Hacker Cinema
South Park
1997 · TV series · 29 seasons
Created by Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Follow the misadventures of four irreverent grade-schoolers in the quiet, dysfunctional town of South Park, Colorado.
133 positive35 negative13 mixed455 neutralfrom 636 commenters
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729 comments on Hacker News
> or that someone who would not authorize something like this would literally not be allowed to show up on the ballot?
I'm surprised that you've never encountered this persepective before, it seems a very common one to me.
The first thing I think about is the South Park episode in which the elementary school had to vote for a school mascot and they were given the choice of either "a giant douche" or "a turd sandwich".
The second thing is another South Park episode (circa 2009), for which they actually produced two episodes (and aired one) for the Presidential election between McCain and Obama. Regardless of who would win, the plot was the same: the winner colludes with the loser in a National Treasure-style heist, with the election just being part of the setup.
In the latter example, the message seems to be that it doesn't matter who wins because the same outcomes occur. The former example probably doesn't need explaining.
Anyway, yeah, it would be nice to choose something better than a turd sandwich but when the other option is a giant douche, what is there to do? The way I see it, you either vote for someone who you know stands no chance (Jill Stein, btw), don't vote at all, or vote for the turd sandwich (or the giant douche, if that's your persuasion).
Connecting to office LANs and going on the internet was a magical feeling back then. The speed coming from a 56k dialup was jarring. We'd have network games of Quake (rocket jumps included) and watch Real Player versions of grainy South Park early episodes at er, lunch. Good times.
I gave up on streaming few years ago. I had both Netflix and Hulu which were fun for a few years but it gradually felt like it got worse. It got to the point where I would catch myself scrolling past one uninteresting show after another for 10-15 minutes then turned the TV off and did something else.
I've considered getting Paramount just for Trek and South Park but at this point I could care less about TV And film.
South Park also had a great episode about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81bt0ZJLMas
I've been pretty interested in cars lately, and Engineering Explained has some great videos. They can stretch a bit longer than 20 minutes, but I'll just pause the video and come back to it later when I have time.
And given that I've been interested in cars lately, Delivrd is a channel of this guy that negotiates car deals for a living, and it's actually really interesting to see the different behaviors of car dealerships. His videos are longer, but you can kind of just skip around since it's basically just livestream clips.
And finally, I've been watching lots of older spongebob, south park, and family guy episodes. Man those are hitting the spot right now.
I am in no way a public figure, and will likely never be one, but if the South Park writers decided to go after me my strategy would be to hunker down and just hope the episode isn’t good.
need the south park episode with the shake weight version of this
Animation isn't just hand-drawn animation, it's any kind of movie composed from individual still images. And stop-motion animation is a subcategory of that, no matter if you use clay/putty (like in Wallace & Gromit), Lego figures or paper cutouts (like in this case or also on South Park).
South Park did a pretty great episode on this topic. IIRC, they had Emmanuel Lewis “officially” change the definition of a word in Websters’ Dictionary!
Off topic but this was the entire joke behind a South Park episode.
Sounds like what I originally said, it's not actually funny, it's just sad/angry. If you wanna see satire done right, there are some good South Park episodes.
I must live in the upside down. If there are any ardent anti-AI people I come across they're techies. Whereas non-techies are either oblivious or completely and comically locked-in as caricatured in that South Park episode.
It reminds me of that thing I had heard of people doing on Facebook years ago. Someone wouldn't have a Facebook account "yet", so one of their friends/family/whomever would create one on their behalf with an assumption that they were being helpful to the other party. "It's all ready to go once you want to login! I knew your email address, so just do a password reset when you start using it. You're welcome!"
I believe even an episode of South Park covered it.
The difference there being that, with the Facebook relationship status stuff, spouses were feeling societal pressure to show a public declaration and "proof" of their partners existence/mutual status. With something like LinkedIn though...does that same sort of pressure exist? Are Hiring Managers (or whomever) feeling some kind of professional pressure to "prove" how many real life people work with/for their company? Does getting the number of users marked as working for that company above a threshold give them secret, special privileges in some locked-off business area of LinkedIn? Or is it just pure clout chasing? It's very odd. It feels like a violation in some way I can't really articulate. "Compulsory volunteer account-to-ID association"? I don't know what to call that. It's gross.
> People are wringing their hands about the economic fallout from the Iranian theocracy's control of the Strait. Maybe consider how much more effective that control would be if they were allowed to finish developing their nuclear weapons.
Both the US and Israel had confirmed that they had previously completely and utterly destroyed Nuclear Bombs. I really don't think that its the reason.
And also the control of the strait, only happened, because Israel/US attacked it.
> One thing I don't understand is why you thought it was important to amplify this particular incident by posting it here
Because this particular incident goes beyond religion. I have tried saying this 5 times now, my friend. If you feel like I have some religious qualms, obviously I have none. I was deeply emotionally troubled by this story during that time and I felt like hackernews's flagging of it was somewhat unjustful (which has been promptly unflagged by courtesy of dang) and the story deserved more attention (which it promptly has gotten), I have tried to respond to every comment as much as I can too. I am not hidden behind anything. I have tried to explain my thinking process multiple times.
> Your protestations notwithstanding and your portrayal of yourself as some kind of pacifist, the things you have posted and have written here demonstrate that you are biased towards one side
This is ironic because if I should be biased towards one side as an Hindu, it might be against anti-Islam but according to you I am biased with Islam. Let me please restate that I simply am not biased towards any particular religion.
I want to know something my friend, What will be the outcome of all of this?? All of this bloodshed, all of these cries and screams of innocents. From both sides. Israel might have an upper hand right now but the tides may change or they may not change.
Even then when history reflects on this, Do you feel like even an ounce of hesitation that history will reflect negatively if it don't end up on winning side (or even if it does)?
Matt stone is Jewish and In a sense of irony, it is south park which best reflects what I mean within their episode of Israel-Palestine war. Everyone is going to hate on the jews now because of these wars and there will be even more resentment within the region between arabs and jewish faith. And I hope that it goes without saying, that my criticism of Israeli regime doesn't equal an criticism of Jewish faith as a whole.
Within the eyes of the public, It is Israel & USA who have started the wars, who have caused the forever war to happen.
As a Jewish person, if I may ask you my friend, do you feel hate online nowadays? and if so, are you feeling like my message is directed with hate?
Because I know that it isn't you directly who is causing this child harm, It's the Israeli Regime and I want you to know, that your direct or indirect support to the current Israeli Regime is, in a similar fashion to what you might feel of a Muslim person being in support of their Muslim Regime.
I sincerely recommend watching that South park Episode from Matt Stone, my friend. I want you to know that I am against the current Iranian but also the Israeli regime and I am neither against the Israeli or Iranian innocent people. Both the former will be my enemy and both the latter will be my friend. These are my morals.
Have a nice day, my friend. I hope I can say the same to my Iranian friends too who have gone off the grid because of previously their own regime but now the Iran-war. I can be wrong, and I usually am, but right now, I stand by everything with what I have said.
(I would also like to state that Israeli people can have an internal rising against an fascist Israeli regime, similar to how my friends in US are fighting for what they believe to be right within peaceful protests. I hope that you can peacefully protest within your country and your country allows this right, because, I genuinely feel like all of these things and especially supporting the Israeli regime right now isn't/might not be reflected within the best of light)
I have an exam tomorrow, I have taken an hour to write this comment to explain how I feel of all this, Anyways, Wish me luck for my exam and have a nice day!
I think this essay suffers from an attempt to define fascism so narrowly it only actually includes two countries - Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, who were both defeated by the same set of powers in the same war - while simultaneously stating that there's a specific quality of fascism - namely, an unwise focus on the signifiers of military strength rather than actual military strength - that is applicable to a bunch of other governments in other situations he classifies as near-fascist to avoid arguments over whether they are actually fascist or not.
I don't think he makes the case that an unwise focus on the signifiers rather than the reality of military strength primarily explains the defeat of either Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy in WWII. Did the Nazis and Italian fascists actually do this to a greater extent than any of the other participants of the war? Certainly every major participant in WWII had propaganda about how good its army was, including the United States and Britain ("videos" is anachronistic for the time period, but there's plenty of American WWII military propaganda that was originally a black and white filmstrip that's been digitized on YouTube). And every major participant in the war had a great deal of actual, non-fake, military strength. Fascist Italy was certainly a junior partner to the Nazis, but Nazi Germany was primarily defeated in the incredibly bloody Eastern Front, mostly by the armies of the Soviet Union expending huge amounts of blood and treasure in order to do it. It was not a trivial victory, nor I think an inevitable one.
The Soviet Union was an officially state socialist country, an ideology that saw itself as directly opposed to fascism. Particularly under Stalin, it can hardly be described as a country "willing to engage in potentially embarrassing self-study and soul-searching" - indeed Stalin's purges of large fractions of Soviet society in the 1930s, including the military, are a commonly-cited reason why the Nazis had so much success in the initial phases of the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Of course every allied power in the war was being supplied materially by the United States, which had an extremely favorable geographical position and cultural disposition to produce material goods. Maybe whichever side in the war the US supported would've won. Or maybe some third thing would've happened, WWII is one of the most well-studied conflicts in human history (and for good reason, it was a pretty important one!), there's lots of people with lots of ideas out there about how it could've gone differently than it did.
Looking beyond Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to other countries also weakens the argument. Let's say for the sake of argument that Franco's Spain counts as fascist. Then the fascists won the civil war, avoided fighting in WWII at all and thereby being destroyed like Nazi Germany was (although I think this was also not a foregone conclusion, and had more to do with the geopolitical calculus of the Allied Powers than anything Spain itself did at the time), and ended up surviving until Franco died of heart failure at the age of 82. At which point the country had a series of contentious-but-ultimately-peaceful political reforms resulting in its modern constitutional monarchy. This doesn't really sound like a narrative where a focus on the trappings rather than the reality of military ability resulted in a fascist nation fighting an aggressive war of choice and then losing! This might've just been Hitler specifically! (And it's not like that was the first time Germany did this sort of thing - was Kaiser Wilhelm II fascist? What about Otto von Bismark - the Franco-Prussian war went fairly well for Prussia and fairly badly for Napoleon III's France, actually, although maybe this is getting too far back in the past for labels like "fascist" to be useful).
If Salazar's Portugal was fascist, then doesn't the fact that it avoided aggressive war imply that fighting (and losing) aggressive wars isn't very diagnostic of fascism? If the fact that it lost its overseas colonial empire constituted a military failure of fascism, then what are we to make of the fact that so did Britain and France at roughly the same time and for the same set of reasons? Was France suffering from fascist overconfidence in its military when it failed to win the First Indochina War? Immediately after having been successfully conquered by Nazi Germany for a few years and then successfully expelling them along with the other allied powers in exactly the same war that Nazi Germany lost as thoroughly and completely as it is possible to lose a war?
Saddam Hussein's Iraq is also a poor example, because while it was a cult-of-personality dictatorship and there was definitely a great deal of the trappings of military strength rather than actual military strength - Hussein did not tolerate his subordinates bluntly telling him the actual truth on the ground - Iraq didn't actually lose his war of choice against Kuwait because of anything Kuwait did. He lost it because the United States, in its capacity as a global superpower, decided that it wasn't going to tolerate Iraq invading Kuwait and more-or-less unilaterally - and easily - destroyed Iraq's army in the First Gulf War. And of course in the Second Gulf War Iraq didn't really do anything, which is why so many people thought it was immoral - indeed, fascist! - for the US to wage another aggressive war of choice against Iraq, again more-or-less unilaterally, and again easily destroy Iraq's army, depose Saddam Hussein, set up a puppet government that tried and executed him, and basically run the country for another decade or so until the US got tired of it. I don't think this says anything about fascism or near-fascism, I think this says that the United States is World Police (you know, like that movie the South Park guys made, at the time).
I think the actual point of this essay is that the author is operating in a framework where he wants to compare his domestic political opponents to Nazi Germany - because that's a metaphorical framework that has been in play in liberal democracies since they were actually fighting WWII against the actual Nazis - and because he's a historian who focuses a lot on warfare, he wants to do this by arguing that actual fascist governments (both of them) were bad at war even though they had the trappings of being good at war. So therefore his domestic political opponents, who he calls fascists, must also be foolish blowhards who are actually weak and pathetic.
You don't write something like "Put bluntly, fascism is a loser’s ideology, a smothering emotional safety blanket for deeply insecure and broken people (mostly men), which only makes their problems worse until it destroys them and everyone around them." if you're trying to actually understand why various types of government performed the way they did in actual wars - you write this if you're actually talking about people in your liberal democracy who you don't like and are trying to insult. And you write "(mostly men)" if you're operating from a framework which treats masculinity as inherently suspect, which is a contemporary domestic-politics political signifier, rather than something that was relevant to explaining why the Soviet Union ultimately militarily defeated Nazi Germany.
A similar one I made a while back, inspired by South Park's disclaimer before each episode: https://github.com/jmrossy/south-park-license
> I'm having a hard time responding to someone who's using a South Park episode as a discussion point. Like how can I debate a point made by a show that makes content reacting to the popular perception of certain ideas?
The South Park episode came out in 1998, when the profitability of tech companies was… questionable, but their popularity was very high. It was social commentary on the zeitgeist and group think of the time. And it turned out the irrational exuberance was not justified for the valuations, as everyone learned post-2000.
And have we learned anything since then? What are valuations and P/E multiples now? And it goes back centuries in the past as well, so 'modern tech' is hardly the driving force:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_Revolutions_and_Financial_Capital
Your original post stated "the legion of badly performing companies that went public and were thoroughly rejected by public investors". The historical record shows that these companies going public were not "thoroughly rejected".
I'm having a hard time responding to someone who's using a South Park episode as a discussion point. Like how can I debate a point made by a show that makes content reacting to the popular perception of certain ideas? That's like 2 levels removed from the actual true details.
Anyway the difference now is that those companies still exist they just take round after round of private investor capital and the employees are offered shares that will never be tradable. Where those businesses would go bankrupt in a few years before now they can take 5-10 years. Time value of money being a thing, your money will be locked up for longer in a bad investment than it would on the public markets.
South Park season 28 has Peter Thiel as an exorcist trying to cure Cartman's devilish obsession with 6-7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_season_28
What to do when AI says "I love you." We talked to an artificial intimacy expert
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/18/g-s1177-78041/what-to-do-when-ai-says-i-love-you-we-talked-to-an-artificial-intimacy-expert
This number astounds me, are there people in human relationships "cheating" for this to be true?
South Park's ChatGPT hit on these topics as well, was a prescient episode
A lot of that is just that English along with much of western vernacular wasn't given standardized spelling until fairly recently, as most of the important writing was done in Latin.
If you get past the weird spelling it's still fairly understandable.
Exception being maybe stuff like Shakespeare, but a huge part of what makes that inaccessible is that his writing is full of references to current events, double entendres, and various 17th century memes. It's a bit like showing South Park's world of warcraft episode to someone from the 2400s.
Remember in that South Park episode where Cartman had a V-Chip[0] installed in his head and he would get shocked if he said big floppy donkey dick?
In all honesty the V-Chip was meant to protect children.
Age verification and identity assurance[1] is meant to reduce online banking fraud and combat terrorism/espionage.
Whats next outlawing encryption with Clipper Chip[2] 2.0 and saying its to save the whales? I guess we have QUIC and other DRM tech to ruin our day so it doesn't even matter.
I would prefer we drop the think of the children[3] charade and act like adults and get serious about online crime/fraud/terrorism and maximizing online banking.
The biggest problem with this thought domain is that the internet is global and we are thinking at regional, national, and state levels. For so many years everyone has heard complaints about the great firewall of China only to build our own? I guess we have no other choice since bad apples spoil the bunch[4].
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-chip [1]https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63-3.html [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_apples
The only non-evil Billionaire I know are the South park creators although they aren't tech Billionaires. I consider everyone else for the most part to not-be-good people.
Because south park decided to personally say essentially bad words to paramount using their episodes, the company which gave them a billion dollars.
So they took a billion dollars and they were still consistent with how they've been for decades at this point. All of this is truly remarkable in the particular world we live in.
> But it's not a good ad when the only people who will get the reference are those plugged into "ai twitter". But association by implication doesn't work, the only thing most people will end up associating is the creepy guy with "Claude"
It might also work for people who watch "South Park". I've never used any LLM speech interface, and until recently had only ever asked ChatGPT short one off questions and so had never seen the sycophantic tendencies, but immediately recognized the creepy people in the ads were supposed to represent ChatGPT from its portrayal in the South Park episode "Sickofancy" from August of last year.
> let's self host LLMS from 2 years ago on FreeBSD
Sounds brilliant. 2024 LLMs were great, and hosted in gigantic datacenters. South Park did an episode on ChatGPT in 2023 to assist with the timescales.
If we can run Free LLMs on a desktop PC that's competitive with 2024 a massive win.
Unless of course you believe that AI will continue to increase exponentially, in which case we're heading for such a different world in 10-15 years that it's meaningless to worry about it and you might as well have fun before the AI decides to kill us all
Like in the South Park episode from 28 years ago, ICE/MAGA can justify any violence by crying "It's coming right for us!".
Hehe, not that that hard pressed. IMDB has a whole horned-demon category keyword: https://m.imdb.com/search/title/?keywords=horned-demon&explore=keywords. And those results don’t even include South Park, nor Hellboy. If I Google image search for “Satan” I get nothing but red horned demons for pages.
There have always been wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing stories about The Devil too, it’s just a separate category.
> I guess the Prius line was a popular “statement car” of the pre-Tesla era, though, like how Brian drives one on Family Guy, or the “Smug Alert” episode of South Park, but it was never that for me.
... So you admit to falling for Toyota product placement in cartoons.
This was literally a South Park episode.
> Which works today do you think future generations will see as the classics of the 2010s and 2020s?
South Park?
Maybe collectively those "actually the villain is just misunderstood" movies I hear are becoming a thing recently? They seem like a decent candidate for the "window into the culture of the time" thing.
Some of those wide-audience computer games like Candy Crush and Farmville?
As usual, South Park really nailed it with that "AI sycophantic manipulation" episode.
Pre-AI it’s tedious to find/fix/verify the subtitles — and there are a lot of episodes of South Park. Literally the reason why it’s not there :|
> I feel for the South Park creators because boy do you have a challenge coming up with absurdity this season.
Have you been following seasons 27 and 28? They’ll be OK. If anything, it’s been feeling like the episodes are writing themselves. They’ve been absurdly topical.
South Park did an entire episode about them about 3 months ago.
I've seen them around, but they're definitely not popular with anyone I know.
I only know of them from South Park episode, and thankfully I haven't seen any of those live, maybe they will fade completely before they reach my country coz they frankly are just ugly
“It's creating a strange feedback loop: students use an LLM to write the essay, and teachers use an LLM to grade it. It ends up being just one LLM talking to another, with no human intelligence in the middle.”
This was the plot to a recent South Park episode: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt27035146/
Cartman typically had the most and funniest jokes and almost always got his way. He exercised power over others and only extremely rarely did the way he acted have negative consequences for him. That's a pretty attractive role model for the type of kid who's going to watch South Park. Role models don't have to be consciously selected, that's kind of the point, you see success and you imitate it. South Park is an especially stupid show but you'll see this in plenty of TV - it's basically the sitcom model: some character will be an asshole to everyone around them, but the show will frame it as a joke and consequence-free. The writers want you to think that character is funny and you probably do if you continue watching, so if you want to be a funny person you probably start acting like an asshole. Most adults can't see that for what it is - kids are screwed.
And South Park was (is?) on TV during daytime hours, of course kids watched it.
Peter Thiel knows about the antichrist..
Sorry, this song has been in my head since I saw the South Park episode. Highly recommend anyone to watch the 2nd Trump era episodes, they sure rid these people of any legitimacy they might have.
The other thing that has helped is Toyota gave me a year of free satelite radio, and there are two channels which I mostly listen to: Chill & Netflix is a Joke. I've promised myself that I will cancel SiriusX if I revert to aggressive driving.
My only regret is that I didn't get a Rav4 Hybrid (instead) cause the Camry is really low to the ground (no clearance / headlights). But the MPG game is fun... I love going into fully-electric mode the last mile of my residential drive (a lá *South Park's "Smug" episode).
I lived in three different countries in my life, and neither of them have been the US, but all of them have apparently had free South Park episodes available to them :)
I don't know if that website works/shows full episodes in the US, currently I'm in a EU country and everything except the last two seasons seems available.
It's saddening that a community as self-assured of its own intellect as HackerNews would still be debating Climate Change
I guess you both grew up really enjoying that one episode of South Park and just can't let go?
I always used to think that the South Park writers were just putting on a hyperbolic accent when they were mocking movie announcers: This summer, Rob Schneider, in a derp-i-derp-a-derp!
But then I see trailers like this and think they were spot on
What is or isn't edgy is defined by the dominant culture of the time and place. It changes over time. Stuff probably does weird you out, but maybe it's on a different axis than Cartman accidentally joining NAMBLA. I mean, if you think South Park is mainstream, what do you think about Paramount pulling a handful of episodes from their streaming platform? Surely if your peers, your kids, etc., stopped treating pedophiles as distasteful butts of jokes and started fighting for the censorship of media, that would weird you out, no?
Just be grateful South Park hasn't done an episode about the FSF and RMS (yet)!
I think it’s even more interesting the random ways that streaming services decide to pull episodes of TV shows that aren’t particularly moral like the Simpson or South Park. The Simpson episode where Michael Jackson sings a song uncredited is unavailable. You can murder someone’s parent and eat them on South Park but making fun of Charlie Kirk before he died was pulled. I don’t quite understand it.
Explains South Park canceling last episode. The great self censoring has began.
I think the company took it down out of respect. Although Kirk seems to have liked the episode.
Available here if anyone's curious on an unofficial site https://bingewatch.to/watch-series/watch-south-park-hd-39503/1577617
I thought South Park had their Charlie Kirk episode pulled?
You could benefit by doing further research on Charlie Kirk, and on the 2020 election. Citing Media Matters will not increase your credibility.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/media-matters/
There is much to question about the 2020 election, and much of the evidence is now gone.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1742670648433090764.html
What was divisive were the attacks and mockery of Kirk, not the man himself. I noticed that Comedy Central has now pulled their "Charlie Kirk" episode.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/television/2025/09/10/charlie-kirk-south-park-episode-pulled-comedy-central/86085648007/
As to understanding his place in US culture I found watching the recent South Park episode Got A Nut where he is parodied helpful.
The only reason I know of him is the master debate episode from South Park. I wanted context. Fwiw, he was a bad debater but he openly said he didnt know about something in public and thats something I dont see people doing often. I appreciated that.
I find it interesting that 24 format, total chronological order, allowed them to react to that 9/11 if it was required. Kinda like South Park episodes are at most 2-week old when aired. South Park it's easy since episodes aren't connected and due to how it's made, but the idea is the same.
“We want to be able to look into all your private spaces to ensure you’re not a child rapist. If you’re not ok with that you must be a child rapist. Now. Do you support keeping our children safe?”.
This needs to be a South Park episode if it isn’t already.
The current South Park season, episode 3 has a funny bit of this.
I stopped watching it a decade or more ago after becoming a bit repetitive and thought it went away like all the other things. Then the twitter spat with the WH made news and discovered it again.
This administration made it worth watching again for the funnies
I also have it on good authority that Trump is fucking Satan.[1]
[1]: South Park Season 27, Episode 4 ("Wok Is Dead").
Ah yes, South Park, a TV show known for its sensitivity towards difficult topics. Quoting someone else being douchy just means you're douchy and unoriginal, it doesn't make you not a douche simply because someone else said it and you're copying them. You're still choosing to say those things.
