
In the online games I play where the community aspect is important, I feel like there's a correlation between general immature crassness and liking South Park. Doesn't necessarily work the other way around, but if you run into someone who could be summarized as an "asshat", there's a good chance they enjoy South Park.
 
M

MontyBrown

Banned
I've not watched SP in years but up until I stopped watching (for no particular reason) it was a show which had liberal views and mocked most of what is wrong with society...
 
S

Shig

Strap on your hooker ...
WhiteRabbitEXE said:
South Park is the reason I have to deal with people quoting/posting screen caps of "Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich" as a genuine "argument"/"defense" of not voting. I swear this show excels at bringing out dumbfuckery unlike anything else on TV not on Fox News.

I haven't even watched it, but isn't that against the point of the episode anyway? I seem to recall people pointing that out, and if so that would make it all the dumber.
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Yeah, I heard that shit thrown around waaaaaaay too much by younger co-workers this election. I like South Park, but I think the article's central thrust is pretty accurate. There's definitely a large subset of viewers that cheer on Cartman's assholish provocateuring and have folded it into their "do it for the lulz, let me taste your tears" trolling ethos, and there's certainly a thread of apathetic cynicism running through the show in general.

I think a lot of the problem has to do with the way they often present the 'moral' as a staccato little stinger at the very end and then abruptly cut to credits. The takeaway of the episode might should be that 'X thing is wrong/stupid', but it devotes 21.9 minutes to building up X thing, then .1 tearing it down with no room for any deeper reflection. It's kind of like a comedian doing a set full of racist jokes and then saying RACISM IS BAD, PEACE and walking off stage.
 
E

EdibleKnife

Member
miller.skippins said:
The thing is, that's the thing about humor. How can we determine what's 'safe' to make fun of and what's not?
Click to expand...

'Safe' from what? Because if you mean critique, humor will inherently never be safe from it. Nothing is 'safe' to make fun of because there will always be people who don't find X, Y, Z humorous. That's the burden of art in general. And in a greater context, "humor" that tries or helps to reinforce backward falsehoods and damaging views as inherently true shouldn't be 'safe' and should be critiqued.
 
A

AniHawk

Member
realtalk: does south park have even 50 good episodes? a lot of stuff doesn't stand the test of time because matt and trey's politics don't stand the test of time. i really am surprised that the prestige has held up when it's so constantly dated.
 
T

Timedog

good credit (by proxy)
South Park was a product of the times. You could say NWO/DX raised trolls. Tom Green raised trolls. Jackass raised trolls. Punk'd raised trolls. The Lion King 2: Return of Jafar raised trolls. Grunge raised trolls. Or maybe these things were symptoms rather than root causes--emergent anecdocts borne out of some greater societal zeitgeist.

Society's collective conscious was headed towards a vapidly nihilistic state which put pressure on people to simply not care what others think or feel. One of the most popular phrases of the last few decades is "don't give a fuck". Not giving a fuck is seen as an ideal state. You care so little that when expressing how little you care you'll mindlessly throw in an societally taboo word that makes no real sense in that phrase, just in case it pisses somebody off. When you build a society and culture where sociopathic people prosper so effortlessly, the rest of the populace picks up on this fact, even if unconsciously.

Southpark didn't cause this. The internet just gave powerless peons more agency. The ability to, in aggregate, become the idyllic avatar of a sociopathic cultural. This is a christian-hypocritical, capitalist, consumerist, patriarchal society eating itself alive after growing large enough for its mouth to find its tail.
 
E

elyetis

Member
Article was pretty much what I expected.
When I see some episode being summarized to :
Voting is just choosing between some Douche and a Turd Sandwich. Bullying is just a part of life.
Click to expand...
It's obvious we simply didn't watch the same show, or at least I didn't watch the heavily cut version but the author did.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
Screaming Meat said:
I'd like to think that's the case, but it's hard to support.