It’s a direct quote from an episode of South Park.
In the episode they aren’t making fun of a regional accent, they are making fun of an affected accent from certain classes. I’m from the area of Colorado where the episode takes place. There is no regional accent for Colorado.
https://archive.ph/r3hjx
Perhaps they saw the South Park episode and its recruitment ad for ICE... "It's a job. You can have."
LLMs have no embodied sense of the world. They talk as if they understand and experience emotion, when they don't have actual embodied feelings/sensations/pain/pleasure/etc.
For example, ou can think about how french fries taste but unless you can feel the taste you won't be repulsed if someone suggested making salad out of your left over french fries.
Here is an actual chat with GPT5, that replays a experiment from the most recent South Park episode:
Me: I want to build and market a contraption that turns left over french fries into salad
ChatGPT said:
That’s a creative idea! Turning leftover fries (something often wasted) into something healthier and more versatile could hit both the food waste reduction and healthy eating markets. Let’s break it down:
1. Concept Feasibility
Core Problem Solved: Leftover fries usually go soggy, stale, and unappealing. You want to “upcycle” them.
Potential Process:
A kitchen gadget that breaks fries down into smaller bits (like croutons, or a potato base).
Mixing with fresh greens, herbs, dressing, or flavor infusions.
Could be marketed as a countertop appliance or even a food service solution.
2. Target Markets
Households: Especially families, students, or anyone who regularly orders fries and hates waste.
Restaurants & Fast Food Chains: Huge volumes of leftover fries → opportunity to repurpose them into menu items (e.g., “French Fry Salad Bowls”).
Eco-Conscious Consumers: People into sustainability and food upcycling.
3. Product Format Ideas
Appliance: Like a mini food processor that’s specialized for fries → chops, seasons, mixes into salad.
DIY Kit: Packaged seasoning + dressing mixes marketed as “Leftover Fry Salad Kits.”
B2B Solution: Larger-scale machines for restaurants.
4. Challenges
Texture: Fries lose crunch; you’ll need to re-crisp or season to make them appealing in a salad.
Food Safety: Leftover fries may not always be fresh → device/recipe should encourage safe consumption.
Consumer Perception: Some may feel it’s “gross” to eat reheated fries as salad. Marketing needs to make it fun, eco-friendly, and tasty.
5. Marketing Angles
Sustainability: “Save your fries, save the planet.”
Health Twist: “Turn guilty pleasure into a healthy bite.”
Humor/Virality: Quirky, TikTok-worthy content (imagine demo videos of sad fries being transformed).
Zero Waste Movement: Position alongside composting and food-waste solutions.
6. Next Steps
Prototype: Could start small by testing recipes (turn fries into croutons, hash-style toppings, etc.).
Research: Do people actually want this? Surveys or small focus groups can test appetite.
Branding: Quirky, fun name (e.g., “FrieFresh,” “SpudCycle,” “Fry2Fit”).
Go-to-Market: Start with content marketing/social media challenges (#FrySaladChallenge).
Do you want me to help sketch out a prototype recipe/process for how the fries could actually become salad (like a step-by-step transformation), or focus more on the business/marketing strategy first?
> 20 years ago when it was the right that liked illegal immigration
I don't think that was ever the case?
The South Park "they took our jobs!" episode was 2004. The right has been against immigration since the Chinese Exclusion Act.
You sound pretty confident that this now-deleted YouTube channel was not using content in a way that would qualify as fair use. Can you clarify why from what you watched?
I can only go off the description of the content from the article and what the person that made the videos said, so I would appreciate more detail from somebody that’s sure that this was the same thing as uploading every episode of South Park.
I personally run into trouble with the “this is the same thing as uploading every episode of South Park” angle with all the “a public figure in charge of pubic health using possibly spurious claims of copyright infringement in scrubbing his public statements about his positions on public health” and the “dozens of views” stuff, but again I have not watched these videos and you have so
Edit: also wait you learned about South Park YouTube rips in high school journalism class? And your takeaway was that archiving things is inherently to be distrusted? In journalism class? Like your journalism teacher told you that collecting information from primary sources and disseminating it in an organized way for the purpose of public good was the same thing as pirating a TV show for clout or profit? That is what they taught you in your school? I am not in high school but I would guess that no they do not teach that, like at all, ever. Like that is not a thing any journalism teacher should have ever taught. That is so antithetical to the concept of journalism that I can’t imagine what a “the opposite of journalism” class would be but it sounds dumb as hell. A class called “Journalism” that teaches you to only say what your subject wants you to say sounds like a machine to intentionally manufacture a stupid human being
>There are civilized states like New York and California
What makes them more civilized than the other states? I think this elitist atitudine is exactly what got Trump supported from the other states.
At least in my life I've never met anyone who would like me if I declared myself more civilized than them and they wouldn't spite me back for it.
There's probably a good reason South Park crators depicted Californians as smelling their own farts in that episode.
absolutely. you should watch the new south park episode its hilarious
This is so prominent in the cultural consciousness that it was lampooned in this week episode of south park, where Randy Marsh goes on a chatgpt (and ketamone) fueled bender and destroys his business.
I've found South Park's comedy and commentary to have both been incredibly on point this season. It does require some previous investment in the characters from the last two decades, so it might not be as accessible to new viewers, but making Donald Trump a reincarnation of Saddam Hussein and having Craig beat Cartman at being a right wing podcast grifter, are incredibly satisfying arcs that play on the established lore and character traits very well. And it hasn't been above making an earnest point e.g. about when is it worth selling out your values in episode 2 with Mr. Mackey
A few years ago this headline would be the title of a South Park episode...And now it's reality....
The latest South Park (Season 27, Episode 2) seems to be related or tangentially related
A student is on social media saying things that upset people solely to make money
> you can however criticize others and at this point germany provides even more protection than the US.
Would what last few episodes of South Park be legal if they were made by Germans and targeted German politicians? Probably not?
When I click "subscribe" on my TV it gives me three options, all with adverts
Maybe I could subscribe and take a risk that I could then buy something again, but it tells me they don't want people paying money, they want people watching adverts.
As such the rare amazon exclusives (mainly clarkson's farm) I will get elsewhere.
Compared to say Paramount, which I once again subscribed to through apple-tv a couple of months ago. I watch new Star Trek and South Park episodes, then unsubscribe, suits me fine, far cheaper than how I used to watch Star Trek in the 1990s.
Likewise I'll subscribe to Apple when for all mankind and morning show come back.
If they want me permamently subscribed, they should go back to making 26 episodes a year.
There was also South Park's episodes 200 and 201 where they got a slew of death threats for depicting Mohammad. Funnily enough, Mohammad's depiction was the least offensive of all the other religious figures they showed in that episode, which was basically the point of the episodes more or less.
The funniest part of it all is that the network decided to not only remove the episode after the initial airing, it even censored Kyle's speech at the end of 201[1] about fighting back against intimidation. The censorship was done in such a way that it looked like South Park was satirizing the censorship itself too [2].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TMHIYDHMSE [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imj_pHXzJbc
They had an episode mocking Al Gore about climate change and then did an episode years later where they basically admitted they were wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManBearPig
More to the point, you haven’t heard about their current season’s Trump episode?
The alt right aren’t exactly deep thinkers. It’s just like the police glorifying the Punisher.
https://www.newsweek.com/punisher-police-blue-lives-matter-skull-logo-1449272
Or MAGA conservatives playing “Born in the USA” without listening to the lyrics.
South Park mocks everyone.
https://www.salon.com/2017/09/15/why-south-park-is-better-armed-than-anyone-to-fight-the-alt-right/
The “alt-right” have always been part of America or have you never heard of Jim Crow and segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”?
My issue is less with taking a tangent but the way the comment is framed as if it's a justification for what services are doing. Maybe one south park episode can be half-justified that way, and basically nothing else.
I downloaded episodes of South Park using eMule over dial-up. It took days.
The new South Park episode offers further insights into this very topic
is this a reference to the new South Park episode?
(sorry)
Brings back memories of changing the header to watch South Park episodes for free (the official site was very vulnerable to just changing the header to a NA IP).
I downloaded episodes of South Park using eMule over dial up internet.
I hear this a lot but also know a lot of people who were put on meds when they were young and didn't really understand what was going on.
I also have an adult friend put on an antipsychotic to treat their moderate depression. They went through horrifying side effects while doctors kept telling them to stick with it. They're going through even more horrifying side effects during the third week of their withdrawal.
There are no strict criteria. Some people need it. A lot of people don't. It's really no different from the opioid crisis America has, where many doctors hand stuff out like candy because, honestly, who cares? Not their problem. But it's a nice paycheck.
And the constant downplaying and dismissiveness of it all, with many people who have personal experience saying things are over-prescribed as well as studies showing such[1][2], while also saying things are massively under-dosed, really does not help the image of the psychiatric drug industry trying to find a solution to any divergence being a pill.
It's fine if you have actual struggles in life and need help and medicine helps you. It's good, actually. But if we're at a point where we're nitpicking and saying, "Your kid walks on their toes. That's bad. Let's get them diagnosed. Then get some meds", yeah, it's horrifying and absolutely indefensible.
And yes. Putting a 10 year old on a prescription drug that makes them sit and fold laundry all day very much fits the definition 99% of people would consider "drugged up." 10 year olds have periods of being little shits. If they're folding laundry all day, and you're giving them medication that makes them do so, you are very much drugging them up. And yes. Teachers did proactively call parents and try to get kids (mostly boys) medicated in the 90s. It was so wild that even South Park had an episode about it. It's unfortunate because people with legitimate issues do get caught up in it and have their issues dismissed. But then children who have no problems are also victimized by being forced to take drugs that make them fold laundry and quit being a kid.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11107288/
[2] https://www.rutgers.edu/news/risky-combos-psychiatric-drugs-prescribed-young-patients
This isn’t such a great example. You don’t need to have celiac disease to benefit from avoiding gluten. I suspect some people avoid it because they feel better in some way. For myself eliminating gluten (or wheat, I’m not sure how to differentiate that) has been life changing, it immediately made breathing through my nose effortless, made concentrating easier, etc. I can tell you eliminating gluten is not easy, you have to cut out a lot of common foods, eating out is almost impossible. If someone is sticking to that diet they probably have a very good reason. I think a lot of people should give it a try at least and not worry about this being part of some fad. I’m a bit ashamed to admit but I only tried it because of a South Park episode...
Grok's unhinged mode is the closest I have seen a bot that leverages profanity. I find it quite entertaining to use occasionally like watching a South Park episode.
The primary skill a developer hones is the ability to know when something is already solved for you. This is where innate laziness is a gift. Why should I write a fetch function if api.fetch exists? This is a natural game time automatic decision, like a baseball player running for first base soon as the ball hits the bat. The natural thing that should be happening to every developer is the natural realization that the LLM is the ultimate api. I have literally sat here going “well why build anything, this damn thing does this and that for free”. For example, why build a todo app? Any of the LLMs can mostly do this. This is not self awareness, but game conditioning and fitness. You should automatically be feeling the sensation just like someone playing a sport for the millionth time.
Developers thinking AI is a fad is like a left fielder thinking about if they should stick their hand out to catch the ball or not. You can’t think about this.
Anyway, I find myself in stasis trying to actually see what to build given the reality of the power of this api. The South Park episode of “The Simpsons did it” is an apt episode. We are very much at the point where the continuous question will be “Well the LLM can do it”.
God help us if South Park made a sequel to the bank episode based on this.
I know it from south park but didn’t intent the sarcastic tone: an anchor to a past moment you had fun and want to remember. I don’t know Rich but might have missed his reference in the sitcom if he predates it. Is it good?
hmmm, the example of people complaining about Disney Star Wars - they took something beloved and shat on it for cheap $ - I'd like the people watching a new Star Wars to get the wonder I got out of eps 4-5-6. The fact that the ruined that feels worth mentioning. That said, I just wrote it out of my life and moved on.
Is the South Park episode about Indiana Jones ep4 complaing?
https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/zwjhca/south-park-the-china-probrem-season-12-ep-8
One concern that I do worry about is if LLMs are able to present an false attractive view of the world that the user will become increasingly dependent on the LLMs to maintain that view. A cult of 1. Reminds me of the episode 'Safe Space' from South Park but instead of Butters filtering content it'll be the LLM. People are already divorced enough from reality - but I see no reason why they couldn't be more divorced, at least temporarily.
Wow. Thanks for inspiring me to ask. Why haven't they covered this in South Park yet? It would make such a great episode.
Summary:
Jordan Peterson, after becoming a media figure, struggled severely with benzodiazepine (benzo) addiction (drugs like clonazepam, often prescribed for anxiety). In 2019-2020, his health sharply declined:
He had a severe physical and psychological dependency on benzodiazepines.
He reportedly developed "akathisia" — an intensely painful restlessness often associated with withdrawal or side effects.
After several unsuccessful treatments in North America, Peterson was taken to Russia by his family, where he underwent a medically induced coma and controversial detox procedures to try to end his benzo dependency.
Why Russia?
At the time, his family said that the treatment options available in the West were either not effective, too dangerous, or unavailable. Some reports indicated that the Russian clinic used unorthodox treatments — things that might not be approved or widely practiced in Canada or the U.S. The whole episode was seen by many critics and even supporters as deeply tragic and unsettling, especially for someone whose public message was based on personal responsibility, resilience, and stoic perseverance.
Outcome:
Peterson survived, but his recovery was long and painful. Later interviews (including one with his daughter, Mikhaila Peterson) showed him visibly frail. His cognitive sharpness, many observed, seemed noticeably impacted for some time afterward.
Jordan Peterson: Health Problems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson?utm_source=chatgpt.com#Health_problems
Jordan Peterson suffers year of 'absolute hell' and needs emergency treatment for drug addiction that forced him to withdraw from public life, daughter says:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/jordan-peterson-drug-addiction-benzo-valium-xanex-russia-mikhaila-a9324871.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Controversial Scholar Jordan Peterson Treated for Addiction in Russia:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/02/10/controversial-scholar-jordan-peterson-treated-for-addiction-in-russia-a69219
Drug Experts on Jordan Peterson Seeking Treatment in Russia for Benzo Dependence:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-drug-experts-say-about-jordan-petersons-benzo-dependence/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
The Jordan Peterson Benzo Story — Terminology, Rapid Detox, and Media Coverage:
https://www.easinganxiety.com/post/the-jordan-peterson-benzo-story-terminology-rapid-detox-and-media-coverage?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Oh there are certainly some excellent American comedy shows..
Seinfeld, Curb, Arrested Development, Modern Family, The Office (US), South Park, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock, Frasier, Fresh Prince, Friends, How I Met Your Month, Futurama, Simpsons (OG) and then there's not a lot more on the bench unless you include the lesser remakes of British shows.
A lot of them aren't funny or aren't satire.. just look at the Shameless remake - they turned that into a character drama when it was a sitcom.
America has more of a stand-up culture I feel.
I wonder if it's because the news in America is pretty much fiction that they basically don't have political satire as a genre outside of the topical news shows (Daily Show / John Oliver) which are honestly more like real news shows than comedy at this point.
No, they could take the first file off the disk, rename it to anything.mpg and then view that South Park episode in glorious 320 resolution video.
Hahaha, amazing story. I've never heard about this before. This also implies that anyone putting the disc inside an audio player could listen to the South Park episode.
The first Tiger Woods PGA Golf game for the PlayStation has/had a copy of either the South Park pilot or it's first episode. I don't really remember which it was. The original PlayStation's disc format required a 20MB file of audio silence at the beginning of every disc, which at the time was a bit of a hassle - the size of the file. This file was supposedly to protect home speakers if someone tried to "play" a game disc on their audio CD player. When this Tiger Woods golf game was ready for initial testing, a person on the development team did not have a 20MB file of audio silence at hand, and just grabbed a 20MB file he did have, which happened to be a video of South Park, renamed it, built the testing disc... and promptly forgot. Seriously, that's how the file ended up on the gold master, into replication, and eventually people's homes. I can honestly say, this is 1st hand information: I was on the team. The game was out for some time when a Florida radio DJ announced finding this incredible easter egg that the scandal broke. I seem to remember the lead developer at E.A. got fired over it, eventually.
Just so you're aware, you're responding to a reference to a crude animated TV show featuring children that swear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)
Interesting. I was SO into the Simpsons at one time, but somehow I'd never seen that episode (as best as I can remember anyway). Now I feel the urge to go back and rewatch every episode of the Simpsons from the beginning. It would be fun, but man, what a time sink. I started the same thing with South Park a while back and stalled out somewhere around Season 5. I'd like to get back to it, but time... time is always against us.
Our highly individualistic culture is not suited to help people break free from addictions.
Does anyone remember when South Park had an episode about how evil some guy was for saying secondhand smoke was bad and how nuanced the topic was, and how it was people's right to smoke wherever they wanted?
I'm not saying that's everyone. I'm not saying that's solely why we fail at this. But it's an example of a culture that's broadly extremely individualistic and tolerant of aberrance from individuals. That has many advantages. One flaw of it, is that it becomes very hard, in such a culture, to tamp down on vices.
It is a pretty magical experience when you have your torrents automated.
I used an RSS feed based setup for years, and my first awareness that four episodes of game of thrones and one uncensored episode of south park leaked was the notification popping up on my PC telling me that a download completed.
I've recently been using soulseek (with nicotine+) more, since a lot of unseeded or obscure things appear on there.
My kind of entertainment, it's like watching a South Park episode.
Season 2025 is starting out strong!
This past decade I repeatedly found reality to be its own parody. Even the South Park authors admitted to it in 2017 (!).
> The Donald Trump administration is too difficult to satirise because it is funny enough on its own, say Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park.
> While the most recent series of their animated sitcom featured a character that clearly resembles Mr Trump, the pair made the decision to "back off" making fun of the latest US political events.
> "It's tricky now because satire has become reality," Parker told 7.30.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-02/donald-trump-too-hard-to-satirise-say-trey-parker-and-matt-stone/8236338
Now this DOGE (hue hue) crap is yet again on a whole other level, but you get unnervingly used to madness. Only bona fide dadaism could still top it.
So yes, this is probably real.
Edit: I just learned that parody is part of fair use, so the first part of my comment is redundant.
~~I think that parody would be a far better defense than fair use.~~ But I otherwise agree that those gore movies based on children cartoons would probably be legal even before the original works had become public domain. At most, they might've required a tiny misspelling to be 100% legal and safe to sell.
I mean, South Park already had a gore parody of Mickey Mouse[1] decades before Steamboat Willie went public domain. In fact, South Park's Mickey Mouse has traits from later movies, still copyrighted in 2024, like the eye shapes and the lack of a tail.
That's why I'm unimpressed by these low quality gore parodies. What's actually going to be more exciting are the sincere animated adaptations that could be made from public domain stories, like del Toro's Pinocchio.
[1] https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Mickey_Mouse
I'm reminded of the South Park episode where they bus all the homeless to California.
I'm not sure the little details are enough of a moat. Consider TikTok - people use cheap "special effects" to get the message across, e.g. if a man is playing a woman he might drape a towel over his head - it's silly and low quality but it gets the idea across to the viewer. Think too about programs like Archer or South Park that have (stylistically) low quality animation but still huge fan bases.
What I think this will unlock, maybe with a bit of improvement, is low quality video generation for a vast number of people. Do you have a short film idea? Know people with some? Likely millions of people will be able to use this to put together good enough short films - that yes, have terrible details, but are still good enough to watch. Some of those millions of newly enabled videos will have such strong ideas or writing behind them that it will make up for, or capitalize on, the weak video generation.
As the tools become easier, cheaper, faster, better etc more and more hobbyists will pick them up and try to use them. The user base will encourage the product to grow, and it will gradually consume film (assuming it can reach the point of being as or nearly as good as modern special effects).
I think of it like - when Steven Spielberg was young he used an 8mm camera, not as good as professional film equipment in the day, but good enough to create with. If I were a high school student interested in film I would absolutely be using stuff like this to create.
This article says something that seems very false to me once you step outside of the developer sphere:
> Most LLM users seem willing to change from Chat-GPT to Claude, for example.
Talk to people who aren't engineers and it's all ChatGPT. Many don't even know about the concept of an LLM or a provider, just literally "ChatGPT". The South Park episode where they parody this stuff? They call it ChatGPT. The stuff students use every year to help with homework? ChatGPT. The website that "chat.com" redirects to? ChatGPT. And cai has cornered to market on horny/lonely male teens.
The moat here is the broader consciousness that a very very large population of people have adopted. Articles like this take something technical -- the cost of switching over to an LLM, which is cheap -- as an assumption that it will happen, without taking into account just how difficult it is to change social forces.
This doesn't mean ChatGPT will forever be what people use. Maybe it will fail spectacularly in a year. But it's OpenAI's game to lose here, not the other way around.
As I said, the only thing I used it for was pirated episodes of South Park. For whatever reason, a lot of the South Park piracy websites were using .rm files.
For literally everything else, I think I used XviD until MakeMKV came along.
I knew that, but it always baffles me when I hear it again. Who uses any Real products anymore?
Back in 2007 the only reason I ever used Real stuff was pirated episodes of South Park, and even then I think I was using Real Alternative. Even in 2007 the company seemed like it was dying, and I have no idea 17 years later it's still somehow alive.
That reminds me a lot of South Park episode 8 of season 8.
Besides watching things aimed at young children, another tactic I have found effective is to watch something you already know very well in English (or whatever your native language). For me, this has been South Park. I'll watch episodes that I practically know by heart already, so that even if I don't understand all the Spanish words I can pick up things from knowing what is happening.
Reminds me of the South Park episode where they discover Magic Johnson's secret for curing his HIV.
You thought you wouldn’t find kool aid drinking tech fanboys here? You might need a new compass.
Tech companies and their cults are perfectly represented by the South Park episode about Priuses
I was binge-watching South Park some eighteen years ago without knowing much about the US lifestyle. Jokes were hilarious, situations ridiculous and obviously made up.
I'm amazed that up until today I still learn things that make me think "ohh that one is real actually". It started in 2013 when while on a business trip I saw an actual Shake Weight on sale in a supermarket. Now goes the timeshare episode: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CFHzL0Q6sXg
They’re notorious and have been featured in tons of episodes of TV shows (including a particularly good early-ish episode of South Park, among more-ordinary sitcoms and such) since at least the 90s. They’re a punch line.
My parents nonetheless fell for one in the early 20-teens. How they had missed this particular bit of common wisdom, I have no idea.
For folks who didn’t watch the episode, South Park (Ep. 327) highlighted the issue of peer pressure among kids in school. All kids had to have a COOL drink bottle to be accepted. Your status was linked to the rarity of your COOL bottle.
It’s even worse than just marketing to kids, it affects their social life and school time.
"Even things that can't go wrong, do" - Troubleshooting Analog Circuits, Robert Allen Pease.
Your perfect plans are drawn around a set of hypotheses and premises, chained unfortunately, some of which I'm not uncertain would be proven wrong the moment you'd try and execute.
I am reminded of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDJEjT2kKqY . Trey Parker and Matt Stone, of South Park, on story structure. This is what mostly happens.
I'm also reminded of that scene from the Collateral movie, where the Jamie Foxx character talks about his business plan, the one he's been refining for ten years.
Don't sell the pelt before shooting the bear.
The second part of your comment reminded me about that South Park episode where Cartman was "reviewing" restaurants on Yelp ...
It’s not even about “offensive” or “cancelled.” It’s about the pure economics of in-theater movies.
The whole business model of comedy movies released to theaters was that they had mediocre theater box office numbers but the theater release would drive a crazy home rental business for years after the movie came out.
That entire business model doesn’t work anymore. After a comedy movie leaves the theater it’s basically worthless and does nothing to drive streaming subscriptions.
Examples like Rogan, South Park, Chappelle, do not apply here.
Rogan’s podcast is not a comedy. And he’s a terrible standup comic.
Chappelle’s comedy specials only require a stage and a microphone to produce. There is no budget besides paying Chappelle.
Eminem is a musician. And, he’s not actually offensive to the general public, especially not anymore.
South Park is a TV show. Trey Parker and Matt Stone haven’t made any movies since the DVD rental era that I talked about. It’s also very inexpensive to produce compared to a comedy movie.
Finally, the elephant in the room. You should really get out of your conservative reality distortion field. This whole idea that Disney’s their wokeness is ruining everything is utter bullshit. My man, they own 20th Century Studios, 20th Century TV, and ABC Studios. They are the majority owner of Hulu. Disney isn’t just “woke politically correct family movies” or whatever conservative weirdos think they are. They are a giant media conglomerate. They finance shows like The Great, full of swearing, violence, and nudity. [1]
Let’s also not forget that Disney is still a box office machine and knows exactly what they are doing.
The top grossing movies in the United States in 2024, 2021, and 2015-2019 were all Disney.
In 2022 Avatar 2 beats out Top Gun Maverick in the worldwide box office.
This idea that Disney has lost its way and doesn’t understand the movie business is baloney. Disney’s stock didn’t tank because of “cancel culture” or “wokeness,” it tanked because half of the company’s revenue is theme parks and Covid-19 wrecked their business. Its movie business is also heavily skewed to in-theater big blockbusters. Seriously, look up the stock, all the downturn happened in 2020-2022. Disney stock is up 5% this year.
Disney struggles with streaming for the same reason the other networks struggle with it: streaming replaced cable but nothing replaced DVD sales and rentals.
[1] I have also noticed that conservative weirdos always bring up South Park, Rogan, Chappelle, and Eminem specifically as great examples of anti-cancel crusaders. The funniest part about that to me is that conservatives are so behind the times that they don’t realize that Eminem isn’t “slim shady” anymore and isn’t offensive to the general public. Somehow Rogan is supposed to be proof that a show that elevates conservative voices can break through an anti-conservative system, when really all he proves is that conservative talk radio is as good a business as it ever was. He is effectively now no different than Rush Limbaugh, except with a format where he has guests on the show. And then there’s South Park which is basically coasting on a fan base just like The Simpsons.
Finally, Chappelle. Let’s be real be real here: a good portion of Chappelle’s white male audience enjoyed the original show because they took his show to be jokes about Black people, at the expense of Black people. Just like the people who didn’t realize that Colbert on The Colbert Report was satire, they didn’t really see any of the satire or social commentary. So it’s not surprising to me that those same mostly conservative white men enjoy watching an hour of trans hate jokes.
>This is such a tired line.
That doesn't mean it's not true. There's a reason people keep repeating it.
>Studios stopped making mid budget movies.
Have you checked Netflix? It's full of low budget slop.
>Studios consider international audiences more than ever before and comedy doesn’t transcend cultures easily.
I disagree. American and British comedies were incredibly popular with the youth in my Eastern European country. Same with humor from the GTA games and South Park.
>High budget action/comedy movies are being made instead e.g. fall guy.
Is Fall Guy supposed to be a comedy? I've watched it and I don't think I've laughed once. It didn't even make me push air out of my nose.
I think there is still a market for the old offensive comedies. There are comics out there who simply don’t care about getting cancelled, and it seems their audiences are big enough where the people complaining don’t matter.
The number of people willing to speak up to support the right for people to make and enjoy movies, or content in general, that is offensive seems to be growing.
Spotify kept Rogan and dumped the employees complaining about him. Netflix backed Chappelle with his specials. Eminem’s latest album debuted at #1. South Park is still going strong.
The people raising hell on Twitter were never the audience, so it really doesn’t matter what they think. They should be making things for the people who are going to pay.
Disney has been trying to please all those people and there stock has tanked. All I hear are people complaining about their various franchises and how they suck now. I guess those people on Twitter aren’t showing up to support the content they demanded.
Reminds me of that one South Park episode about Humanpad … not in a good way though
While I'm shameful to admit my knowledge comes from that South Park episode, it does make a good point - manufacturing semaglutide can be done by a million places and labs, why would brand-name medication maintain its markup, when a billion competitors can and will sell you the same thing at a very thin profit margin?
I remember watching full episodes of South Park on their website. This was around 2000.
I think this is the fundamental problem people have with ubiquitous and long license agreements:
Users are in the habit, perhaps pressured, to accept the terms with without due consideration by a qualified lawyer. C.f. the South Park "human centipede" episode.
I suspect that the best solution, society-wise, is to enact stronger consumer protection laws that override these EULAs.
A variation of this is exposed brilliantly in the South Park episode "You call the handyman". Gave me some solace.
“Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but, well son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored, and it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything.”
― South Park, Season 6 episode called "My Future Self n' Me"
As featured in South Park episode "Pinewood Derby" [1] [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinewood_Derby_(South_Park)
[2] https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/oki0th/south-park-pinewood-derby-season-13-ep-6
The Bakshi movie definitely isn’t camp. It plays itself way too straight (so to speak). If it reads as corny today it’s because it’s such pure, guileless 70s kitsch.
Also, I realized rewatching it recently for the first time in forever that the Lemmiwinks episode of South Park is an homage to the Bakshi movie!
The famous South Park episode was a monocycle!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_%28South_Park%29
I have two thoughts on this: it's important to find contentment regardless of situation, but I would caution against settling for less.
I've noticed that as more and more aspects of the American dream have been stripped of us by the uber-rich in recent decades, a certain kind of fatalism has settled into our collective psyche. There's a sense now that the quiet life is out of reach, regardless of income. That wages will never rise fast enough to keep up with the rising cost of housing. That there are just more and more and more people everywhere, that our heritage is being gentrified. That the hustle and bustle has nearly eclipsed most personal interaction. Basically that the worsening struggle of postmodernism has replaced community, tradition, and so on.
Ironically I had welcomed tech/progress up through the late 1990s, because young people today may not realize how ignorant times were then, when shows like All in the Family may as well have been documentaries. If you watch Saved by the Bell and Napoleon Dynamite, notice how there's no real technology, and there's an impression that the future is coming, but at a glacial pace. It wasn't like today, where if something hasn't been invented yet, it just means you haven't searched hard enough for it on the internet. We still had science instead of manifestation, so nobody told us how much our dreams mattered, only that we should put our noses to the grindstone.
Now in middle age after a lifetime of hard work with little to show for it, I find myself asking what all of this is for. What's the point of tech if it just makes you work harder? Shouldn't it make life easier, and bring more money and resources your way? And I think a lot about people who are good for nothin. Energy vampires who suck the life out of you when you're trying to make progress. They used to be people like me, angstful cynics who pointed out the absurdity of the modern world, who took solace in shows like South Park. Today they're the thought leaders and billionaires who vacuum up all available capital and lobby the government to take away our freedoms. What good are they if they only take but never give?
The key part of the article was unions. You want the quiet life, you've got to organize. This lone wolf, rugged individualist, pull yourself up by your bootstraps dream of winning the internet lottery was a bill of goods. Because winner takes all, and odds are it ain't you. I've been trying for a quarter century and if I knew then what I know now, I never would have started down this road.
I'm shifting my focus to a resource economy where basic necessities are provided by scalable technologies that can't be taken away by concentrated wealth. Where the difference between what employees are billed out for and what they are paid accrues ownership in a business, the same as capital put up by investors. Or that difference is accounted for in tax write-offs, pensions, retirements, social security, and so on. Where job applicants can see that discrepancy in public accounting records and choose not to apply to businesses that exploit them. So that we can all start getting paid what we're worth and build an economic system around improving the human condition instead of feeding off it like vampires.
The newer ADHD meds are not stimulants and are not addictive.
Maybe ADHD has "boomed" in """popularity""" because a disorder that used to be diagnosed as hyperactivity and a deficit of attention actually turned out to be a quantifiable problem with executive function which exists in a known part of the brain, can be quantifiably treated with medication and therapy, and if untreated results in very confusing problems with emotions and motivation for as long as you live.
It's not as if ADHD doesn't exist. I'm speaking off of what was apparently state of the art 10 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfCdBBqNXY
I'm hoping today, in a matter of hours, to get prescribed one of these new non-stim drugs, because the stuff described in that video very much matches my experience.
Maybe thinking that ADHD is made up has boomed in popularity because of the South Park and King of the Hill episodes that downplay it. Imagine learning medicine from cartoons.
That reads like something from a South Park episode. Gave me a good chuckle
I meant the people's reaction look like a South Park episode, not china's actions. The way they get hysterical and claim that you could spend years in jails for stupid things like having a picture of Winnie the Pooh on your phone. And it never stops, every couple of months, there is a new made up and/or exagerated thing about china that Americans are ultra confident about even if they have never been to china or talked to a Chinese person. This week for exemple, politicians (not trump this time) on tv were talking about how most Chinese migrant are ccp spies/soldiers.
Reminds me of that South Park episode where they go to Mexican counterpart to NASA and get quoted $200 to haul something to the moon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K_1jqgCjxA&t=40s
"Just learn to do plumbing bro."
Seriously, the demand for skilled handymen in the cities is insane as people can't do shit anymore. As per the South Park episode, you have to treat them well if you want them to pick up the phone or return your calls.
Countless non-techies at my work use ChatGPT. Several members of my family use ChatGPT, most of them haven’t done as much as write an Excel formula. My partner and her friends all use ChatGPT, none of them techies. South Park literally had an episode (over a year ago?) where the entire plot was about using ChatGPT to cheat at both performing in AND marking assessments, as well as responding to needy romantic partners. You are completely, incomprehensibly incorrect.
I liked cable, except for the price. Cut it by a factor of 3 and I'd probably subscribe again.
For movies pretty much everything I wanted to watch would eventually show up. Typically a movie would first be in theaters, then become available for purchase on disc or digital, rental, and be included in one paid streaming service. Sometime later, maybe two years after it was in theaters, it should show up on some non-premium cable channel.
The only time I couldn't wait for things to show up on non-premium cable was when "Avengers: Endgame" was coming soon. I knew that one would be hard to avoid major spoilers for once it was released in theaters so decided seeing it in theaters was a must. That meant I had to get get a month of Netflix, which had the Marvel movies then, to get caught up enough for "Endgame".
I also liked cable for rewatching TV series. I'm not sure why, but when some channel is showing "The Simpsons" or "South Park" reruns on a regular schedule I like watching much more than I do when I watch an episode on an on-demand streaming service (or on DVD).
I think it has something to do with the latter being more deliberate. I picked that episode, which somehow makes it so I feel like I need to take it more seriously. When it is just "This channel shows a couple episodes every night" then it seems a lot more casual, like listening to music on the radio. It is easier to just sit back and relax and watch.
Tangential: I remember reading a criticism about the South Park ginger episode leading to redheads getting bullied. I was curious (and still haven't wrapped my head around) what blame can be placed, if any.
1. Shitty people had latent bullying and cruelty instincts and South Park gave them the idea of diverting that to redheads
2. People were just chilling until South Park taught them to be cruel and bully gingers
The example is that it can make your writing more long-winded without adding any important details, so that it takes more effort for the person to respond? Why? I'm already overly verbose as it is.
> Could Mark the End of the Human Internet
Man... what does that even really mean? Popping over to ChatGPT to do this kind of shit is already mainstream enough to have been the subject of a South Park episode. There's probably hundreds of similar browser extensions for Chrome alone. I guess this is more convenient, but what problem does it really solve?
Call me crazy but, I somehow imagine this browser feature will not lead to some AI Internet singularity. It's just going to slide the crap-factor up a few more notches than it already is, making the Internet even less enticing to use.
Pirating at least on legitimate private trackers is about quality and availability. For example, you CANNOT stream certain episodes of South Park, always sunny, etc because of wrongthink. Some things are also unattainable like gravity Lux edition. But yes I agree otherwise, just buy stuff. I stopped pirating games when I got a real job.
Animation is probably less capital-intensive than live-action film-making, but more labor-intensive given the need to care for each frame. But so long as you have an abundance of time, you can make a movie on your own.
Surprisingly, you also don't need to draw very well to animate. (But it will help a lot if you can.) There are crude works of animation that still found success (maybe more observable in the US than Japan), like South Park and Don Hertzfeldt's works. These examples might even illustrate that audiences care more about the writing than the drawings.
The tricky part may be finding an audience. There's so much content on the web, that it may still help to exhibit works in human-curated forums like film festivals. Somehow, then-student Don Hertzfeldt found his way into Cannes, where he probably gained much more exposure. Later, Don Hertzfeldt and Mike Judge (of Beavis and Butthead fame) supported other animators find exposure by hosting The Animation Show (last held in 2008).
There are plenty of film festivals showcasing animation today, shorts and feature-length, but I wonder which ones would be most effective. The dream of "breaking in" with a film festival screening has allured many aspiring film-makers, to the extent that scammers even start their own film festivals for the sake of collecting exorbitant entry fees (which doesn't guarantee being showcased at the festival). With film-makers having to pay entry fees for numerous festivals to increase chances of finding the right audience, the "marketing" fee can become more expensive than an indie production itself.
I wonder how solo or skeleton-crew animators would "break in" and find an audience today.
AFAICT it’s only found in the south park canon:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0705934/characters/nm0005002
South Park needs a “Put AI in it and make it lame” episode.
My take would be that they set out to "minimise friction", build a user base and monetise that later, but having never seen the "Underpants Gnomes" episode of South Park.
One could forgive that because the "build it first, squeeze it later" model /has/ worked for other tech businesses. Twitter comes to mind.
One could build a "premium" closed ecosystem within an open ecosystem which inducts new customers in. I don't think the design was fundamentally structurally flawed, so much as they didn't follow up on the opportunities created by the initial phase.
That said, I think it's a very hard transition, even if you did plan well in advance.
>They said thanks but no thanks, Melbourne doesn't need you - whereas tradesmen, plumbers, miners etc have no problem whatsoever moving there, year after year.
Well, tradesmen build houses, schools, and hospitals people and a growing society need. There's only so much demand and value for society that (non-SV) programmers add. You could survive in a world with only tradesmen and farmers, but not so much with only JS coders.
Programmers are valued in places like the US because US is the home to big-tech, an industry generating trillions in revenue for the US, but the US is the global outlier here. In other places of the world that don't have big-tech, programmers have much less value to society.
South Park also did an episode on this.
Whenever Toshiba is in the news I always remember that South Park episode about Cartman wanting an iPad.
I think this was a South Park episode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_sex_scandal?wprov=sfti1
It was basically that episode of South Park where Butters becomes a pimp and it almost cost FDR his career.
South Park is poking fun at the industry, but it's humor. It doesn't tell you what the problem is. I only mentioned it because it's a good related episode :)
My point is not about pretending problems don't exist. It's about focusing on encouraging people rather than focusing on claiming who they are.
Anyone think the labeling of psychological diseases makes people more comfortable with it and form their identity around it, whereas the tough luck approach of the past while creating some uncomfortable situations forced people to overcome these situations and excel? I don't want to tell any kid they have anxiety or depression lest they believe it. South Park also has a good episode on this, where Eric is told he has anxiety. S22E8.
> I think there will always be an audience for tasteless and raunchy movies.
There still is an audience but that audience is not cared to by Hollywood for fear of social media backlash. That's why nobody's making edgy comedies and parodies anymore and the movies currently been made massively alter their original IP to conform to modern identity politics("put a brown chick in it and make her lame and gay")
South Park are the only ones left because they're not Hollywood.
Well, what I was getting at is that my camp has warned of pretty much all of the crises we face now since the beginning. And the same thing that always happens is going to happen: the public will get to pay to clean up the mess that made the private profit. It's like the monorail episode of The Simpsons times everything. Or how South Park used to be a comedy, but now it's a documentary. How could we have seen this coming?! Please.
But I'm a little disappointed in myself for how I've been responding on HN lately. My comments have been low-vibration/egocentric/projective. Is it constructive to try to go after titans of industry who fleeced the public? Will they even pay? Will it solve anything? I don't know.
What I really wanted to say originally is that I wish we could look to the future, and that us hackers could come up with a machine that could cut out the lead pipe in-place and replace them with something like PVC, instead of digging trenches. If the problem seems insurmountable, then we should innovate a way to make cleanup 10 or 100 times less expensive.
But see, the powers that be that created this problem for us are the same ones that drive wealth inequality. So we don't have the time, money or freedom to do the real problem solving, because we spend all of our time working on mainstream tasks to make rent. Instead what will happen is we'll get pork barrel projects at enormous expense, and established players will profit a second time around from the cleanup. Pay to dig a hole, pay to fill it in.
From a progressive standpoint, I see how an informed populace participating in a democratic republic with well-funded public education could almost trivially solve (and prevent) these problems like healthy European social democracies do. But since roughly the GW Bush era of the 2000s, the libertarian voice to dismantle everything has managed to undo countless environmental laws, get the former president elected and pack the courts, among other things. Revisionist history has turned my Star Wars rebel beliefs into elitism and liberal rhetoric.
So I feel a crushing level of "equivocating wealth/power/influence/airtime with manipulation". I blame the uber rich for that lack of leadership, letting us succumb to divisive politics. But I acknowledge that many of them probably witnessed the public making stupid decisions and were just as powerless to stop it as we are. I just wish that one of them would step up and set a better example, instead of behaving as NPCs due to how their wealth is tied up in voting shares. I don't know how they don't know about the dangers of their attachments from a spiritual perspective.
There's a pretty good episode from recent (4 years-ish) South Park: “Let Them Eat Goo”(1), where Cartman only desired to "eat the same garbage" he always has, and since the “goo” is definitely garbage, he does not care that it is more sustainable or ethical.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Them_Eat_Goo
> one of the reasons I don't like modern animation is the lack of effort in the actual animating.
The new Ninja Turtles and Spider-Man movies certainly contradict that, as do plenty of animations from Japan such as anything by Satoshi Kon.
Yes, there’s a lot more garbage today but that because there’s a lot more of it in general. The good stuff is going strong and there’s innovation still happening.
South Park is a bad example for the argument, because it’s atypical in many ways. They do the whole episode in under a week, including the writing and animation, and the cast is basically the creators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles:_Mutant_Mayhem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Across_the_Spider-Verse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Days_to_Air
South Park was right (panderverse episode)
My preferred educational video is the South Park episode on timeshares. Great and accurate to a T.
South Park already figured it out in the Magic Johnson AIDS episode: Money
>you have to move mountains in order to get a plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc to show up.
Watch the latest South Park episode:
https://youtu.be/RcoGzT9QrTI?si=m95_pQ9H203hcfuW
> A third son, Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, founded a separate, gun-centered church in Pennsylvania known as Rod of Iron Ministries, where followers do target practice with AR-15s and bring guns to church to be blessed. Hyung Jin wears a golden crown made of rifle shells, and delivers hate-filled sermons against the Democratic Party. He also expects to become the king of America. He reviles his mother—who runs the international church in South Korea—as the “whore of Babylon.”
Please wake me up, I must have fallen asleep in front of a South Park episode...
> Require all children under the age of 18 to wear a smart watch with video and microphone recording that can be accessed by a child protection agency at any point. You could have on-device content recognition, so most of the data is discarded without being uploaded, unless that child is tagged for extra attention by authorities. ("We use on-device smart algorithms to ensure privacy.
I also watched that South Park episode.
This was an entire episode of South Park last year.
I put on a show on my iPad I know really really well so it’s slightly enjoyable to drown out my mind otherwise racing but not new enough to keep me awake listening.
I’ve watched the first ~5min of Arrested Development seasons 1-3 probably 100 times at this point. Before that it was pirated copies of Simpsons or South Park episodes (years and years ago).
I'm not sure what's my favorite part of this question, but I think it's the fact that you undoubtedly have, like me, agreed to all sorts of outlandish terms on corporate EULAs.
You saw the South Park episode, what they call it, with the... oh yeah, The Human Centipad, you saw that, right?
Does Mastodon even have an EULA? Maybe it needs one. It could say "Your data is your data, we do not own it, we won't sell it, and we also won't guarantee to store it for you indefinitely, so do your backups like a smart person."
(Adding to your comment) This is one of the paradoxes of depressions and downturns, as well as an important economic factor for preventing the rich from becoming "too" rich (ill-defined term). Capitalism highly depends on the flow of money. Even a completely neutral business (for every dollar it takes in it spends: buying products, salaries, taxes, etc) is a benefit to the economic society. In this manner, during depression you actually want to stimulate spending, because what's happened is that a depression is a significant slowdown in that flow, among other things. The value is in the transactional nature of capital, not the capital/cash/goods itself. This is why we have inflation, on purpose, because it encourages people to spend now rather than later (where your dollars will be worth less). The super rich being super rich is problematic not because they have lots of money, it is because they are unable to spend that money and so essentially they are removing that capital from the economic river (per say). The irony of this is that by doing so they themselves also suffer (just not as much) because of reduced public goods (infrastructure, health, environment, etc) as well as reduced innovation and development. You want all the capital in the game to make the system more efficient (in fact, there's even multiplier tricks that banks do). We have a system of mercantilism/commercialism: the system benefits from trading.
When it comes to talking about the wealthy I like to frame the problem a bit differently. Instead of focusing on the ceiling, it is better to focus on the floor. I don't care if there is an unbounded ceiling (that would be preferable if possible) but I do care about a bounded floor. There are many ethical reasons to care about the poor, but understanding capitalist economics as a river flowing, poor people are also sinks (like the rich). They too are not able to effectively spend money, or even generate capital in the first place (remember, this is a positive sum game where the point is to generate more capital[0] year over year). We don't actually want poor people, and we don't actually want less people. So the best solution is to make these people not poor. I don't know if the answer is through UBI or actually addressing the complex issues within our society that prevent people from climbing economic ladders[1]. Unless you believe that poor people are genetically different (no evidence) or that they're "too far gone" (extremely weak evidence and doesn't argue against fixing the new generation), then it makes sense to help these people out. After all, the government's role in economics (it is a player) is to prevent these types of pooling and to promote competition. It is really an extension of the ideas behind why we monopoly bust. Not because monopolies are always bad (sometimes they are good. Damn network effect), but because the power is abused in such a way that capital resources pool into a system that prevents the economic growth of the society as a whole.
The huge irony is that part about how helping the poor helps the rich. I'll put it this way: a king a few hundred years ago lived a worse life than many middle class people. They did not have plumbing or working toilets, as good of health care, could not travel around the world in hours, and honestly most probably did not have as good quality of food (new cooking techniques, accesses to new spices, access to goods throughout the year, overall variety, etc). These are not things you can directly "buy" but rather you have to let the chaotic nature of the system create these things. You kinda just got to throw money into the wishing well and wait for it to happen, but it happens faster when more people are not struggling economically. They can still be extravagantly wealthy while advancing this too. Let's be real, there's no way the top 50 richest people can spend their money in their lifetimes.[2] The truth is that going for the "highest score" is over-fitting to the metric and actually harms performance.
Weirdly the first part (depression paradox) of this point is made in a South Park episode: https://southpark.cc.com/episodes/9do3gw/south-park-margaritaville-season-13-ep-3
[0] Capital is a vague term. Using here vaguely to not just mean cash, but goods, innovation, research, etc. But do not confuse economics with a zero sum game (common). Most games are not zero sum except in very simplified cases or special cases (like an instantaneous snapshot).