In any online discussion on social issues (especially on GAF), there is a very vocal faction of the Left (minority or not) that tend to righteously shout down and snark rather than engage in actual criticism. I'd probably label that group 'authoritarian', if I were feeling particularly unkind.
Click to expand...

I said most and you respond by saying a minority doesn't...


Also to associate snark and whatnot to authoriarianism is more than just unkind
 
D

DarkKyo

Member
HotHamBoy said:
I get where this article is coming from but I grew up loving South Park (I was 12 when it premiered in 97) and I'm the furthest thing from the people they are talking about in this article.

Of course, I also think the show has been pretty lame since, like, season 10.
Click to expand...

Same here. SP is one of my favorite shows ever but I am extremely liberal and empathetic.
AniHawk said:
realtalk: does south park have even 50 good episodes? a lot of stuff doesn't stand the test of time because matt and trey's politics don't stand the test of time. i really am surprised that the prestige has held up when it's so constantly dated.
Click to expand...

Yes, but it's very much based on opinion. I can find 50 episodes I like/love, but I imagine by your tone you could not.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
AniHawk said:
realtalk: does south park have even 50 good episodes? a lot of stuff doesn't stand the test of time because matt and trey's politics don't stand the test of time. i really am surprised that the prestige has held up when it's so constantly dated.
Click to expand...

I think it's about the closest you can get to having a good comedy that promotes bad politics. Some of the jokes fall flat because of their bad politics, but a lot of them are saved with some clever and funny writing.

I do think they are often saved by their political positions barely being a position at all.
 
M

MineralCraver420

Banned
I kinda hate South Park because of the environment I grew up in. It was the go-to thing to reference when talking about climate change, the two party system, Kanye West, and transgender people. The latter in particular hurts me. Though they have done some effort to get their act together with depicting trans people, I'm still not sure I forgive them for it.
 
N

Not

Banned
CassSept said:
They had an episode in season 19 lambasting Trump (Canada being a desolate wasteland after being governed by Trump expy) and then spent the entire season 20 showing how bloody awful Trump is. Opinions like the one in the post above had been repeated by dozens of people ever since Matt and Trey's statement and I cannot see how they can be made by anyone who watched the last two seaons.
Click to expand...

You're right. I remember being a conservative kid and latching onto the stuff in South Park I liked (Al Gore being dumb) and blocking out the stuff i didn't. The same is probably happening here on some level. It's just a bummer they're offering so much for li'l troglodytes to latch onto.
 
K

Kain-Nosgoth

Member
and yet south park clearly said to the viewer of the show to vote for hillary in the last season, mocking trump in every fucking episodes, and mocking internet trolls too... Watch the show or research more about what you're talking about

but no, south park must be alt-right because some stupid young people can't saw nuance and quote the show.... creators should not be responsible for dumb people liking their show! Maybe it helped, sure, but it could have been anything, they'll always quote something if that's fit their agenda, even if they don't understand it
 
P

Prime crotch

Banned
South Park is easier to nail down since it crystallized, unwillingly I'd say, a lot of rising alt-right sensibilities into something more palatable to the mainstream, but it lost any relevance post mid 2000's.
 
S

starchild excalibur

Member
It's interesting to me how SP can attract admirers on the left as well as on the right despite how politically focused it's been in recent seasons. I guess much of that speaks to their tendency to lampoon everyone, even if some are more deserving than others.

That being said, I was originally opposed to them not tackling Trump next season. But honestly, after the deluge of Trump-based comedy skits, late night monologues, and fictionalized shows these last couple of years I'm actually looking forward to SP getting back to apolitical humor hopefully.

The entire last season was a wash for me and the more WoW or Blockbuster-type episodes the better IMO.
 
D

DarkKyo

Member
About the cynicism thing, I think South Park is more a product of cynical times than it is the thing that's causing them. The demographic that grew up with South Park would be dissatisfied with the state of society regardless of if they watched a show based on construction paper cut-outs or not.
 
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