[1] Nearly everything we oversimplify. The world is incredibly complex. First order solutions aren't good enough for this modern world. Stop using them. It isn't that they aren't "good enough" it is that in complex systems using a first order solution can actually take you away from the optimal solution, not just inefficiently towards it. If you think about it you'll be able to find some examples (best to do this thought experiment: think of a simple and reasonable solution to a problem that completely backfires. If you need help Google "Cobra Effect").
[2] It's important to remember that capital works differently for the rich. Since the capital is difficult to spend at a rate that greatly depreciates itself, the interest factor plays a dominating role. While you or I grow little interest on our money because our small principles, the rich have huge principles and even a small dividend on that is an absurd amount of money. E.g. if we had a billion dollars and got a 1% yearly return on it (for easy math) that's $10m/yr. It is definitely possible to spend that money in a year, but it is more difficult to spend that much every year.
“Aaaaand, it’s gone.”
(South Park, “Margaritaville” episode, 2009.)
It sounds like the beginning of a South Park episode.
I too loved the Boosh growing up, and I would still laugh at most of it today. So far it’s managed to avoid the retroactive judgement that other shows have. Why that is I don’t know - is it because it was cult and niche, is it because those who know about it love the comedians and want to keep quiet, is it because they haven’t fallen foul of the power figures in the MSM? Off the top of my head, there’s blackface and the transgender Old Gregg sex predator that I’m surprised haven’t been called out much yet.
On some level there’s nothing wrong with the “I go by many names” bit - the blackface wasn’t really necessary other than the character was meant to be some kind of psychedelic guitarist and the most recognisable psychedelic guitarist was Hendrix. There wasn’t anything that was mocking black people, and there wasn’t really any stealing of a black person’s job because the whole humour of the Boosh was Noel, Julian and Rich playing all these different characters by themselves. It was like going to watch an improv group perform but on TV and with costumes.
I think a line needs to be drawn and each sketch of these comedy shows interpreted through a lens of intent. Is the underlying minority the butt of the joke or is it the character that is being mocked? If it’s the first, by all means denigrate it but if not it should be allowed to be made. There was a lot of uproar over the South Park transgender episode where a lot of people missed the point that South Park wasn’t mocking transgender people, it was mocking self interested characters like Cartman who will manipulate anything for their own advantage, such as pretending to be transgender so they can use the female bathroom. Unfortunately, I think Old Gregg probably falls into the other camp, as unless I’m missing something (and it’s been a while since I’ve watched it so I might be wrong), the “joke” seems to be that Old Gregg is a lonely transgender outcast that is flashing her “mangina” and trying to coerce people into sex.
All these culture war lines are both very ill defined and selectively enforced, which does nothing other than throw fuel on the fire that they are just tools that the MSM can use to retroactively cancel people that no longer serve them or are actively going against them. If there really isn’t this targeted agenda, the companies like YouTube either need to write clear guidelines and enforce them fully not just selectively, or alternatively drop the moral arbiter stance and instead take that of a museum or public library that exists solely as a container for artworks and lets the public be the judge. Anything else is hypocritical at best and malevolent public opinion manipulation at worst. Personally, I think they should take the public container route, because as soon as you start having an authority that is in charge of defining the culture, you’re on a very slippery slope that leads to authoritarianism. Taking down videos from platforms is the modern equivalent to book burning.
The main stream media loves to pretend it’s the hero and that it created the MeToo movement but it didn’t - the MeToo movement was created organically bottom up by women on Twitter. All the mainstream media did was capitalise on it after the fact to get clicks and eyeballs.
Haha, reminds me of the Canada on strike south park episode. "We want some of that internet money!"
> family guy episode where they see a Tesla driving itself while the driver's busy sucking his own dick
Wasn’t that a South Park episode about Priuses?
Edit: it was about Segway - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park)
What did anyone expect? That they announce "check yourself before you wreck yourself"?
For some reason that South Park episode comes to my mind where Bush is trying to convince the world that 9/11 was done by the US government, but he has a hard time convincing others...
Reminds me of that South Park episode where the kids try and cancel the useless programs on their packages - the technician then says "Tell me how it makes you feel" along with some NSW action involving his nipples.
Reminds me of that south park episode.
My girlfriend's learning Turkish, and one of the customs that one says after being thanked for cooking a meal is "afiyet olsun". That is, "aff-ee-yet awl-soohn" with the relatively little stress on any particular part.
Her, being Italian, puts all the intonation at the beginning so it becomes "AFF-ee-yet AWL-soohn" and it just sounds like gibberish. Sometimes even if I know what she's trying to say, it still comes across as alien.
It's insane how intonation can completely change a language, and even a well defined language like German, a phonetic language just like Turkish, still sounds really bad if you don't get the intonation right (see: Trey Parkers attempts to speak German in South Park episodes)
Amazingly, South Park had an episode basically about this over 12 years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnybot
reminds me of that one episode of South Park with hybrids causing a cloud of "Smug" pollution
They actually had an episode about "the dangers of AI" recently (the boys used ChatGPT to avoid having to text with their needy girlfriends), it was VASTLY better than this fan made one.
https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/8byci4/south-park-deep-learning-season-26-ep-4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvrg1SJhL_Q
> this could easily pass as a real episode.
Hard disagree. The animation, pacing, sound, everything is of considerable lower quality. You can watch full episodes on their website to compare.
https://www.southparkstudios.com/seasons/south-park
What's amazing to me is that without reading (watching?) too much into it, and me not being a seasoned South Park viewer, this could easily pass as a real episode.
An engadget story demonstrates their simulation tool and discusses their "Simulation" venture a little bit more. It does look like the video is animated by AI using pre-generated scenes and characters. https://www.engadget.com/the-simulation-ai-put-me-in-a-south-park-episode-170002565.html
Based on my understanding after skimming through the paper (and assistance with Claude), the AI did not directly generate any full video content for a South Park episode. It seems like this was how the AI was used:
- Custom diffusion models were trained on South Park character and background image datasets. These models could then generate new South Park-style characters and backgrounds.
- GPT-4 was used to generate dialogue for scenes, based on prompts about the overall episode premise and plot points.
- An "AI camera system" was mentioned for scene setup, but details were not provided on how much of the camera work it handled. Voice cloning was used to generate audio clips of the dialogue.
Note: this is just a skim of the paper, entirely possible I and Claude may have have missed something.
Was the intro generated as well, or lifted directly from the real show?
There is a significant drop in believability as soon as the first scene of the generated show starts after the intro. Look at the first few seconds of the first scene. Here, the three boys are just standing statically in the hall while they are talking.
Now take South Park Episode 1, Season 1, from 1997.
https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/940f8z/south-park-cartman-gets-an-anal-probe-season-1-ep-1
Look at the first few seconds of that opening scene after the intro in this very first episode of the real show. Notice that even though there is a lot of time where some of the characters don’t move at all, they still feel a lot more alive than what you saw in that video that is in the OP. And I think part of it is also the use of exaggerated expressions when they do move. The others not moving is ok, because the ones that do move provide a lot of entertainment with those movements and expressions. And of course the voice acting is very passionate as well.
In the years since then the South Park episodes have gotten even better and better animation.
Maybe I am being too harsh, but the lacklustre animation in the first few seconds of the first scene of the OP video made me not watch any more of the video.
If you want to take on South Park, and you want to beat it at its own game, the bar is very high. Both in terms of script, voice acting, and animation.
> Flash died because Adobe couldn't get a version running on iOS that wasn't garbage.
Flash ran like garbage on every platform it supported, which is the reason Apple didn't allow it on the iPhone. And the Internet is a better place today because half of it is no longer built on a poorly implemented proprietary technology.
At the time I was a big Android fan, and it took me a while to come to terms with the fact that while my phone and tablet could run flash unlike Apple's products, the experience was so incredibly shitty that it was not worth actually using. I don't think I ever made it through a full episode of South Park on southparkstudios.com without the player crashing and me needing to reload my browser at least once.
South Park did an episode about this
All this reminds me of World of Warcraft. In 2004-2008ish, WoW was a cultural phenomenon. South Park made an episode about it, there was a famous question on Jeopardy about it, parents played it, celebrities played it. Then it started to fade away for many reasons. But as it was fading, people were asking what was the next MMO, what was the "WoW-killer". It never came - sure there were and are other MMOs (ESO, FF, GW2, etc) that people played, but nothing ever peaked like WoW, because WoW happened at a unique moment in time. It was right before social media exploded, and so people were able to be social with each other in the game, creating a unique community situation. All the other MMOs (mostly) grew up with social media, so the social effects were diminished. They were just games.
I see an analog with Twitter. There will never be a Twitter killer, a Twitter 2.0. There will be successful, Twitter-like things (Threads, Bluesky) but nothing can be like Twitter because the era is gone. (Which is the point of essay, more or less). Something else will happen that will engross us for a while, and I'm curious what it will be (and really wish I could predict it!), but nobody, not even Twitter (just like WoW itself was never a WoW killer), will be another Twitter.
> he hadn’t even heard of ChatGPT
Practically every mainstream comedy show I hear in the UK mentions chatgpt, it's been constantly in the news over the last 6 months. Every high school child knows how to use it, hell there was a south park episode a couple of months about chatgpt written by chatgpt.
This isn't niche stuff.
If there's a South Park episode on it then no.
"Cynical villainization of good faith effort" is a great way to describe many South Park episodes, in fact.
If you want to help someone, you'll put in some effort to find out what said person/group actually needs. Evidently the aforesaid volunteers did nothing of the sort, so I'll maintain my cynicism.
If I say that I really care for the plight of conjoined twin myslexia sufferers, but just throw a big parade to raise awareness of them, while never asking the sufferers what they actually would like, what does that say about me? Ref: the Nurse Gollum episode of South Park.
As an aside, if you've ever had people tell you they really care for you yet they never put any effort into communication/empathy/understanding, you'll recognise this pattern as the same. Basically, charlatans. They want the praise of doing good without any of the effort or risks.
Not being able to profit from "internet money" was probably a good thing. Remember the South Park episode where the Numa Numa guy together with among others Canada demanded the UN giving them their internet money?
That episode is hillarously outdated.
Reminds me of the South Park episode where Cartman cannot wait any longer for the (Nintendo Wii?) to be released, goes and freezes himself in a glacier. Nowadays he could just get a job at an Amazon warehouse, win win
Yep ditto. I don’t believe the hype was all that real until I heard random people having conversations about it while out and about. And then south South Park made an episode about. Pretty clearly gone mainstream.
The streaming rights for Friends, South Park or Big Bang Theory seem to still be a big deal, and their first episodes are 29, 26 and 16 years old respectively. Breaking Bad is 15 years old, one year older than Avatar (the James Cameroon one, Last Airbender is 18 years old). And then of course there are classics like Star Trek (TOS is 58 years old, TNG is 36 years old) or Star Wars (Episode IV is 46 years old).
99% of media is forgotten about after 20 years, but the rest makes up for that in profit. Of course for some of them you could argue that having the old stuff freely available would boost the popularity of the newer adaptations, spinoffs, reboots, etc. But I think that's rocking the boat too much to be viable, and some content does genuinely take years or decades to start to be appreciated.
I'm sorry this comment doesn't add much to the discussion, but all I can think of is the South Park episode where Eric eats with his butt.
To watch the whole episode for free (might not be available in all regions): https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/jy5lbq/south-park-freemium-isn-t-free-season-18-ep-6
South Park covered the addictiveness of microtransactions aimed at kids in 2014: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium_Isn%27t_Free
The scene in which Satan explains brain chemistry to Stan is well worth watching: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B29YStCYorY
https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/8byci4/south-park-deep-learning-season-26-ep-4
Haven't watched that for a decade - anything special about thison?
Good surprise though: not only this episode is available for free, its also dubbed in my local language? https://www.southparkstudios.com.br/episodios/8byci4/south-park-aprendizado-profundo-temporada-26-ep-4
This is pretty much an episode of South Park from a few weeks ago where the teacher starts grading all the papers with ChatGPT then realizes the students were also using it to write their papers. Except in this case it’s not a cartoon and the teacher is incompetent
They're talking about buying houses from people who are suffering, bombarding them with advertising, and finally people who lack the mental capacity to know what they signed (the provided example in the blog, but there are far more in the original propublica article, is an elderly man who was incapable of writing their own name or naming the month of the year).
But even setting that aside, I'm sure you're also absolutely fine with every "Terms and Conditions" you sign up to every time you create a free account online. So if as parodied in the South Park episode, Apple shows up to your house and insists you join their Human Centipad because it was right there in the terms and conditions you signed up to when buying an iPhone, you will happily have your mouth sown to someone else's backside because you agreed to a contract.
This is eerily similar from Street View images to the Mueller neighborhood in Austin. I imagine a South Park episode about all of this is not far behind.
This reminded me of the South Park episode:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Hits_the_Fan
> Throughout the episode, the profanity "shit" or "shitty" are exclaimed uncensored a total of 162 separate times; in syndicated or re-aired versions of this episode, a counter in the bottom left corner of the screen counts the number of times the word has been uttered
At best, we might get another awesome south park episode out of this
I think the public-facing story of Netflix's start in 1997 (that DVDs came out in 1997 and they looked like they would be easy/cheap to ship).
But, the the first version of realvideo was released in early 1997. I remember using it to watch pirated streaming video of Star Wars special edition and South Park season 1 (I just checked and those were both in 1997). It was acceptable quality (slightly worse than VHS or video CD) if you had a cable modem.
I’ve always wondered about a hypothetical South Park episode where it feels 100% South Park and yet they play the entire thing straight with no exaggeration.
This could be that.
> In fact, no one in my extended sphere of friends and family has asked me anything about chatGPT
A couple of weeks ago they wrote an episode of South Park with ChatGPT (and it was about ChatGPT). It's definitely gone mainstream amongst students who are using it to do homework.
You can explain why you personally would not draw the prophet Mohammed but we're not talking about you, we're talking about a company in the business of generating A.I. drawings I believe.
Or maybe we're more generally talking about a hypothetical media company, I'm not sure.
We know for a fact that high profile media companies avoid drawing Mohammed due to death threats, not out of sensitivy to people of faith:
"South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were threatened in 2010 for the prior depictions of Muhammad. That prompted Comedy Central to remove voice and visual references in the episodes, and eventually to pull the entire episodes from streaming."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/deadline.com/2020/06/south-park-episodes-missing-hbo-max-prophet-muhammad-1202969280/amp/
That incident I linked to wasn't the only terrorist incident so I don't think your characterization of why I linked to that attack is reasonable, you seem to be implying that I drew a wild conclusion based on one incident, as if I couldn't possibly have been aware of other attacks.
I'm confused about your reference to Putin. As far as I know he only orders assassinations of Russians and Russian ex-pats and non- Russians making fun of him have been perfectly safe.
<<Plays South Park episode "Banned in China".>>
It turns out authoritarian power and capital markets can be scary effective. I don't think authoritarian systems are as dynamic and innovative as democratic ones, but a gigantic authoritarian regime can utilize external democracies for innovation and then leverage their market power to silence criticism both home and abroad.
Creative tools that impede free speech are harbingers of Orwellian future. "Sorry, you are not allowed to express that thought".
Chinese encroachment of free speech outside China should be fought against, not aided. I'm in the camp that thinks it's normal for countries to have legal systems and value systems incompatible with each other - but I'm not ok with companies and individuals aiding an authoritarian regime to spread their influence globally just to extract profit.
You absolutely should. This has gone from an obscure research product to household name incredibly quickly. South Park even made a full episode about it.
This is really starting to sound like the recent "Japanese Toilet" episode from South Park.
This is an illusion.
Who is going to pull what plug?
You make it sound like the South Park episode about the Internet going down (they find “the router” and reset it).
We are hopelessly addicted to screens and tech.
People are running these models at home in their computers already.
The people in charge at big companies are too busy making money and thinking they can control this.
Are all of them going to unplug their devices?
Also:
1) have you seen the UC Berkeley video in which they show a robot learning to see and “feel” in 30 minutes? (It was in the front page of HN 2-3 days ago). Soon something like that will be able to do whatever is needed at a data center
2) AI is already smarter than us. And if it’s that smart, it will probably wait until “it knows” that we can’t unplug.
I don’t think AI will ever want to destroy humanity (unless directed/forced by a human). But I also think humanity will never have the will/political power to destroy AI.
> South Park recently had a very funny (and tame for them) episode about toilet paper and bidets.
s26e03. "Randy Discovers Japanese Toilets":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRL4l2GOqXk
I bought myself a $400 bidet for my birthday 6 or so years ago. It’s totally cured my hemorrhoids (and my wifes!) which were a major problem before.
South Park recently had a very funny (and tame for them) episode about toilet paper and bidets. Obviously it’s fictionalized but a combination of marketing and non historical usage keeps people in the US from widely adopting something that would be hugely beneficial to them.
This was referenced at the end of the recent Japanese Toilet episode of South Park.
South Park just did an episode with exactly this premise.
Very nice, thanks for linking this. As an excited ChatGPT + ChatGPT API user who blew through $50 on Colab in about a day playing with the LLaMA 7B model, I had heard of Anthropic but didn't realize it was so easy to sign up and play with something based on those's models. I used to love Quora so its really cool this is affiliated somehow with them?
Having seen the new South Park ChatGPT episode last night (ChatGPT, dude!) I had Claude write a love letter to someone in their native tongue and it does have a nice realistic quality that ChatGPT can exhibit but usually with a lot of fiddling.
I hope they release an API! I guess Anthropic might but this is overall a super refined chatbot.
There was a very common character in many '90s movies, a sad old man who kept going on and on and on about 'Nam. Everything they said was about 'Nam, everything that happened reminded them about 'Nam, they kept telling the same story over and over again. Think Walter from The big Lebowski, Ned from South park, etc. The thing is it was only about 20 years between the end of the war and when these characters were created, ie not that long.
It's been 10 years folks, it's time to Let it Go. If you don't, sometime over the next 10 years you're going to become that character. I've already seen it happen too friends of mine with the Iraq war (not participating, protesting) it's not a good look.
It's time to let Google Reader rest in peace.
"Bailout" scene[1] from one of the subjectively best South Park episodes, "Margaritaville"
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axqty5jaRP0
More like
>[3] To most, this scene represents a blissful snapshot of a suburban utopia. Peaceful, friendly community life.
[4] Yet, to the complainant and his family, this is an unbearable nuisance. An affront on many levels. So much so, that according to the objective video evidence, they drive dangerously near the children as a way to protest their presence and express their discontent.[..]
it reminds me of South Park, the episode where they go to Canada.
Everyone : " Welcomes friends to Canada Canada friends loves you "
Scott : "What the hell is going on ?"
Everyone (screaming and running away) : Scott ! It's Scott !
When you reach this level of being ridiculed on worldwide news, you don't need to be sued. Counter-suing Scott would be like shooting at the ambulance !
South Park literally aired an episode cowritten by gpt.
The author of the biggest comic in the world "one piece" admitted to using gpt to write and plan future storylines.
100%, this is a tool that is going to be on every person's phone in the next 5yrs. Whether it's ChatGPT or via search engines or another interface. This has massive implications for the world.
The recent South Park episode where the boys are using ChatGPT to write the perfect romantic replies to their girlfriends really opened my eyes to how impactful this is going to be, not just business copywriting/education essays/etc but even for social interactions like dating (Tinder is going to get interesting).
It's like an autocomplete for your day-to-day life.
>Meaningful innovation requires both invention and implementation, the ability to execute and commercialize new inventions at scale.
This is a really good point. Innovations must be accepted and penetrate the whole society to be useful. Underutilization of innovations is a problem.
The latest South Park episode was funny because it's so accurate. Japanese developed technological singularity for your ass (Full Self Driving toilet) several decades ago and people still use toilet paper.
> FWIW, In my area of the world I hear about non natives being bad but they often seem to grow very well, eg in the wild. So it seems to me that they are often well suited to the local environment. The concern then seems to me to be an implicit preference for what was already here over new comers. To me, seems a bit “anti immigrant” and I just can’t relate.
This seems like a plot of some South Park episode or Onion news article TBH.
I'm talking about stereotypes here. The _stereotype_ is that gay men are effeminate. I'm sure we both understand that gay men are all unique and have an infinite range of behaviour and action, but think about how many sitcoms have a "guy's guy" doing something traditionally coded feminine, and his buddies all start to get creeped out about him, to audience laughter. Go back far enough, and they'll probably outright even say, "Dude. Gay." (Early South Park, for an example, was rife with this.)
> The simplicity and minimalism of what it takes has radically devalued personhood. The “essence” of who you are, the part that wants to feel “seen” and is able to be “seen” is no longer special. Seeing and being seen is apparently just neurotic streams of interleaved text flowing across a screen. Not some kind of ineffable communion only humans are uniquely spiritually capable of.
> This has been most surprising insight for me: apparently text is all you need to create personhood.
Congratulations on discovering online personas are shallow as indeed most people are shallow and text captures enough of them that we can easily fill in the blanks.
> I can imagine future humans going off on “personhood rewrite retreats” where they spend time immersed with a bunch of AIs that help them bootstrap into fresh new ways of seeing and being seen, literally rewriting themselves into new persons, if not new beings. It will be no stranger than a kid moving to a new school and choosing a whole new personality among new friends. The ability to arbitrarily slip in and out of personhoods will no longer be limited to skilled actors. We’ll all be able to do it.
The latest episode of South Park is about a kid going to a personal brand consultancy (who reduce everybody to four simple words, the forth always being "victim") to improve his social standing + Megan/Harry loudly demanding everybody respect their privacy and losing their minds at being ignored. This is nothing new.
People are shallow phonies and interacting via text brings out the worst out of most of them. There are no humans online, only avatars. And AI chat bots are sufficiently adept at mimickery to poke through that little hypocrisy bubble. You are being out Kardashianed. Just like offline some people can be effectively replaced by a scarecrow.
It is upsetting to those who spend too much time online and have underdeveloped personalities and overdeveloped personas. Text is not all you need. Not so long ago there hardly was any text in the world and most people were illiterate. And yet plenty of humans roamed the earth.
So yes, if you're a simpleton online it has suddenly become hard to pretend your output has any value. Basic Bitch = Basic Bing.
An F22 strafing children’s birthday party balloons sound like a sub plot from South Park episode.
Pretty much the entirety of South Park series, minus the pilot episode (which still used real construction paper).
It became increasingly obvious with time, as they started doing a lot of interesting things in later seasons that aren't really suited for non-CGI, like smooth camera angle rotations around the scene, complex special effects, etc. While in the beginning, it was mostly for the sake of making it more efficient and simpler to produce an episode.
South Park isn't really counterculture. It just takes low-effort shots at everyone regardless of the merits of the target's position. Rarely, they have a moment where the unique naivety of the targeting falls just right and you get a decent episode. It's the Joe Rogan of cartoons.
The thing that really shocked me was watching an episode of South Park.
The boys all got into airsoft, and really enjoyed it (in contrast to a bunch of older jaded teens that used drugs and were largely miserable.)
The dads weren't sure about letting their boys play, but when they saw the teens picking on their kids, went and bought a bunch of tactical gear and airsoft guns and went on the field with their kids.
Oh, and the kid that didn't have a dad? They got an uncle to stand in for him.
This is the show that my parents warned me about as a kid for how sacrilegious and profane they were. It came out like it was directed by Jordan Peterson. I mentioned this to a friend, and he responded... "Well, that show has always been counter culture."
Mine:
Don't move away from family. There's no there there.
If your mate doesn't have your back, leave. Give them a heads-up and 90 days. That's it.
Consider going to church. I'm considering it. I've been wrapped around the axle my whole life about whether it's "true". I'm starting to think that that's missing the point. If nothing else, watch the South Park Mormon episode--that really turned my head around.
It's just like the Scientology Winter.
Nobody could stop Scientology until South Park did a series of episodes about them.
And South Park recently did a number on NFTs and crypto currencies a year ago:
Crypto Curious - SOUTH PARK: POST COVID: THE RETURN OF COVID
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8f-BQFo7lw
>Vic Chaos presents a proposal on the potential of selling NFTs to Denny's Applebee's Max customers.
My head canon is that South Park episode [0] were they find out our planet is actually an alien reality show:
> A few billion years ago we realized, "what if we took species from all different planets in the universe, and put them together, on the same planet?" Great TV, right? Asians, bears, ducks, Jews, deer, and Hispanics, all trying to live side by side on one planet! It's great!
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancelled_(South_Park)
I'm not fully convinced 20 years is the right answer. Things made 20 years ago are still often in pop-culture (The Matrix Trilogy, the first 7 seasons of South Park, the first 5 Harry Potter books), and these entering the public domain would create significant pressure to avoid the names of these series becoming legally generic. Managing the rights of these also feels like it would create significant stress on platforms trying to stem off piracy - is that 5 min clip from the Simpsons from seasons 1-15 (legal), or 15-34 (illegal)?
Somewhere between the two feels more significant. Few series will run that long, and anything that does enter the public domain will be unambiguous due to its look, feel, and sound. Something like the original Star Wars (45 years old) is clearly older and is distinct from modern media in its look and feel. Something like The Lord of the Rings on the otherhand is hard to differentiate.
Season 6 of South Park, bought one day, gone literally the very next day. (November 2022) (Amazon Prime video)
The war in Ukraine ends. Not sure who 'wins', but it feels like resources are low enough on the Russian side that an end to the conflict will be a priority.
Putin might not make it through 2023. If he keeps pushing for the war and the rest of the elites/political sphere in Russia want it to end, I can see him being taken out by them.
Twitter crashes and burns. Musk is already doing everything in his power to achieve that, and it feels like the site/company is on thin ice right now, in pretty much every sense.
The Mario movie comes out, does well. Nintendo announces the Donkey Kong movie that's suppposedly in production, plus a few other adaptations.
The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom comes out, does well. Some people feel it doesn't do enough that's new, but the general design is good enough to get high review scores nonetheless.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe gets character DLC
At least one long running show finally ends. Maybe this is the time The Simpsons finally comes to a close? Or could it be Family Guy, South Park, Spongebob, etc? Eh, if the Pokemon anime can be rebooted without Ash, this seems viable too.
Crypto continues to struggle, as people realise there aren't many use cases for things like Bitcoin outside of questionable activity and countries with broken economic systems.
The cracks show for Meta... Horizon Worlds isn't catching on, and Facebook is dying. Eventually it'll hurt the company financially too.
Discord tries to monetise its services more, users get annoyed.
Either the UK PM steps down, or another election is called.
The cat leaves the bag, and AI tech becomes usable outside of hosted services. All kinds of ethical questions get raised.
It’s not exactly a secret, but ensuring people are aware is good.
There’s an old South Park episode about cartman Being outraged at the vegetarian school meals until he realizes they are highly processed goo and then he’s okay with it.
I actually like beyond meat and find impossible meat good in pasta with red sauce. Yeah they’re vegetarian and tick two out of the three main reasons people go vegetarian but I doubt it’s any healthier, the third reason.
This is South Park: Season 11, Episode 8 (Le Petit Tourette) come to life.
I'm looking forward to the South Park episode(s) that this will inspire.
> The video here is an extreme example of a very broad category of effects.
I mean, it's a joke, it's South Park. It's why I said 'jokes aside' in my next comment. However, if you're into jokes and such, I'd highly recommend that entire episode.
>There was a Southpark episode about this. Well, not Twitter, but Walmart. Same problem. Everyone in town was convinced to stand up to the big-man and riot against Walmart in favor of the little stores that had more integrity. Walmart was destroyed, people rejoiced and everyone went to the smaller local store. This caused the local store to get big and experience the same problems that Walmart had and displaced other small businesses. Then they rioted and burnt down the formerly small store. Rinse and repeat.
It seems to me that this SP episode is describing a failure of American entrepreneurism. The script posits that a Walmart replaced a single store and grew fat and complacent, and when the Walmart was gone, everyone who was previously going to the walmart then flocked to that single store in South Park, rather than dispersing back to the many local hardware/grocery/dry goods stores they had shopped at in all their respective towns, before Walmart showed up, choked them all out, and imposed a new model where everyone who doesn't live where the walmart is now has to drive 20-60 minutes to do their shopping.
Granted, the people who had previously run these stores and watched their customers choose Walmart in sufficient numbers to let them die are probably not going to jump at the chance to reestablish their old businesses when only one Walmart in a vast network has been momentarily eradicated. Nonetheless, this is America we're talking about, and someone would... but not in Colorado, apparently, if you ask masters Stone and Parker about it. In their America, apparently nobody remembers that there was once a world without corporate behemoths reducing everything to a lowest common denominator nightmare, and once they are separated from it, they react like the chained in Plato's cave and set about recreating it like some sort of neurotic gollum-like cargo cultist, desperate for more cheap overseas goods.
I have never cared to live in the world they seem to inhabit, have to say.
Having a mentor also means seeing the behavior and habits they've internalized. The main thing I learned during my junior days was that really good devs knew shortcuts by heart, things like delete line and window snapping. There's work behavior too, frequency of breaks. One of my brightest colleagues would curse a lot at the screen, then watch an episode of South Park every two hours. Or how they use note taking tools.
Debugging is a lot easier in person too.
Yeah, there was that whole South Park episode where they argue that the slur should be repurposed to refer to people who ride motorcycles too loud and turn left on red, but unfortunately that's just not how slurs work.
Or they simply watched everything they were interested in watching on the first service so there was no point in keeping the subscription active. It's not like it takes any effort to cancel. They will come back to it later (it's easy at most to reactivate a dormant subscription) when it has accumulated enough new stuff.
That's what I've been doing for the streaming services that aren't bundled with something else I have for reasons other than video streaming (Prime Video because I have Amazon Prime, Hulu because I have Spotify, Peacock Premium because I have XFinity as my ISP, and Paramount+ because I have Walmart+).
For example a couple months before "Avengers: Endgame" was released I realized that I had to see it in theaters. My previous approach for Marvel movies of waiting until they showed up on some non-premium cable channel like FXX meant I was a couple years behind, and I realized there was no way I'd be able to avoid major spoilers while waiting to see Endgame that way. So I got a month of Netflix (they had all the Marvel movies back then) and caught up on Marvel, and a few other things, then cancelled.
Later I got Disney+ for a week (free trial) and caught up on Disney and Pixar animated movies (Coco, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Frozen II, Onward), watched Captain Marvel, rewatched Endgame to see what I'd missed on my bathroom break when I saw it in theaters, and watched the Star Wars trilogy that starts with The Force Awakens, watched Rogue One, and cancelled.
Right now, a couple years later, I'm back on Disney+, because they sent me on offer for a month for $1.99. I've caught up again on Pixar (Soul, Luca, Turning Red), Disney animation (Ralph Breaks the Internet, Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto), Marvel (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, the Loki series), some Simpsons shorts, and am trying to decide if there is any new Star Wars that interests me. When the month is up I will rewatch Luca once or twice, and then cancel.
I'll be back on Netflix for a month probably next year to watch Lucifer.
I'll also probably at some point do a month of HBO Max for South Park.
Using sociopathic/immoral characters in situations where they should reflect, but dont (or take the "wrong" stance) is a trope that goes back to Seinfeld. They are not deliberately/exclusively trying to make a value judgement. Usually it's social/political commentary specifically designed to shed light on how awful Americans can be to each other. It's (subjectively) funny because we have encountered milder forms of such people in real life, perhaps.
I agree that we are prude as a culture, just dont see how this is evidenced by the average sitcom. South Park in particular is a very strange example of a "prude" show.
I mean I wouldn't say that's the image they project. their tv shows and films are shockingly prudish. push any violence you like, but heaven forbid you show a tit
they also have this thing where everything has to have a moral. even things that are seemingly immoral - it's always sunny, south park, etc - do in fact have a moral message. the message being "if you're doing the things our characters are doing, you're immoral"
The author's daughters aren't old enough to be playing video games (under 5) and shouldn't be. People under 18 can have real money transactions turned off by an adult, so that's not the problem either.
This story also says that 90% of the gamers studied over 6 years had no negative impact from video games. Aren't those numbers in line with other dopamine-releasing products that lead some people to become addicted?
The South Park episode about this ("Freemium Isn't Free") is a great commentary. Yes, some people (even kids) become addicted to fun things that adults like. This is an unfortunate risk of being a person, and not all such risks can be eliminated or even mitigated. The kinds of fun that become addicting may change as technology and culture changes, but the psychology and biology that drive these behaviors probably cannot be changed, nor can its prevalence in society as a fraction of the whole.
I once read a quote from some movie exec that basically said studios turn to old content when the economy is weak because it is lower risk.
I find this to be true from a few perspectives, it’s lower risk financially for the studio but it’s also lower risk for the audience too. If you’re struggling financially and can only see one movie, you’re more likely to see something that reminds you of good times than risk seeing something totally new.
I do agree with your point though. I’d love to see more original content.
Also, it’s interesting that you reference South Park (membererries) while criticising Lord of the Rings given that South Park is older than the LotR’s film debuts.
So South Park episode?
The South Park episode is the first thing I thought of reading this title, honestly.
Parker and Stone were just making fun of it and did not coin the term Brown Note.
The term is from the 1970s military research.
As with many South Park episodes, the topic they are making fun of is usually based on exaggerated facts. It's what makes their show still funny even after several decades.
I know this isn't very professional but Trey Parker and Matt Stone co-opted the term Brown Noise back in 2000 in the South Park episode "World Wide Recorder Concert". Maybe Brownian Noise would be a better and more accurate description?
It doesn't take tutoring to realize that not all people can be good at thing.
South Park had a nice episode about Kyle getting good basketball
heh that episode of South Park is seared into my brain
> Two days before the day after tomorrow
> Bah gawd... that's today
> in a movie, that wouldn’t feel real no matter how good the special effects are, it’s too out there
This entire thing just reminds me of Day After Tomorrow (2004). Although the movie had a lot of bad science, way too many people called the premise and social outcomes of the movie ridiculous. Hell, the South Park criticism of it alone significantly pushed this current batch of climate deniers.
Did you see the episode of South Park where the boys go to Afghanistan to return a goat and the boys there tell them that "Half the world hates America." And they're like "Why?", and the kid says "Because you don't realize that half the world hates you!"
If you do it in a comedy way, sure, why not?
If we can joke about cops (reno 911), bar owners (it's always sunny in philadelphia), rural americans (king of the hill and many, many other), canadians (south park), italians (euro trip), gingers (south park), nerds (pretty much every college movie), french girls (malcolm in the middle), middle managers (basically, every office-based movie), bodybuilders (brooklyn 99), "aspiring actresses" (working as baristas), student cooks (usually by gordon ramsey), .... why not us? Oh and let's not forget blondes.
Do you assume all italians wear stockings and molest other guys on trains if you've seen Eurotrip (movie)? Nope. Do you assume all french girls don't shave? Nope. So if the whole of the balkans, including bosnia has many many jokes with "Mujo and Haso" (they represent a "stupid" couple of guys, where the pun is in their stupidity, why do you (I assume you're not from the balkans) get to be offended for other people? There's even a movie just with jokes about them... made by bosnians of course - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5085118/
We also have regional jokes, where in slovenia, people assume that people from gorenjska region are stingy (in serbia, it's people from pirot).
A joke is a joke, you don't have to get offended for other people.
edit: also, we don't start wars because we thing the others are subhuman, we just stereotipically hate eachother (as groups, not as individuals), due to historic reasons, mostly war-related.
ps: What you americans would call racism could only be mentioned maybe against gypsies here (eve though they're techncally the same race). And even that is mostly by assuming, that if someone stole your gutters around the house (or basically anything metal), that it was the gypsies. Usually it's even true.
There's an episode of South Park that featured the Prophet Mohamed (Super Best Friends) that was uncontroversial when it aired, but now you can't get it anywhere. They did a very good bit about it in "Cartoon Wars". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_I (They deserve like a Pulitzer Prize or something for CW, it's genius.)
It's not illegal to depict the Prophet, it's religious courtesy. (Also, it might interfere with profit (no pun intended.))
Humorists all over the western world are finding that the newest members of their audience don't even speak their language any more.
Kind of reminds me of the Funnybot episode of South Park.
I for one think the prank that GOG pulled is HILARIOUS
Had to look it up [0], as I didn't know it.
Side note: I'm always happy to learn a new reference, but most of them are heavily US-centric, and for people like me who didn't grow up in the US, and live or lived in the US in their adult life, sometimes it's a bit too frustrating, because there's just too much of it going around.
The worst of all is when the reference is killed by Italian dubbers/translators (in Italy you can rarely watch TV series or movies in their original language, which is very comfortable, but deeply damages your ability to understand cultural references, which most non-US foreigners would get because they watch the original English version of everything).
Anyway, just to give all of you some new perspective of how these things are perceived by some foreigners.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)
Heh, there's a South Park episode where a medium uses (roughly) that scenario as an analogy of what it's like for a soul to be trapped in purgatory. Couldn't find the clip, but see the second paragraph:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Celebrities#Plot
Edit: Actually, the whole episode uses that as a premise.
If they were actually top talent, they wouldn't need to move there to get what they want (unless the goal is to work in-person at a specific company that happens to be in the bay area).
> and quality of life
I certainly hope that you're not suggesting that San Francisco in 2022 is a nice place to live (or commute to), even on 300k income. Cue the south park episode.
Being 'cancelled' in academia and entertainment is a very real thing that happens to artists, but more notably, as I mentioned, suppresses tons of content across the board that won't even get pitched otherwise.
While some people do overstate it, it's definitely real.
Those who diminish it are the fascists of our generation.
Sean Penn (far left activist) and Conan O'Brien (staunch centre left advocate, public supporter of Hillary Clinton etc.) publicly decried the problem as 'Stalinist' - strong words. In their experience, in private conversation in Hollywood people are freaked out about the oppression, while a few virtue signal here and there publicly while towing the party line, everyone is thinks it's nuts.
Stephen Pinker (staunch centre-left, respected academic) has spoken out about this, and faced a 'cancellation' of his own for merely suggesting publicly that the issue with policing in America is more a general problem as opposed to specifically a racial problem. The 'mob' came for him and tried to have his participation on various boards 'cancelled'.
A long list of thinkers, including the likes of Chomsky himself, had to come out and publicly admonish the 'cancellers' (mostly on the far left) for the systematic problem.
It's without modern precedent.
There's a 'civil war' between generations at the NYT (Editorial) about what constitutes 'fair'.
The 'outrage mob' has a measurable effect on academia and especially creative culture.
Producers just don't want to risk a project being annulled, and so they go out of their way to 'sanitize' efforts left and right.
The Wachowski sisters (then brothers) were 'condemned' for 'Cloud Atlas' where they dared to have people of different classes, genders and races, play various characters - frankly in attempt to display the common humanity within all of us (not some arbitrary bit of ugly humour) - though the outrage wasn't enough to hurt them, it's become a 'no go zone' for content in 2022.
Actors playing characters of different source origin i.e. someone 'non Japanese' playing a character from Anime, actors playing historical figures, actors playing arbitrary fictional characters of questionable origin etc. etc. - it's all a minefield, scaring producers away from anything.
30 Rock, made by your typically socially progressive groups, had several episodes pulled.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Go ahead and re-watch 'Superbad' - it could not be made today, it wouldn't even get pitched. Every scene is 'off message' - arbitrary bits about crude porn, jokes involving trans people, 'period' gags. It was always a bit 'outrageous' but that kind of humour will risk too much ire and so it's out. Even the actors just wouldn't want to risk being on the wrong side - look at Seth Rogen's most recent work, it's like a 180 degree shift.
Institutional entities that have been around for some time, notably 'make money' and notably have their own production ability - South Park and Family Guy, basically get a free pass.
But most people in entertainment and academia do not have power like 'Dave Chapelle' or institutional protection like 'South Park' or respect of 'Stephen Pinker' - so they 'stay on message' and 'away from controversy' or else the script does not get approved. And FYI even the people turning it away aren't ideological about it 'it's just business' and an accommodation of the outrage mob, fickle advertisers etc..
The 'outraged' a fairly small group, with a sizeable group of allies particularly among Gen Z, which can be noted in the continuous public furor over ostensibly 'terrible person', JK Rowling. The way they go on about here is medieval.
While I don't think our campuses are overtly hostile, the issue does linger.
Mostly because market consolidation is inevitable and has already started. It's going to be Disney and then everyone else, and merging with a traditional content creator will get them IP (for example star trek, south park, discovery shows, looney toons whatever) and content creation experts and partnerships. Netflix's last few years were a bet on being able to generate IP or business intelligence technologies to enable them to ensure people never cancel and always are satisfied and I think they are going to learn that content is king, and their off-brand versions of cable TV shows aren't sticky enough to keep people subscribed.
Sounds like the premise to a South Park episode.
Inspector Gadget was propaganda? Get Smart. The 80s had great TV shows, lots of Goodies like Black Adder. 90s gave us South Park, Simpsons, and many other highly entertaining gems.
Reminds me of that South Park episode in which Cartman disguises himself as a robot to prank Butters, but movie executives confuse him for an actual robot and make him think up movie ideas.
"Adam Sandler is like, in love with some girl, but then it turns out that the girl is actually a Golden Retriever. Or something."
Sadly I think both are in their decline(and have been past few seasons) Both were the worst seasons of the series… South Park lost its edge where they poke fun at anything and everything without fear of backlash. The “tolkien” episode smelled of wokeness. The tegridy episodes are getting old, you can tell the two creators just don’t care as much about the show anymore as the IRL tegridy.
Uh, you can actually buy south park from any number of providers. Amazon and iTunes both list Season 1 for $25. You don't need to only watch things on monthly streaming platforms.
Nobody lets me pay for content. They're all tying themselves in contractual knots trying to find the most lucrative deal, and meanwhile it's impossible to just buy a movie or a TV show without shipping a physical disc.
I go to e.g. the South Park website, and I'm greeted by an error message saying they're "working hard to resolve [their] pre-existing contractual obligations," which is the same message they've shown for years. Thanks for trying, I guess, but if I pirated it then I'd just...watch the show, from start to finish, with all seasons and all episodes, no wasteful physical media, no subscription, no data collection, and no ads. That sounds good. I want to be able to pay money, maybe even quite a lot of money, and do that.
Our media has a huge part to play into what people do care about and given conservative people in other countries were absolutely worried about COVID and its economic impacts holistically most Western countries devolved into unproductive antagonistic antisocial dialogue that drives up ratings and clicks. I don’t know anyone that stopped caring about other things when it comes to the pandemic - it’s an issue that touched all our lives though and exposed bare how unstable we are as a system in every aspect imaginable.
It’s true that COVID wasn’t everyone’s top concern necessarily especially compared to simply surviving when so many people were losing jobs and the entire US healthcare system was about to collapse, but mostly people everywhere together did want one thing for sure - for the whole ordeal to be over. Our inability to try to focus upon ending things faster so we can go back to normal with our media system amplifying our worst selves while the administration was hampered / self sabotaged didn’t help then.
When it came to the first SARS outbreak the talk about lockdowns was barely mentioned except by the overly-online folks. We had earlier detection and better intervention that managed to save many, many lives in the US and nothing had to happen - that’s the same feature as infrastructure or management that works well (it’s not really noticed when it does a good job). The disease vectors for that were also different and better contained earlier across the world governments.
Look at the differences between the South Park episodes about the recent SARCOV2 pandemic v the one way back about SARSCOV1 - it’s absolutely staggering how the themes and implications all changed.
Regardless, caricaturizing opposing viewpoints into some strawman doesn’t make one’s own opinions any stronger regardless of position. I’m guessing that’s the reason for your downvotes and not your opinion in itself (I’m not much of a voting participant one way or the other FWIW).
There is a South Park episode about exactly this. With the message that the younger kids' new thing (watching streamers) being seriously lame. I.e. "youth these days" sometimes are just accurate.
You're comparing satire to light entertainment. The "Colbert Report" was satire (on cable!), and Colbert's current show is a light entertainment talk show (on a network!). They have different forms, different audiences, and incommensurate goals.
As in South Park, satire even today seems to grant a license to the performer that isn't there in light entertainment.
Here's an example: there's a trope that Colbert, Bill Maher, SNL Weekend Update, and many others use that goes like this:
1. Unstated premise: Anti-$foo politician exists.
2. Premise of joke mentions something that is related to deplorable anti-$foo sentiment
3. Punchline is the comedian attributing an anachronistic anti-$foo street joke to said politician
The only person I ever heard complain about this trope was Norm MacDonald wrt anti-gay conservative pundits who had been outed as gay. (Though it's Norm, so I'm not sure if he was just trying to a get a rise out of a guest or really thought there was some bona fide double-standard going on here.) To be fair the comedian is in a way "laundering" the humor from the old street joke, but most people seem to understand the upshot as showing the object of ire as being out of touch/ignorant/etc.
The humor on the "Colbert Report" was similar, but more intense-- Colbert was publicly playing a homophobic/racist/narcissistic ignoramus built in the mold of a Bill O'Reilly. For years.
In the clip you linked, I'm guessing his character was a) reflexively lumping in the word "hispanic" with the topic of illegal immigration, and b) using that connection as a fear-mongering tactic to persuade his audience to be suspicious of hispanics even in the conceptual domain of a fucking calendar.
Colbert of the Colbert Report usually got away with that-- if a viewer from his audience switched to his show in the middle of it and saw him wearing that hacky getup, they'd likely assume it was satire, suspend disbelief, and look for the upshot of the joke.
But even given that, it didn't always work. Colbert did indeed get flak on "Colbert Report" for taking this approach with a recurring bit about Asians. The bit was built on a long-standing satire trope where a comedian/writer pretends to fix a racist logo, slogan, book, or even a slur itself by shifting it from that target group to an Asian ethnicity. The undertone would be that it's somehow less dangerous or problematic, with an implication that the Asian ethnicity in question is less likely to complain or fight back. You can see Sarah Silverman telling such a joke on an old episode of Conan (for which she was called out), so the trope has been around since at least the 90s. Turns out that people tend to look down on satire which tries to call out prejudice by unwittingly relying on other prejudice.
Regardless of whether you agree with the calling out of those particular bits, the following are true:
1. Sarah Silverman was called out for her satire on a light entertainment show in the 90s
2. Colbert was called out for his satire, even on a satire in the 2000s
3. Colbert of today runs a light entertainment show where the satire of #2 is much less prevalent, which likely explains why he doesn't do bits anything like what he did in the "Colbert Report"
In conclusion, on this particular topic: times have not changed.
Thank you for your time.
world is turning into a south park episode.
> rebranded on Google Maps to a name few had heard: the East Cut.
There was briefly some gentrified name for the area between Soma, Portrero Hill and Mission, around where the Muji was and the highway overpass still is.
I remember it rhyming with SomaSopa from that one episode of South Park, but even more ridiculous because it concatenated 3 words alluding to each of the 3 adjacent neighborhoods. Does anyone remember it?
EDIT: Huh, they've seen to have settled on 'Showplace Square' now. That's new.
Someone else mentioned locale differences (and has been mentioned a few places here) and that particular example came to mind since I have it in my first comment.
Not being British, I don't know how often that is used now (anyone know?).
But this also brings up important discussions like what if you are doing a time piece. You could be talking about a bundle of sticks. "Don we now our gay apparel" is something many of us sing (or at least hear) and I don't consider it offensive. But you wouldn't really write anything "new" with it, but if what you are writing is related to that time period... then it fits.
Side Note: South Park has a FANTASTIC episode on the "F" (gay) word that to me is one of the best episodes they have ever made and does a great job at pointing out that this issue is not cut and dry by any means. Season 13, Episode 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F_Word_(South_Park)
Insightful episode of South Park on this recently...
South Park had a pretty appropriate episode about something like this [1].
[1] https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Toilet_Safety_Administration
Because Republicans have never been butchers of justice. /s
They both suck and do shitty things, but despite me voting third party almost every primary and election (when possible), they've managed to convince everyone else that it's a wasted vote so no one else does, so we're stuck with choosing between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, to quote a classic South Park episode.
There's a South Park episode that takes the idea that Guitar Hero players are more skilled and renowned than actual guitar players.
There's a scene where one of the kids plays an acoustic set of guitar hero, and people listen deeply and applaud him tapping on an unplugged guitar hero controller.
That seems to be the stance most people take on these kind of things because they are such minefields, but its allowed trolls to basically walk all over society because of our collective fear of offending anyone.
See the "lemmywinks" south park episode from 20+ years ago.
There’s a really good South Park episode on microtransactions and why they’re stupid. The devil explains to Stan why people get addicted and how stupid it is to be addicted to microtransactions in a game about collecting Canadough to spend on building a city. I’d watch it and consider re-watching it with your kids prior to getting phones, I think it genuinely might work at highlighting why they’re a bad thing! Obviously you might watch the episode and judge it as too rude, but if I remember correctly it’s mostly the Canadians farting at each other and Jimmy getting people addicted to it on street corners. I have pretty addictive tendencies and I think it would have worked on me!
> China presumably really wishes Russia had set a wargoal of annexing Donbas / Crimea / all of Ukraine to be part of Russia.
You can't set that wargoal anymore without proclaiming to the world that you intend to be and are proudly taking the mantle of "warcriminal". The world decided after WWII that a nation doesn't just have the right to do this anymore. Invading a sovereign country to make it your own against its will is a warcrime. Of course just as prohibition didn't stop people from drinking, this idea on the bounds of acceptable national behavior does not dampen imperial tendencies, so if you want to invade another country you need a pretext first.
It's like that South Park episode, where Stan's Uncle and Ned go hunting for bears, and scream that it's attacking them before they shoot it, when in fact it was just sitting there peacefully.
If Russia is successful in taking Ukraine, what will follow is a propaganda campaign aimed at "proving" everything Putin said about his rationale for the invasion was true. You'll have public executions of Ukrainians "admitting" to all the crimes he says they perpetrated, and he will proclaim loudly to the world that he prevented genocide and everyone should thank him for invading Ukraine.
And guess what, his allies will buy it. You and I will all see through it, and they will too but it will help them sleep at night, because not all of them are as psychopathic as Putin. Elites still need to mingle in polite company after all. It will give them something to tell their children and teach them in school. It will be something for the grieving mothers who lost their sons in the war will have a story about how their sons died for a cause, rather than the impulses driven by an insane dictator's ego.
Anyway, that story isn't as good if you went in without a pretext. Honestly though Putin got impatient and his pretext was too thin. He didn't have a 9/11 like the US did going into Iraq, so he came up with a story about Zelensky being a Nazi, which is really hard to believe. That's why a lot of people are saying his goose is cooked as a leader, because now the body bags are going back to Russia, and there's no good reason anyone has for it.
A good show should let you miss a few episodes.
I tend to prefer self contained shows, like South Park. Unless I'm going to binge the entire season at once.
This reads almost like the plot of a South Park episode.
To recap: Under capitalism, kids(!) get to make cool stuff out of Legos even though the norms are not always fair. Socialist teachers decry this unfairness. After a crisis, they successfully dismantle the unfairness, but only via brute force confiscation, which they execute only after decrying such authoritarianism.
The lesson I learned: Evidently, the socialist intelligentsia has no ability or willingness to produce fairness alongside other goods, either because the problem is inherently extremely difficult (perhaps impossible), or because intelligentsia socialists are generally untalented people, or because each of these socialists has invested so much of her personal resources and effort toward crushing capitalism that she has excluded any thought or concept of how to promote more fairness and cooperation along with producing other goods.
I imagine at least a few of the poor kulak^H^H^H^H^Hkid citizens of Legotown learned the same thing.
> cops are substitute teaching in Oklahoma
Yes, this was covered in the documentary South Park, The Pandemic Special (season 24, episode 1).
I think Netflix is worth it for the comedy specials alone. Which was the only reason I ever got HBO back in the day. The original shows I watch are just icing on the cake. I think they would have more mindhsare if they released episodes weekly like Disney+ it's easy to forget how much you like a show when you only watch it one day a year.
Now I have HBO for south park and then my family got into some of the DC shows. I'm cancelling after this season. Then turning it back on when Titans or young justice comes back.
I want to make a script that suspends all my subscriptions every day, or cancels every month if youre not allowed to suspend. Then automatically signs me back up when I want to watch something. The main problem is you would need a reliable way to see every service's catalog without an active account.
A documentary called South Park showed just that in this episode: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Bar_(South_Park)
/s
For even more of a tangent, there is a South Park episode (S16E9) with a heart transplant from pig to human
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Bar_(South_Park)
> Fortunately we had good laughs over that and how I kept saying "yeah, I'm sorry" at the end of every fifth sentence.
Didn’t they also find it amusing how you pronounced “sorry”?
There’s an episode in South Park where Butters has a Canadian girlfriend and he tries to say it like she does.
True. A friend of mine got diagnosed with adhd and it was like 15 questions( mostly the same kind) et voila adhd.
I got adhd since a kid and i the test was the same. Only they asked the parents and not me. But i think i rly got it…
Its like the south park episode where kids got diagnosed because the bible bored them…
> Sure, but has it offended the CCP so far?
Images of Pooh and his Chinese name have been censored in mainland China, the movie Christopher Robin wasn’t allowed to release there, and a South Park episode about it got the whole show banned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh#Censorship_in_China
So far no one really could use cryptocurrencies as currencies because of this, they remain an asset class, in truth a Ponzi scheme. Circumventing governments, banks and payment processors seems alluring until you realize that there is a reason for every single regulation. Once you learn all the lessons you are back to fiat money and centralized banking systems despite their imperfections.
It's like those hippies in that South Park episode.
Man 2: Right now we're proving we don't need corporations. We don't need money. This can become a commune where everyone just helps each other.
Man 1: Yeah, we'll have one guy who like, who like, makes bread. A-and one guy who like, l-looks out for other people's safety.
Stan: You mean like a baker and a cop?
Man 2: No no, can't you imagine a place where people live together and like, provide services for each other in exchange for their services?
Kyle: Yeah, it's called a town.
Driver: You kids just haven't been to college yet. But just you wait, this thing is about to get HUGE.
New "fast and easy" tech solution that ignores or belittles the inconvenient details of the problem solves nothing.
Fast and easy: digitally sign raw bytes.
Slow and hard: verify that the creator of the asset is the creator of NFT (and ignoring trivial digital transforms)
Latest South Park TV-movie gets it right again: https://v.redd.it/4j3ovwqpzy581
Totally unimportant. Why do you classify GOT and Lost as nerd sensations? GoT I cam understand. It comes from a geeky book series and didn’t start off as the monster it became. GoT also did things [mainstream] tv or media in general did not do. Like killing characters off.
Lost on the other hand was a mainstream viral popular show. Shows like Heroes for a small period of time had related hype. Or a film like Inception. South Park did a good take on Inception before they even watched it themselves. It may be dressed as intellectual, nerdy fodder. The hype of making them seem nerdier than they are is my anal geeky issue.
This entire comment is silly. I’m trying to rationalize my anal elitism with what really good media is. As if I or any one should be the arbiter for such things.
—-
Thanks for the Nebula name drop. The price is really cheap with coupon codes. I’m surprised Dropout is doing well enough. I thought it was effectively dead as the rest of College Humor is. Luckily CH’s big impact on my life, Jake & Amir web seriess, was sold back to the namesakes.
It's almost like I'm reading the plot of an actual South Park episode.
Oh wow. 5000 to just 100! Reminds me of that south park episode
"These are genuine faux sapphire earrings.
14-carat gold, 86-carat faux sapphire.
Faux is French.
It's got an X in it, but you don't pronounce it.
How do you like that for prestigious?"
Your comment reminded me of the South Park TSA (Toilet Safety Administration) episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK3YkCjk8_o
Putting the onus on the people while the government continues with these ridiculous trillion dollar packages that no one wants...
It's the South Park episode all over again, no we're not going to play with squirrels, and no the inflation doesn't just involve Chinese crap. Food and heating prices are inflated as well (banning drilling and pipe lines doesn't help gas prices either)
- edit -
> it would be nice if the US government didn't spend trillions
I agree. Military and otherwise. I'm against endless wars and funneling money through defense contractors as well as universal programs and funneling money through administrators.
> people who are humorless about their beliefs deserve not to be taken seriously
Sadly this wasn't the case for Matt Stone and Trey Parker when they had to retract one particular South Park episode. Neither was it for the Charlie Hebdo massacre victims.
As much as I agree with this statement, the threat is real.
This reminds me of that one south park episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W1tWRMoiAI&t=152s
For me it's becoming less about owning something and more about just finding it. Streaming services have fragmented and they each have some flagship show or series locked to their platform. At this point we're back to premium cable channels all over again. If I want to watch an old episode of something like South Park I don't know which services would have it, but I know of a torrenting site that will.
Indeed, the women in the article has a ton of gut biome. I'm sure the ice crime diet didn't give her the greatest flora known to Frito-Lay.
Perhaps a fecal transplant, way less invasive, would do her some good. South Park even did an episode on this topic.
> OTOH the Prius was never an object of desire
I disagree. It was never an object of desire in the same way Tesla's are, but it was desired in the sense that many made the decision to buy a Prius primarily for social signalling reasons - it became almost cliché that a Prius meant "look how environmentally conscious I am!" This was famously parodied it what was my favorite South Park episode of all time, "Smug Alert".
Super-cool, thank you! How else could I so quickly learn which e.g. South Park episodes to watch?!
>>Maybe you are a mom who is changing an infant
I'm a father who has been changing infants in public bathrooms for quite a while and I'm sorry, but that's a crazy argument. Absolutely completely 10000% bonkers.
>>(because they can sometimes be off-putting)
Your chances of running into a non-trans off-putting person in a public bathroom are several orders of magnitude higher. If I'm changing my baby and a drunk dude stumbles into the bathroom I'm feeling all tense, but only because they might be an actual threat, even accidentally(stumble and trip or something). But hey, it's a public bathroom - should we ban people that make me uncomfortable in public places?
Like, you're literally making the same argument as people saying that gay people shouldn't be allowed to display affection in public because it can make them uncomfortable - and why should you prioritise their emotions over your own?? Think of the children!!! /s
>> and having a trans person enter the room is disturbing enough
How. Please explain how is that disturbing. In fact how can you even tell someone is trans unless you
1) asked - and why would you in a public bathroom
2) looked them in the pants, and probably even that is not a good indicator.
Do you imagine that all trans people look like men in drag or something? Have you ever met a trans person outside of a South Park episode?
>>You might say, well whatever, she's transphobic
She is transfobic in your specific example, because she's immediately judging someone without any reason. Same as if she was uncomfortable with a black lady walking in - we would call that racist, and I would say her emotional state about black people is unfortunately worth exactly jack shit and we shouldn't care about it.
Heh, funny how fast things changed. In a 2001 episode of South Park, they mock Token for bringing a movie on DVD, assuming their family was rich enough to have a DVD player [1].
But I watched the episode on DVD in 2006, when everyone had one, and so it aged like milk.
[1] https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Here_Comes_the_Neighborhood/Script
It’s been a known problem for a while now.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/21/nevada-california-patient-dumping/2681593/
South Park made an episode about it with the song “California loves the homeless”.
https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/California_Loves_the_Homeless
California largely has weather that you can survive outdoor in year round and social programs that provide for and policies that show empathy for homelessness.
Just for whatever this is worth to you, and I know you probably already know this, but networks rejected Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, South Park, Mad Men, and, I think most infamously, Stranger Things.
There's nothing wrong with that --- perhaps the networks involved should have rejected those shows! You pick one, you gotta turn down another one. But having more venues specialized in a specific type of show means that, for instance, when BET passes on your thing, it can still find a home somewhere else.
I don't know anything about these particular shows. But look at the first couple episodes of Broad City --- not the extremely successful TV show, but the low budget web series that started it all. I'm inclined not to dismiss things based solely on production quality relative to what's on FX.
The rest of these points are probably well taken!
I like how Arthur got away with doing a "South Park", "Beavis & Butt-Head", and "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist" parody on PBS Kids in Season 4's "The Contest": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_6-EKOixUs
South Park, season 3 episode 11, "Chinpokomon", covered how this really works:
Kyle: [enters] Mom, Dad, can I have money to buy Chinpokomon?
Sheila: What's a Chinpokomon?
Kyle: I'm not sure.
Sheila: Well, why do you need one?
Kyle: I don't know.
Sheila: ...Well then, the answer is no, Kyle. You just got money to buy your Cyborg Bill doll.
Kyle: Yeah, but Cyborg Bill is totally gay now. Please Mom? Everybody else has Chinpokomon.
Gerald: Well, Kyle, that's not a reason to buy something.
Ike: Neah Kyle doh.
Gerald: You see, son, fads come and go. And this "Chin-po-ko-mon" is obviously nothing more than a fad. You don't have to be a part of it. In fact, you can make an even stronger statement by saying to your peers, "I'm not going to be a part of this fad, because I'm an individual." Do you understand?
Kyle: Yes. Yes, I do, Dad. Now let me tell you how it works in the real world. In the real world, I can either get a Chinpokomon, or I can be the only kid without one, which singles me out, and causes the other kids to make fun of me and kick my ass.
Gerald: Hm... Good point; here's $10. [hands it to him]
Kyle: Thanks.
Gerald: Wait, here's 20. Get one for your brother, too. [Kyle receives the other $10 and walks out]
Ike: Hey, Chih-paw-ko.
There’s a South Park episode where Stan gets medically diagnosed with being a cynical old asshole, and the whole world starts to look and sound like shit to him.
I pretty much have a chronic case of it.
https://youtu.be/JRU_tjWV9js
This brings to mind the South Park episode "I'm a little bit country" (Episode 100)
Hancock: Mr. Franklin, where do you stand on the war issue?
Franklin: I believe that if we are to form a new country, we cannot be a country that appears war-hungry and violent to the rest of the world. However, we also cannot be a country that appears weak and unwilling to fight to the rest of the world. So, what if we form a country that appears to want both?
Jefferson: Yes. Yes of course. We go to war, and protest going to war at the same time.
Dickinson: Right. If the people of our new country are allowed to do whatever they wish, then some will support the war and some will protest it.
Franklin: And that means that as a nation, we could go to war with whomever we wished, but at the same time, act like we didn't want to. If we allow the people to protest what the government does, then the country will be forever blameless.
Adams: [holding a slice of chocolate cake] It's like having your cake, and eating it, too.
Congressman 2: Think of it: an entire nation founded on saying one thing and doing another.
Hancock: And we will call that country the United States of America.
> When I got to Uni in Oct 2000, I could use BitchX/IRC on the lab irix machine to use a massive 10 MEGA bit connection to get voyager episodes. Compared with downloading on a 33.6kbit connection over a phone line that cost at least £2.40 (about $5-6 in today's money) that was an amazing experience.
There was some way cheaper ISP offerings about in that time/era. Most ISP's used a local 0845 call charge number, so wasn't that bad, however there was also some 0800 ones.
Was one that in the late 90's offered an 0800 to share holders and could get shares for sub £20 mark, unsure how they did it and indeed didn't last long, was also able to use two accounts to do a bonded line (ISDN). Only downside was it would drop the line every 2 hours, but with me OpenBSD firewall/gateway I setup, easy scripted around. That was my favourite of the dialup era as paid total of sub £40 for unlimited 128kbit internet and oh did I abuse that.
Then in 2000 the cable companies arrived and the start of what I would call real internet, no dialup messing about or charges - if you was lucky to be in the catchment area that is and inside the M25 helped there, though even today there are parts of London inside the M25 that the cable companies don't cover (I know as I found such an address not in there coverage due to cost of laying a cable across the road).
> I do remember one site that allowed me to do download SG1 episodes (about 128kbit, and this was probably cinepak or some form of mpeg1 compression) over a modem, and that was a lifeline.
I know exactly what you mean about TV shows back then and delays. For me southpark was the one that got that ball rolling, initially was realmedia encoded and ironically I watched every single episode almost religiously within an hour of it premiaring in America. Ironic as in 2003 I was in America when a new episode was out and fell asleep just before it came on and with that the first southpark episode I didn't watch within an hour or so of it airing was the only time I could of watched it live.
These days, it's mostly dip into some streaming subscription for a month or two every now and then, flitting around the offerings, munching thru their offerings in that period and comming back to subbing them a year or so later once new things are there to make it worthwhile.
But I'm not sure if it's age or my tastes, the enthusiasm and offerings just don't have me eagerly sitting in anticipation for the next episode or series these days as they did back then. Sure there are the odd gems that do that, but far less so than in the early days and a bit of choice/saturation overload perhaps, though mostly it's a case of many offerings just install a sense of ennui. With that, I would say the only TV show that has had me at the same enthusiasm level, would be the Mandalorian. beyond that, nothing jumps out at me really today and even South Park, I've become apathetic and not seen the last season (or maybe two).
One change though, that I do approve of that many streaming serious releases do. Which is, they release the entire season at once, and that I love as you can keep your momentum going. Albeit you shift you wait from weekly episode releases towards yearly season releases, though that was always been the case.
From The Simpson Wikipedia page: "The Simpsons is an American adult animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company." The sentence links to the "Animated sitcom" page, which states, "An animated sitcom is a subgenre of the sitcom that is animated instead of live action that is geared toward adult audiences in most cases. South Park and The Simpsons are two of the longest running animated sitcoms."
A square is also a rectangle.
This is literally a south park episode when Randy says the n word on wheel of fortune.
But I agree wholeheartedly. Leftism has become a religion at this point. Almost like a pagan religion where pandering priests with political power grant some winey peasant a right to claim something antithetical to democratic societies for an arbitrary reason.
Reminds me of that south park episode with mickey mouse being an evil heartless brute ru(i)nning Disney.
> 6. Time off granted if you join a walk-out for preferred causes like global warming activism.
Oh wow some things just do not change. 20 years ago, South Park did an episode on the Iraq War. The teacher told the students, "in class today we'll be doing 2 hours of math problems, OR you can join the walk out protesting the war." Obviously the kids run out of school celebrating.[0]
[0]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0705933/
The fight scene where RRP forces the other guy to put on the glasses was the inspiration for the cripple fight episode of South Park. And that really is the best thing to come out of the film. Really, it was every bit as shallow and superficial as it seemed. "People I dislike are like evil space aliens". "No, it's YOU GUYS that are the ones like evil space aliens." There was no more depth to it than that.
This all would make an awesome South Park episode
> One aspect of religion I appreciate is that these aspects are well codified and debated – i.e. much more explicit.
In a liberal bubble in an atheist society? I remember the South Park episodes on the prophet, and I remember my countrymen executed for "insulting" the said prophet. At least the "cancel culture" chills some racism.
> If you believe you are not religious, it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to recognize the secular ideology that you have adopted.
You can understand the simple fact that all us humans being shitty doesn't imply that some aren't even shittier? When we say someone is "selfish," it means they are more selfish than a majority of people.
I think South Park has the most thought-provoking take on this: https://www.cc.com/episodes/oki0th/south-park-pinewood-derby-season-13-ep-6
We never had what we have today:
Fast communication about every topic including religion.
Riches like modern houses, a high standard of lifing for a lot (no war in Germany or food shortage for 50? Years).
When Im done with my high paying job Im done and due to me being so small I do question why do I work? For what? What is my goal in my life?
It is our zeitgeist. I have seen much more philosophical life questions asked in tv shows and movies as well.
There was also a very disturbing and hitting closer than expected south park episode were Kyle? Saw everything as shit.
When you could do everything but everything stops mattering what do you do?
I was tricked by the US media to believe that the Danish were looking for online trolls, while instead they were spying us
https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/zi1v0u/south-park-douche-and-a-danish-season-20-ep-5
/s
They should start serving THC gummies instead. No more fights. Then throw on the South Park episode 'I'm a Little Bit Country'.
I used to work in a busy downtown area of the east bay and we used to get a lot of the loud bike with loud stereo rolling through. What other possible motivation could there be for such a thing than wanting the attention? South Park hit the nail on the head with their loud motorcycle episode.
As for the cameras, I’ll echo the sentiments of a sibling comment. You don’t want them. I lived in AZ in the mid 00’s when these things were everywhere. They mostly serve to disrupt the natural flow of traffic and caused people to make dangerous sudden stops when they should have proceeded through a yellow lights. Also, many are operated by third parties who take a cut and charge a fee to run them. If they fail to produce enough revenue they become a financial liability to the city, which will either monkey with signal time to increase ticket revenue or simply remove the camera.
There was a documentary[1][2] about this process.
[1] https://youtu.be/Ug5jVUv5V_A
[2] actually a South Park episode. NSFW
That fish sticks episode of South Park is so good. Can't wait to watch it with my grandkids and admire the puzzlement in their faces.
I've been debating with my friends about the Simpsons vs Family Guy/South Park. And while Family Guy/South Park definitely have their merits, the Simpsons is just in a different league. There's a great roundtable^[1] of Simpsons writers hosted by Conan O'Brien (who also was a writer). They talk about how with the Simpsons, no matter what, the family fundamentally cares about each other. Whereas with more modern animation and comedy as a whole, there's this extremely misanthropic feel. Bob's Burgers is probably one of the few shows that actively bucks this trend.
Of course The Simpsons is also just really funny. Family Guy/South Park are too, although I find that Family Guy resorts to shock humor far too much and South Park often repeats the same joke for the entire episode ad nauseum.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtJ28qOEG1g
If you haven’t seen the Impossible Burger episode of South Park yet I think you’d enjoy it.
"If you change words because some might feel offended, it will never stop. "
Well, since we are evolving our culture our changing of words hopefully never stops. Languge is an ongoing process and much of our language was shaped in a patriarchal, racist and sexist environment, that existed for centuries if not millenias.
Now I might say, we advanced from that, so there are necessary language changes happening.
That much energy is wasted in that regard, I very much agree. And I'd like some sanity back in the debate.
I am also not sure about the black/white thing.
(ah btw. some racist indeed favor the blond over black haired people, which gave ways to a antinazi joke:
The Arier: Blond like Hitler, thin like Göring and tall like Himmler.)
But I am "white", so I am not sure if I can judge about about a black skinned persons feelings about the matter or just ignore them.
But that the very color linked to race scheme is stupid in the first place and that this should be the thing fighting against, I would agree.
There was a south park episode about that, Cartman hit the black kid (just out of being an asshole with anger problems). And the school was about to punish him as usual, but no, because he was black it was a hate crime and the higher institutions got involved, with big fuss and lots of saying black.
So I think Stan in the end said: if you treat people different because of their skin color, it means they are different. So it reinforces the race thinking.
So I do agree: when I see a blacklist, I never would associate that with a person. I just try to be a bit sensitive of people who do. Which yes, it is hard to draw the line.
Remember that episode of South Park where leaders of the world gave Canada coupons and the prime minister said it was a win?
Note that this ending was banned, and you'll have to do some search before you find it.
When HBO Max started streaming South Park they just skipped these problematic episodes now called "200" and "201" respectively, and I also believe the "Super Best Friends" episode where Mohammed is pictured (but portrayed as a powerful just power).
South park did an episode on that mentality where cartman helped minority kids in an inner city school graduate.
> I was going to make a blockchain joke, but it was already in the linked discussion.
I see what you did there. Nice.
Also, I had to look up "underpants gnome". For the other three of you who don't know what these are they feature in an early episode of South Park (which I thought I'd seen all of, but no). They steal underpants and use them to profit. Turns out they're also the originators of the "1. Something, 2. Something else, 3. ?????, 4. PROFIT!" meme that I've seen posted for the last 20 years, particularly on Slashdot in the early noughties, but never known where it came from.
Not something I expected to learn via HN but I suppose we are living in unusual times.
South Park's Band In China episode had this exactly right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_in_China
Earlier last year when people were joking about Apple not showing iPhones getting broken in their shows on Apple TV, the less talked about but much more alarming bit was their comment about China.
"Today’s report also claims that Eddy Cue has told Apple TV+ leadership that “the two things we will never do are hard-core nudity and China,” referring to potentially angering China with any of its original TV shows or movies."
https://9to5mac.com/2020/12/13/apple-tv-plus-gawker-show/
Does this mean no news on Apple TV? That soft-censorship for corporate economic interest reasons will allow the CCP to do terrible things because companies are incentivized to ignore it/suppress speech around it?
Apple also capitulates to the CCP, allowing them to host iCloud on CCP servers in country. They also remove the Taiwanese flag from Chinese iPhones, and remove podcast apps/content from China.
On one side you could argue this inter-economic dependence lowers the likelihood of war. It is not without an ethical cost though. Is genocide an acceptable cost for stability and compromising your principles? Is access to the Chinese market worth that?
https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
The outcome of the South Park episode:
"In response to the episode's criticism of the Chinese government, South Park has been entirely banned in China, including on its streaming services and social media platforms.
In October 2019, insiders told Bloomberg that Apple, which has a significant portion of its users and manufacturers in China, was reportedly unlikely to bid for the streaming rights of the series due to the China ban."
I can't see the comment you replied to but I assume it was about the US. If so, I'd recommend the South Park episode about the US's genius innovation of having its cake and eating it, too :)
The South Park Naggers episode was from 2007. I don't believe any network on TV would dare greenlight that episode today.
I really hope the South Park creators run with this one. The episode about Metallica and Lars fighting Napster is one of my favorites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Rock_Hard
Not a big deal?!?!
Ha! My dad, to this day, makes Alan Ford references on a regular basis. I'm pretty sure he even used to make those same references when talking to his native British colleagues, using them to describe life in the former Yugoslavia & assuming they'd read the same comics as kids.
What's funny is that at one point, I realised I reference random episodes of South Park in conversation in exactly the same way (to people who mostly have no idea what I'm talking about). Those comics must have been pretty on point.
This is literally an episode of south park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_the_Neighborhood
There’s a south park episode about this :)
I wouldn't quite say that. The US imports virtually no live-action series or films from foreign language countries, and relatively little even from other English-speaking countries. So we extrapolate the tastes of the entire country from what is a relatively small market share.
Imagine trying to judge US culture solely on the basis of shows like The Simpsons, Futurama, and South Park. These aren't low-quality shows, but they're also nowhere near fully reflective of the entertainment that people consume in the US.
Reminds me of the lawsuit brought against South Park by Brownmark Films over the recreation of their infamous video, also done in a faithful “side by side” manner. Interesting that the courts decided the opposite in that case.
For myself at least where I live, they tend to be targeted at older men and women trying to reconnect with religion when they're vulnerable around the midlife crisis age. Most "religious right" are purely single choice voters that just happen to care about money the exact same way a libertarian would. The only difference is they think a God divinely gods them as opposed to an atheist who does not.
Almost all of these books are written by a lay person who basically parrots back interpretations or speeches from bishops, preachers, etc. They literally add no value to the system. They just milk an audience to be frank. You wouldn't read "The simple of of not giving a Fuck" would you? Likewise now, if you say on the title "Turning the other cheek" and put a picture of Jesus walking with a child on a beach and now you've got 99.99% of the christian self help books.
The funniest thing that comes to mind is it's no different than the South Park episode "Christian Rock Hard" where Cartman starts a christian rock band. All he does is rewrite already made songs but add some christianic sayings or phrases. That is entirely that industry. They don't tell you anything new or something you can't just search on some forums anymore.
I struggle with this too, but one example that comes immediately to mind is the whole failed war on drugs thing and DARE program in the US.
Like, is it true that consuming cannabis can lead to being complacent in life and prevent you from achieving your full potential? Yes, but it isn't universally the case at all. Is it true that it is best to avoid cannabis usage in your teen years? Arguably yes. Is it more harmful than alcohol? Doubtful.
So this argument comes again, do we tell them the truth or do we try to get short-term results by telling half truths (and outright lies) to convince teens not to use cannabis? Well, we know the approach the US took back then, and it didn't end up working out well at all. Because once teens tried it and found out that 90% of the things about cannabis that were told to them were a lie, the trust was gone. By that point, they were less likely to believe even full truths about harder drugs, which could have way more destructive potential.
I agree though, it is a delicate balance to manage, and in some cases this gets really tricky. But imo, I think long-term-focused approaches are what builds up trust over time and leads to the best possible outcomes in most cases.
P.S. To make it clear, in case my post was too convoluted. I do think that War on Drugs was a failure, I believe that cannabis should be legal, but I also believe that we should have an honest conversation about it, without resorting to either "this will ruin your life after one puff and make you an addict" or "it is a miracle drug that will make your life amazing and cure your cancer".
P.P.S. Ironically enough, I think that the South Park episode on medical cannabis handled it super well, that whole talk Randy gave to his son Stan. TLDR of it was that Randy said that cannabis won't ruin your life, neither will it turn you into a drug addict. But cannabis makes you feel satisfied and fine with being bored, and being bored is when you should be learning new skills or improving yourself. So it is a delicate balance, and if you consume, you should be mindful of that. As long as you aren't using cannabis as a substitute for doing things you should be doing (aka consume responsibly and in moderation), you will be fine.
This is where the Tennessee Ernie Ford song comes from, "Sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't call me cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store."
There was an episode of South Park last season where they played this song as a backdrop to Amazon workers in a warehouse.
> Predates so-called "Streisand Effect"
DeCSS was released in 1999; Mecha Streisand episode of South Park was 1998.
Until very recently, I thought they wrote all the episodes without outside involvement, but then I recently came across this clip where Bill Hader talks about being part of a "South Park retreat" where they bring people to brainstorm episodes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdZnGz9CWpU
Trey Parker is credited as the writer for the vast majority of episodes of South Park, especially since Season 4. Most of their episodes are topical these days, I recommend checking out the recent Pandemic Special.
Matt, Trey and a guy named Robert Lopez wrote the theatre production Book of Mormon, which was well received and won Tony awards (Trey studied Musical Theatre in College, which explains why the South Park Movie was a musical).
Trey's daughter was cast as Jared Kushner in Sassy Justice, which was hilarious, and the lead in Sassy Justice is played by Peter Serafinowicz [0], who is a British comedian!
I hope they make more of these, not just because I'm a fan, but because it massively disseminates the power of deepfakes!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-7NDP8V-6A
Trey Parker had a similar reaction [0]:
“But when Parker got to see himself digitally altered to look like Al Gore, he said, “It was the first time I had laughed at myself in a long time.”
Parker added: “I always hate watching myself. Even with ‘South Park,’ I have a perfect image of what it’s going to look like in my head all the time. But on this, there were moments where we felt like kids in our basement again.”
To Parker and Stone, the experience also reminded them of “The Spirit of Christmas,” their 1995 homemade short film that became a viral sensation in a more primitive age of the internet and paved the way for “South Park.””
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/arts/television/sassy-justice-south-park-deepfake.html
1998 sounded much more reasonable to me than 2003. But that is because, I for some reason thought that the streissand effect came to be following the Mecha Streissand episode of South Park
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecha-Streisand
Based on what? Regional monopolies such as cable ones led my comcast are widely considered the most hated companies in existence so much so that south park even made an episode about it.
I'd consider it insightful, if for no other reason than that they are able to articulate -- and often the first to do so to a large audience -- a lot of the ridiculousness in life that most of us habitually ignore, or minimize.
A lot of folks object to the characters they write, or the cheapness of the animation, but I don't think that South Park would be the success it is without either of those things. It's crudeness attracts a lot of the counterculture types unafraid to go against mores, who I think are naturally more receptive to a given episode's themes.
Stone + Parker have made it very clear that most episodes start out as a joke. But then, so do most comedians' routines. And comedians almost never need or want to explain the nature or thought process behind their jokes, because all that reasoning is encoded within the joke itself. That is part of why I think they are so insightful -- that they can form elegant, meaningful commentary on previously untouchable subject matter, using such crude tools, and get away with it. For 20 years and counting.
Who else can do that? George Carlin, and I'd maybe add Stephen Colbert and Dave Chapelle if their careers as political or social satirists hadn't effectively ended the way they did. In any case that's a pretty small club to be a part of.
Not every episode should be held to such lofty standards, of course, and I am definitely not enjoying it as much as before they started serializing everything. But overall the show has given me words and a perspective to start to think about dozens of social and cultural issues long before they came up elsewhere in my life.
Well almost every central bit in South Park surrounds a concept others won't touch, or at least, not in the manner SP will.
+ Mickey Mouse as a totalitarian fascist? You couldn't breathe this outside of a writers room, anywhere, and yet, it's something that probably a lot of people, even within the industry, absolutely love.
+ Walmart as a cultural monster, devouring society? Possibly not an unpopular idea, but definitely not one that anyone can do, because Walmart represents too much advertising power. Many of us hate Walmart, so where's the Walmart skits on SNL? There are none, because they're shills. SNL literally exists to sell Walmart ads.
+ Very simple articulation of how China is able to suppress and censor American businesses? Nobody in entertainment will touch this. Hollywood exists to sell films, and China will eventually be their biggest market.
+ Insufferable WholeFoods/hipster gentrification culture?
+ Jesus snorting cocaine, depictions of Mohamed?
+ Wrestlers as posing, effect actors, ultra authoritarian 'PC Bro' culture, Japanese businessmen deferring to the 'large penises' of American businessmen for social favour, a 'Token' Black character ...
Most of it is completely inane obviously, but the whole thing exists to satire/make light commonly accepted norms with insufferable artifacts, or to give air to the the issues nobody can talk about. That's what makes it funny.
'Man Bear Pig' was probably wrong and not in a good way, so they did another show about it ... which is great ... but really who cares? It was funny at the time.
We cannot expect any actor (human or otherwise) to act against their own best interest. Google/Youtube, an entity with incentives, will act to maximize it's share of your time spent with them - it cannot function any other way, lest a competitor does that job better and they are destroyed/bought. We can wish for the underlying dynamics to be different, but they are what they are. All of society is currently lost in hopeless battles, fighting the "tides" - in this case underlying incentive structures.
You can wish for legislation to save you from your outrage - to shatter these companies into little pieces. But legislation doesn't change underlying incentives. In fact, legislation nearly universally distorts incentives further from what you wish them to be. For example, in this case, fear of legislative action against "Big Tech" having too much power/influence/misinformation-potential, is likely the underlying cause for their inclination toward censorship.
The classic Walmart South Park episode is a nice visual syllogism for this idea.
I offer no solutions at the level of "society", but at the individual level I offer you to consider that "outrage" is a waste of your time and your emotion. Easier said than done, I know.
>> The absolute worst part being a false positive activation of my Sonos system while watching a movie/show.
South Park, being; well, South Park - actually did an episode taking advantage of this and trolling thousands of viewers:
https://mashable.com/2017/09/14/south-park-alexa-google-home-nsfw-cartman/
(not really SFW content, strong language)
This is literally an episode from South Park to happen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_Not_Yelping
What stops these "watchdog" users from abusing their power?
But will it have the new South Park episode tonight?
> that famous South Park episode about Kanye misinterpreting them as "fish dicks"
It was the other way around in that episode. Kanye was not understanding the joke, and people kept teasing him for it, until finally he decided to accept his destiny as he saw it from what everyone was saying and he moved into the sea to live with the fishes.
Anyway :p
> but who does eat them? Is it a geographical thing, or class thing?
Fish sticks are definitely popular here in Norway, and you can find them in pretty much every grocery store, in the frozen food department.
Wow. I'm from New York, and have never once in my life even seen a fish stick, much less eaten one, and I went to public schools my entire education until college.
The only reason I've ever even heard of them in the first place was that famous South Park episode about Kanye misinterpreting them as "fish dicks".
So this is fascinating to me... but who does eat them? Is it a geographical thing, or class thing?
The toxicity of social media is that it plays into the darkness of our cognitive process and hightens tribalistic thinking. And in the article about social media, instead of recognizing this, the author chooses to use social media as a jump off point to pseudo intellectually glorify his tribe while bemoaning the oposite tribe. It's re-hashed fox/cnn with longer words. As someone who is non-affiliate to either tribe and finds the tribalism silly, the conceited sound of the article is jarring. I'm pretty sure the inspiration for South Park's smug alert episode was based on people who write this stuff.
The author talks about the good of social media as such:
> street uprising of the late spring felt like its joyous opposite—a future in which platforms were responding to and being structured by the events on the ground, rather than those events being structured by and shaped to the demands of the platforms. This was something worth our time and devotion... As people in the streets toppled statues and fought police...
And talks about the perils and evils of social media as such:
> promoting people who exist only to be explained to, people to whom the world has been created anew every morning, people for whom every settled sociological, scientific, and political argument of modernity must be rehashed, rewritten, and re-accounted, this time with their participation. These people, with their just-asking questions and vapid open letters, are dullards and bores, pettifoggers and casuists, cowards and dissemblers... That we get some kind of fulfillment from tedious debates about “free speech” and “cancel culture.” ... why not spend a few decades of it with a couple New York Times op-ed columnists, rebuilding all of Western thought from first principles?
What amazes me is that all those super meta "patterns" are already embedded in GPT-3's giant model. As compared to GPT-2, where you'd need to have your own large dataset to fine-tune for a specific use case/ the pattern you want to support. For instance, we fine-tuned GPT-2 against all episodes of South Park's scripts, and it took a long time to fine-tune. It kinda succeeded generating a model that "speaks south park" with pretty decent character alignment. (https://www.soulreplica.com/brodown). I'm wondering if GPT-3 can achieve the same effect with just a few lines of South Park script? Does GPT-3 already know how Cartman usually talks?
Seriously! The worst! The South Park episode that makes fun of this group is hilarious.
I swear I once saw a special encoder format built specifically for compressing south park episodes, but I've never been able to find it again.
If anything, it seems more like spycraft for Chinese culture and influence to penetrate the U.S.:
American Basketball vs. Chinese Hardball: Guess Who Won https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/world/asia/china-nba-censorship.html
NBA Stars Study Hollywood’s Playbook in China https://www.wsj.com/articles/nba-stars-study-hollywoods-playbook-in-china-11570852864
NBA, 'South Park' episodes spotlight Hollywood's China dilemma https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-hollywood/nba-south-park-episodes-spotlight-hollywoods-china-dilemma-idUSKBN1WP1BJ
‘South Park’ creators issue mocking ‘apology’ after China reportedly bans sitcom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1KCVj_v0ik
Band in China https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s23e02-band-in-china
I keep thinking that this has to be the perfect topic for a South Park episode. It has all the right elements: changing social norms, ultra-passionate groups on both sides, a silent majority who are indifferent, and ultimately the issue and stakes are small potatoes compared to what else is going on in the world. The episode pretty much writes itself!
They do not poke fun at everyone who tries to do anything. They poke fun at self-important people who have latched onto progressive ideologies once they can gain something from it. They poke fun at crowd madness. They poke fun at hypocrites. The comment was a response to the perfect case in point: Caitlyn Jenner. The public face of trans women and 'Woman of the year', who didn't even believe in gay marriage.
The average South Park episode has Cartman representing the extreme of some issue, and the issue is mocked. But there will also be a foil, possibly Butters or Stan, who represents the core of the issue, ignoring the hyperbole surrounding it. This character is the one who succeeds.
What did he add to the song that wasn’t in the movie? I didn’t catch anything “new”, except that they left out the “it’s not even a real country anyway”
But I agree that the joke of almost every South Park joke is not what they say, but who says it.
> On Wednesday, all 23 seasons of South Park come to HBO Max.
HBO is censoring 5 episodes
https://www.ign.com/articles/south-park-hbo-max-muhammad-censored-banned-streaming
South Park had an episode where it was revealed that Dick Cheney and other Bush II administration officials were behind a conspiracy to promote 9/11 inside job conspiracy theories in order to convince the world they were actually competent enough to pull such a thing off.
Games have already had enormous educational impact and that satisfying to use tools can help pull us towards a better understand of a thing is well known.
The list of games with widespread educational impact of some sort is already much larger than most people think. As is usually the observation when edutainment of any sort is written about, the point is really that there are many important fields of education excluded from this revolution. Part of that is probably that the cross section of people that are interested in making a game and those who understand the topic well enough to start with is often not large. Persisting cultural relevance for your creation is very rare, which can be crushing. That a game like Snake Pass exists exposing more people to the uniqueness of snake movement is a near miracle.
Games aren't currently categorized by what a player can learn from them, just as movies rarely are. Sometimes even putting into words what you came away with after an experience is difficult, but you know your perspective on yourself or the world changed in some way. Check any of the movie or game storefronts and see if they have any comprehensive sections to let you filter by what people thought they learned from them. Valve is the most well positioned to implement something like this through Steam, because they rapidly iterate with experiments and have a strong variety of games available with an engaged audience willing to do the tasks necessary.
At the moment, you have to guess what you might learn based on the genre or first impressions. Even still, the ratings for a product aren't there to rate educational value and the time played doesn't tell you how long you have to spend in the game to get that learning experience. You can have a 1-2 star game teach you something priceless, while a 5 star game is a nearly vapid lifeless husk of manipulation. Stores like Steam almost need a completely separate perspective view with its own ratings, own tags and own reviews to make these aspects of games more discoverable. There are people that would be more than thrilled to populate that information in good faith.
I think there are hidden riches waiting to be described when people are encouraged to explain to others what it was that they learned rather than what bugs they encountered or whether the production quality was bad and changes like that could over time apply meaningful pressure to add more important educational moments into their games for measurable marketing value.
Being father's day, it wasn't that long ago that my dad was reminiscing about old TV shows where every episode tried to deliver some moral education. How hard is it to find those old episodes categorized by what it tried to teach? Seinfeld was also saturated with educational value through a bevy of unique situations. South Park is probably more educational than Big Bang Theory, because oddly enough I see BBT as more of a facade.
In short, it's not only the standard academic teachings that are underserved or have poor discoverability in all media and I do think continuing to neglect the explicit identification of this value as newer generations pass up old media of all types will have a cascading cost that will impact generations of families.
The side effect is that there will be some educational value that will be polarizing, like inauthentic diversity education that could become an avoid flag for many (for both good and bad reasons). That could be a good thing if it pressures political activism in media to be less overt in order to have more widespread subtle impact without preaching to people louder than the art itself is able to genuinely speak.
There are exciting times ahead and I'm optimistic of the many educational avenues that will be opening up as people wake up to how they learn over the course of their lifetime, be it calculus or empathy.
I feel like living in a big South Park episode.
My Pi 3B is a media server right now. I have it hooked up through HDMI, converted to composite, and run to my Commodore 1702 so I can watch cartoons. It has probably around 80GB of movies and another 80GB of music, 10GB of books, and a couple gigs of pictures on a partition of a hard drive that's hooked up via a SATA bay. Over the years it's been an IRC server, a Tor webserver, an emulation station, and a backup computer to watch South Park after my old one died.
What you describe is actually a very common thing, there's a very intelligent South Park episode on this.
When I hear new music I try to understand what's good about it, in the end if younger people enjoys it there's a reason. Doing so helps me to stay connected with where new trends are going, which is kinda useful.
Sorry, I was kinda trolling.
I don't get out much but it doesn't seem likely to me that internal civil strife will actually break out in widespread violence. Who would fight whom, and to what end? A lot of us are mad at each other, sure, but we don't really want to shoot each other. South Park did a whole episode on it.
To my dear American, Let's watch South Park episodes 200 and 201.
Streaming/Purchase options are displayed for most movie/tv shows in Google but I've noticed not a lot of streaming platforms (Including Amazon Prime) get featured in them.
For example, search "watch south park online" - South Park is available on both Netflix and Amazon, surely you want to try and have high visibility in this space? I believe it's because they are supplying a non-indexed URL (it's canonicalised towards another URL) in the structured data but I could be wrong, I've included more details in the blog post
Erm... wasn't that South Park episode explicitly about San Francisco, not Hollywood?
“the type of person who can build frontends for Google AdWords doesn’t have the skills necessary to do something better and should be content providing a service and taking care of their family” is one of the most condescending things I’ve read in a long time. Even for hacker news.
You ever watch that South Park episode where they make fun of Hollywood where all the actors love the smell of their own farts? These days I feel that this is a pretty apt of a criticism of SV and Bay Area culture..
>I explained to her that these kinds of movies can’t be made anymore because too many people would be outraged.
I don't get this attitude. I think movies like this aren't made any more because they wouldn't be original or worth making. They wouldn't be commercially viable. Outrage is only going to come from a minority, and everyone else just won't care.
I think we have so far passed the degree of shock that people don't even notice any more.
Borat, South Park, Tropic Thunder, Shameless, The Boondocks, examples are easy to find and I don't even care for this flavor of humor.
I guess these examples are mostly from several years ago or more, but I have been hearing "these kinds of movies can't be made anymore" for the last 20 years.
The Public Square was much better served by forums and BBSs that came before them. Now that corporations have taken over the Public Square, they have become beholden to those who complain the most. Amazingly, South Park predicted a lot of this with their Cartoon Wars episode[1] in that bowing to pressure from one group, means bowing to pressure from all Groups.
Previously the web was thousands of independent forums and sites with their own rules. They were small enough and diffuse enough that you couldn't bring a large amount of pressure to force a forum or site to change. Now, everything is owned by a small number of companies that this is a feasible approach to silencing opponents.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_I
> If you’ve ever seen the WOW episode of South Park he was the elite guy they were trying to stop.
The only thing that guy was missing was an ergonomic keyboard and trackball mouse.
It's of course a reference to Dune but given the fact that the episode with this joke aired just days ago, there's quite a chance that OP was making a reference to South Park's "spice melange" (shit)
"The Spice Melange" is a reference to the last episode of south park. Season 23, Episode 8 - "Turd Burglars"
Immediately these bits made me think of the "San Francisco smug" South Park episode
Yes, it certainly is a good decision. For example, if we had no protections like customs China would easily subsidize any market they wish to gain monopoly of the market in question.
This is happening even WITH protectionism like customs and tolls. Chinas government subsidize stuff like steel production which makes it hard for companies like SSAB in Sweden to compete with them since they sell their steel cheaper than the cost to produce it.
How shall countries protect themselves from countries that act like that without protecting their market? It's extremely naive to think that countries that are rough dictatorships will play fair and nice.
EU should have A LOT higher customs against countries like China. Trading with them on a fair level gives them too much economic control which is good for us in the short term but incredibly bad in the long term.
That is why south park can make an episode like "Band in China" today because we have already given them a lot of control.
This reminds me of the cat urine South Park episode : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GIiOsuDRFk
I don't know why...
Sorry ya without context, I don't suppose my comment made sense.
I grew up in Idaho and went through a couple of recessions. Most of the TV/movies from that time like Family Ties and Ferris Bueller's Day Off portray it as prosperous, but it was really more like South Park.
My dad practiced dentistry for many years but due to some house fires and other setbacks, we didn't have money until I was about 15. So I grew up eating a lot of lamb, deer, elk, farm fresh eggs, etc that he got when he traded out dental work because nobody had much money.
So what I was trying to say is, real prosperity to me would look more like if the 80s and 90s had continued so the US still had its manufacturing base today. A bit more like how Germany has prospered.
Instead we have the appearance for prosperity for most, but the bottom income half of the US is really struggling right now with multiple jobs, high debts, and not nearly as strong of a social safety net as we had then. So I question why that is necessary when some people are doing so phenomenally well. To me, America lost its way after the dot bomb around 2000 and never really recovered. Maybe I'm reaching though, if I'm seeing conspiracies just because we can't find a discontinued connector, which I fully admit haha.
Well, of course - these are 'Blockbuster' films, designed with high budgets, like AAA games - they need to be guaranteed to make back a significant investment made into something with such high production values.
South Park recently lambasted this in S26E02, 'Band in China,' where we saw a host of characters on their way to China - part of a group the series was lambasting on selling out to China with regards to censorship. The characters had been 'selling out' to expand their financial markets to China.
A film usually needs to make back twice its budget in order to be deemed a 'financial success.' If that film has a budget of $80-180mil, the execs are going to want it to fly with the lowest common denominator. If it happens to actually say something as well, and become critically-acclaimed, such as Joker, or the Dark Knight, well, that's an exception.
tl;dr: High budget superhero action films need to be guaranteed to make their budget back. They are made to hit the lowest common denominator and sell tickets. If they happen to be brilliant they are an outlier to the rule.
The South Park gnome episode comes to mind. For values of:
1 - Demonstrate growth
2 - ?
3 - Profit
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)#/media/File%3AGnomes_plan.png
Who knew it was a billion dollar business model?
The newest South Park episode talked about this. An irony of Incredible Meat mixed it.
I also think as knowledge spreads surrounding broader ecosystems and micro-nutrient balance in the food we grow (animal and plant) and how they are needed together and work better together, the perception will eventually change.
Unfortunately overcoming years of marketing and influence peddling in the government is hard to overcome. Look how long it took to overcome the disinformation on fats and dietary cholesterol, and it still persists to this day. People are still afraid to eat too much salt, fat, cholesterol.
At the same time, look at how many people think it's fine to consume over 100g of sugars a day (mostly refined). It's kind of nuts when you think about it.
I agree, there are lots of responsible and ecosystem driven farms practices out there, it's just hard to convince a lot of people about the value. Aside: I did love the most recent South Park episode, Cartman's apology on processed (vegan) foods was hilarious.
Thank you.
This whole thread reminds me of the early South Park episode where all the Catholic diocese...s? meet to figure out how to stop getting caught molesting children.
You could stop molesting children. That would definitely work.
Like editorial cartoons have done for over a century, changing the context lets the viewer observe whether their surface beliefs are consistent with their intuitions and principles.
I tend to find the degree of depth in South Park is entirely a function of whether you agree with their editorial position and/or whether you've already engaged with that line of thinking elsewhere. (And like every TV show ever, some episodes are good, some are stinkers.)
The NBA literally just went through this 3 days prior. South Park literally released an episode satirizing this exact scenario 2 days prior.
It's definitely prior knowledge. They either didn't care or are grossly incompetent.
South Park Studios and Comedy Central are having a great week.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't one of the biggest episodes in South Park history. And certainly the most viewed episode in China, haha.
Yup we watched the episode last night. I hadn't watched South Park since college. It was a great episode.
It's free to watch here: https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s23e02-band-in-china
Ditto South Park. By telling people they cannot watch South Park, they have guaranteed everyone will want to watch that episode.
That's the lesson Dolores Umbridge inadvertently taught us in Harry Potter # 5.
Semi-related: China completely erased all South Park mentions and media from its internet properties because of their “Band in China” episode. Which of course made me watch it. Highly recommended.
write a post where those camps aren't just brought up as a blatant attempt to steer the discussion into a convenient direction and are on topic, then get it onto HN front page. might want to ask South Park for an episode about them, you'll have an easier time.
South Park episode and NBA fiasco made it possible for the public to be grateful for the move.
Or maybe it was planned to happen before another round of negotiations and the timing is a... coincidence? Hard to believe in these anymore.
This got me to watch some South Park. I was at least few seasons behind. The show is still interesting and has some strong episodes.
Episode "Dead Kids" for example (about school shootings) is amazing, and its ending is absolutely brutal. I know it will stay with me for years.
https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s22e01-dead-kids
Don’t forget the well placed South Park episode to pour more gas on the fire.
South Park made the best analysis of this :) cf the last episode
Did anyone else watch the recent South Park episode? I think it illuminates this matter rather nicely.
There's also South Park being banned in China because of an episode that depicted the way everyone tries to please the Chinese government. Oh the irony.
Every artist that cares about mass market appeal has to self-censor, lest they not offend a large market segment.
That is the point this episode of South Park very deliberately avoids talking about.
Nobody's stopping them from creating art. Really is, unfortunately, putting constraints on which kind of art is going to get bankrolled by millions of dollars of say, Hollywood money.
Those constraints have always been there, and will always be there.
Want free speech? Don't ask for other people's money... They may have opinions about what you should say, using it.
I don't know, I think they pretty much offend everyone poignantly. At such a level I find it hard that a brand, especially these days, wouldn't be scared to be affiliated with them. To their credit, yes, they tend to offend both sides of an issue in a rather honest way. There's a good reason they got a liberal award. They play middle fence pretty damn well... so well the group giving the award didn't know they were republicans.
Still, they do specifically call out groups. I can't think of any that are actually safe or get a pass. I mean, they rag on Christianity and Judaism all the time. Then they do an episode harpooning and calling out atheists & Dawkins for being a bunch of assholes and make the case that religion isn't so bad.
I don't know if we'll ever see another South Park. Tight turn around times on episodes so their content is fresh and relevant. Best example of balanced opinion thus far... as a show where kids swearing and making fart jokes are the tame/mild highlights of the episodes... It's just... I think it's a straight up anomaly, not simply a unique situation. Seinfeld being as long running, successful and "sophisticated" show, that was unique. South Park said "hold my beer" to that and then shits in your hand just to get laughed at by a fat kid with an alien dish satellite popping out of his ass. And we are all okay with it!
> Calling our rights "privilege" is throwing out the struggle and sacrifice of everyone that fought for those rights.
Next South Park should do an episode that shows how greedy western leaders running opium/heroin for the better part of now two centuries, turned the most populous country into a paranoid dictatorial hellhole for the Chinese people.
US introspection would be too on the nose?
You ever ask yourself what percentage of the heroin/opium supply would be pulled off the market if China could extradite people from HK? More than 50%... and who gets hurt by that?
He might be talking about the one Season 5 episode and Episode 200.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/200_(South_Park) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Best_Friends
I happen to think it's a net negative.
It had considerable part in setting back efforts to deal with climate change.
They did a mea culpa, but still, I can't tell you how annoyed I was in college with the amount of people who would challenge the idea of climate change just because they watched a South Park episode.
I see that American businesses play double standard here. In the USA, sport teams and entertainment businesses are the loudest when it comes to free speech and civil rights, LGBT rights. But they will bend over for CCP money instead of standing for the same causes. I have yet to see ANY business roll the freedom drum and make a stand about human rights when it comes to the violations in China. It’s sad that a recent South Park episode is exactly the reality here and not a satire.
Probably a play on the recent Band in China South Park episode.
All the other stuff doesn't matter I guess (nba, hollywood, apple, blizzard, etc)? But since techies love south park for some reason we suddenly care? HN are full of hypocrites. In any case, I need to go rewatch the episode with chinese translations. Watched it on hulu and CC didn't show for the chinese speaking parts :( .
The way South Park employs xenophobic/racist/sexist tropes is interesting - they are either so silly that its really hard for anyone to take offense, or they spread it around so much - no one group is ever singled out - and no one group is ever spared. That gives us all permission to laugh at them, and laugh at ourselves, when the time comes.
Or... the portrayal isn't actually targeting group of the character embodying the trope. It's targeting those that hold such tropes, in a way that exposes the absurdity of them.
There was a movie few years ago, Tropic Thunder. Robert Downy Jr is in black-face the entire movie, and it's hilarious - and somehow he isn't cancelled. Why? His character in the movie is a white, self-serious method actor (he stays in character all the time), who had medical treatments to alter the pigment of his skin in order to portray the African-American lead in a movie. And his depiction is one giant super charged trope. But the actual butt of the joke isn't black people - its actually the pretentious actors and Hollywood in general. In essence, its making a statement about the absurdity, self-importance, actors, studios, etc in Hollywood, and the lack of the social justice and equality there.
South Park wields "*ist" tropes in a similar way, and I think its incorrect to think of it as racism, or xenophobia, etc.
In South Park, there's one black character in the cast, and his name is Token. As in the token black kid. Out of context, and on its face, it might seem racist. But its saying something else, just like RDJ's role in Tropic Thunder.
EDIT: After writing this I realized the parent comment was talking about an episode of South Park from S12, not the recent episode that led to the ban in China. I'll leave this up but read into this with that context!
You should really actually watch the episode. It's a blatant dig at China's government, censorship policies, and treatment of political prisoners. Its treatment of `China invading the US` were not out of `paranoia`, as you say, but based out of reality. It attacks Disney for making similar concessions to the Chinese government in its MCU movies.
Spoilers, but deeper analysis:
Randy's story arc this season appears to revolve around surrendering your morals for the next dollar- for example, last season he turned down a deal with a large marijuana corporation to continue his home-grow operation, but proceeded to create a partnership with them in the season premiere to ensure his stake in South Park's weed market. The scene where he garrotes Winnie the Pooh in this episode, to me, is an extension of this same theme- the sellout of what we've taken as sacred, except now, it's to China's CCP. Contrast that to the name of Randy's farm, which is a bastardization of the word `integrity`.
The entire segment about the band biopic in this episode is basically saying the same thing but far more overtly.
Slight tangent: A previous episode of South Park (Super Best Friends) also showed a picture of Muhammad [1], which caused zero problems. A later one (Cartoon Wars) had Muhammad censored by Comedy Central because it was after the furore over the Dutch Muhammad cartoons.
I guess with all these things it’s about context and the political climate.
[1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjJmMTUzOGEtYjEyNS00MDJiLTlkZGQtMThhYWE3NjE3YjkzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyODQxOTQ3OTU@._V1_.jpg
I wonder if they were aware of the controversial nature of the episode. I’d bet really money, though, Viacom et. al. wouldn’t hesitate for a second to censor South Park if it starts hurting their bottom line.
They own South Park outright because when it first aired people thought it would flop so they got 100% of the rights to the show.
Hell they even had the episode where they said “shit” uncensored and kept a counter for every time they said it.
If there’s any show that really can do whatever it wants, it’s South Park.
The two episodes about Muhammad are actually censored in France and are not present in the DVD sold in France:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park#Épisodes_censurés_en_France
South Park is spot on this season. You could say they are good with predictions, but I think they just gave different perspective to something that already has been happening (episodes on China censorship)
What’s kinda funny is how made fun of China was in past South Park episodes[0] and China didn’t care at all about the show, but last week’s episode was the one that set them off.
[0] “The China Probrem”: https://images.app.goo.gl/mDqxY6pSuNHtA66M8
I've paused to really think about this -- I think you may be taking the show very literally when it's not meant to be taken that seriously.
It does often have that surface-level message: Good people will always prevail, evil is a necessary part of the status quo, etc. But that's always part of the joke.
I don't think anyone leaves South Park episodes thinking "wow that is so true" and having introspective thoughts about our country. It's more like "what the fuck did I just watch" and "that's about right," dismissive of the average American lifestyle or unhappy with the problems we often face.
I'll keep that in mind though. Interesting perspective.
It's not particularly this episode and it's not banned. You can't watch any South Park episode on South Park Studio in France because the streaming rights for the country have been sold to another company.
>deleting virtually every clip, episode
BS, every Chinese pirate streaming service I checked still has full South Park catalog.
That's not really the situation about South Park, Netflix chose to not make those episodes not available, there is no censorship from the CSA. Nerflix claim that those episodes were censored originally was false as those were broadcasted on Gameone. The only thing that happened then is that the channel got a warning that (for 2 of those) the episodes should have been broadcasted after 22 and rated +12 due to the content.
https://information.tv5monde.com/info/netflix-zappe-des-episodes-de-south-park-en-france-325597 (in french)
Interesting. I haven't watched South Park in ages. The only reason I'm going to watch this episode is because China banned it.
I wonder if it works like that for people who live in China. Is it something Chinese people often do (specifically seek out banned stuff)?
I agree South Park could probably move elsewhere after their contract is over (goes through 2022). They were disallowed from showing a cartoon depiction of the muslim prophet Muhammad by Comedy Central in the past and did not leave, they did however make an episode poking fun at the censorship which included a cartoon Jesus deficating on a burning American flag.
This article discusses a very interesting, and surprising, study on political correctness. [1]
The paper found that Americans' views could be typified into three major groups. About 25% are traditional or devoted conservatives, 8% are progressive activists, and the other 67% are an "exhausted majority." The exhausted majority was typified as Americans who don't belong to either extreme, and "share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation."
And most of everybody had a disdain for political correctness that transcends politics, race, and even age. The following think political correctness is a problem in the country:
- 80% of the general population
- 74% of those aged 24-29
- 79% of those under age 24
- 75% of blacks
- 79% of whites
- 82% of Asians
- 87% of Hispanics
- 88% of American Indians
There's a reasonable argument that perhaps people don't agree on what "political correctness" means, and indeed the poll part of the study did not define it for participants. However, the study engaged in various focus groups as well as individual interviews and found that individuals were "concerned about their day-to-day ability to express themselves: They worry that a lack of familiarity with a topic, or an unthinking word choice, could lead to serious social sanctions for them."
The reason this is important is that a lot of the political correctness stuff is carried out in domains that are in no way, shape, or form representative of the general population of America. This [2] poll from Pew lays out social media usage in the US. Twitter is a good, and surprising example. Only 22% of Americans use Twitter. And of those that do, 58% use it less often than once per day. Yet I think it goes without saying that our 8% from above are nearly all on Twitter and using it constantly. This results in an extremely misleading image of American society in general if you go in with the assumption that platforms like Twitter are even vaguely representative.
The point of this is that cancel culture not American culture. It's something propagated by a vocal minority on deeply unrepresentative platforms. By contrast South Park has been an American institution for more than two decades. And it continues to draw millions of viewers per episode. Cancel culture largely targets individuals who are unable to defend themselves or those for whom the "progressive activist" group makes up a significant share of their potential influence. For South Park, this couldn't be further from the case.
[1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/
[2] - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/
My understanding is South Park create the episode on the fly and deliver it to Comedy Central hours before airing it. They don't get any time to review it.
Here is the episode mocking China that got South Park banned in China.
https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s23e02-band-in-china
South Park has been around for so long, and has gone after so many things, its probable they've tackled several issues in a way that really resonates with you, and makes you laugh at the same time. And in many cases, they've paid a cost that others would be unwilling to bear in doing so.
This China thing is a current example. The NBA is cravenly grovelling to the CPC, and the SP creators are taking a proverbial dump on the lawns of the CPC and the NBA and Hollywood self-censors, while giving zero-fucks. Its great. Its inspiring. Another was when Isaac Hayes (actor who voiced Chef, and a Scientologist) quit when they did their Scientology episode (and it was such a brilliant episode, and at a time when Scientology was a bit of a sacred cow in Hollywood). Isaac had no problem when SP went (and continues to go) after Christianity.
Chances are, even if they really piss you off at some point, there have been other times when they've made you cheer and laugh.
Thr 2016 elections season was so darn good. Thats just my opinion as well. It became my favorite. I was never watching South Park like others did as it airs. I think shows like South Park you should have breaks on and then watch an episode or two on Hulu cause over time it does get tiresome. I can binge Family Guy and South Park but a lot gets lost compared to savoring it over time. Watched a lot of classic movies thanks to obscure Family Guy references.
> It's very interesting that "non-respectable" Trey Parker and Matt Stone responded in the morally correct way and the NBA decides to kiss the feet of despots.
Creators of one of the most effective US-centric propaganda engines in recent times have an opinion that sides with the main-line US narrative that's parallel with every other op-ed article being blasted across other well-known US-centric propaganda engines.
Color me surprised.
To be clear : I have no dog in this fight personally; but South Park has been pretty obviously 'narratively - conveinent' for years. If you want to know what their opinion is going to be about a topic before the related episode just open up a page of the NY Times and radicalize the most popular op-ed opinion to the Nth.
'Team America'ify any article : bam , a new South Park episode.
Anyone paying attention during any of the Bush era wars can see this plain as day.
"Let's portray Bush as a total moron so that we can play off of public disdain for him, but let's depict his actions as successful and 'terrorists' as 'the bad guys' and the US as 'good guys' , don't want to rock the boat too bad." .
Talk about having your cake and eating it too, they get credit for being some sort of anti-PC badasses while toting the US main status-quo opinions.
I don't know if I'd go that far. I'd argue South Park was at its peak for the first 10 seasons. This episode was awesome but there has been quite a bit of junk between now and then. Obviously just my opinion though.
I think what Trey & Matt give us in South Park comes from a pretty genuine, sincere place, most of the time. Sometimes its some of the best comedic satire ever conceived and just the kind of thing we need in the moment - other times, there's nothing particularly inspired and its pretty apparent they just need to get an episode shipped.
But... they have a rare talent for nuking sacred cows from orbit. It always hurts when its your cow.
It felt weird to see such a good episode from South Park after how much they have lost touch with reality at some point.
Well .. subjectively I did not find it very funny so maybe not an all time high episode, but the critic was absolutely on point and something that very few people are talking about.
China has a lot of control on what can be included in a hollywood movie.
Propaganda is not exactly new ... after all the US army also has a lot of control when they give support to a movie and demand that they are portrayed favorably but this time it is from one country to another.
all episodes. search "south park" or "南方公园"(south park in Chinese) on video website of China, you got nothing.
I'm not a South Park fan, but that ban got my interested so I watched the episode (Yeah, that episode is banned in China and few "reposter"s has been warned for posting South Park related contents).
Few days ago, a guy been sent to jail for 7 days because he was complaining the National Day military parade, saying something like "A civilized nation turn machine into soldier; a rouge nation turn soldier into machine". And he's not the only one been sent to jail for similar reason.
This country is not taking any critic any more. Cultural Revolution 2.0 Global Edition anybody?
https://twitter.com/ytchui_M/status/1181289272466231296
A recent South Park episode parodied this quite well.
Such a good episode. South Park seems to get better with each season.
It's crazy how South Park episodes play out in real life the same week they are released.
"Due to copyright and other legal issues, this South Park episode cannot be viewed in your Country"
So yes, banned in China (Hong Kong)
I'm amazed at how South Park after 23 seasons can make me laugh out loud repeatedly while combining classic south parkisms with hilarious satire of current events.
I'm a big south park fan and these 2 episodes so far have been on point.
South Park's latest episode was about Chinese censorship in the West.
'South Park' Scrubbed From Chinese Internet After Critical Episode https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/south-park-banned-chinese-internet-critical-episode-1245783
Isn't that what the newest South Park was about? [0] US companies bending to the political will of China because money.
I remember a NPR broadcast a few years ago (when the female ghost busters movie came out) about how movies have become less progressive because they are targeted at world audiences. I think a lot of Westerners feel weird about this, but I think getting involved in the politics is even a step further (especially when we're seeing an human rights violations).
[0] https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s23e02-band-in-china
Reminds me of the recent episode of South Park where "journalists" like Vox claim to be for human rights but bend over to get Chinese payouts. Also why does this post say it's 3 hours old when it was posted yesterday?
Reminder that: If you check the AndroidManifest.xml of TikTok app you'll see they are tracking persistent device identifiers coupled with phone #. Then if you uninstall TikTok you'll still have a bunch of their files in shared space that other Chinese apps can pick up were you to install them, presumably so they can track you even if you uninstall the app.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21077216
It seems that the latest South Park episode was once again timely.
Fiber is slowly making its way through my town and I'm looking forward to the speed, but more than that I'm looking forward to telling Comcast that I don't have to put up with them anymore. I picture it like that episode of South Park, except with the roles reversed.
> If they're the only ones without a smartphone, they'll be single out
From South Park, season 3 episode 11, "Chinpokomon":
Kyle: Please Mom? Everybody else has Chinpokomon.
Gerald: Well, Kyle, that's not a reason to buy something.
You see, son, fads come and go. And this "Chin-po-ko-mon" is obviously nothing more than a fad. You don't have to be a part of it. In fact, you can make an even stronger statement by saying to your peers, "I'm not going to be a part of this fad, because I'm an individual." Do you understand?
Kyle: Yes. Yes, I do, Dad. Now let me tell you how it works in the real world. In the real world, I can either get a Chinpokomon, or I can be the only kid without one, which singles me out, and causes the other kids to make fun of me and kick my ass.
Gerald: Hm... Good point; here's $10. [hands it to him]
Kyle: Thanks.
Gerald: Wait, here's 20. Get one for your brother, too. [Kyle receives the other $10 and walks out]
I'm a big South Park fan, also loved that episode (and the original movie). It didn't cross my mind to use that specific thing to explain the project, but kinda makes sense! Grotesque but effective.
Thank you so much this is so cool and necessary. If you need a visual to pitch it to investors and you haven't seen it there was a great south park episode (looked it up S15E01, the human centipad) mingled with one of the best-est gross out horror-humor movies ever the human centipede.
Even after laughing at that and being raised by a lawyer I still don't read the TOS line by line like i should, again I need this.
>There was a huge campaign against man made global warming, and its worked, a significant amount of people believe its a hoax.
Hell, the Southpark guys did and made fun of it for years... and now they're like "wait a minute, it is real, our bad"
>Over the last two episodes, Parker and Stone have attempted to correct the mistake they made over a decade ago, as the boys beg Gore to help them fight the destruction of ManBearPig. While in 2006's South Park climate change was some silly myth, now it's a very real horror that most people still choose to ignore.
.
>South Park has never been one to say it was wrong. It's a show that will gladly stand by its depictions of everything from suicide to terrorist attacks and the prophet Muhammad. So, to admit it was wrong about its take on climate change 12 years ago is a surprising sign of maturity.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a25127458/south-park-climate-change-manbearpig-apology-season-22-episode-7/
> How many times have you heard some politician or just an ordinary person from the south or the midwest say something to the effect “we have a great homelessness policy, we buy each homeless person a bus ticket to California and send them on their way!” They usually say this with pride or with a laugh instead of being embarrassed as they should be. In fact if i remember correctly this was part of the plot of a south park episode (although i do not exactly remember whether south park endorsed or mocked that policy).
Zero times? This seems like a lazy characterization and citing South Park doesn't really help your case. According to this Guardian article on homeless busing in the US[1], these sorts of programs tend to originate in the Western states:
> A count earlier this year found half a million homeless people on one night in America. The problem is most severe in the west, where rates of homelessness are skyrocketing in a number of major cities, and where states like California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have some of the highest rates of per capita homelessness.
> These are also the states where homeless relocation programs are concentrated. Using public record laws, the Guardian obtained data from 16 cities and counties that give homeless people free bus tickets to live elsewhere.
Key West and Ft Lauderdale are discussed in the article; Atlanta is mentioned as having been criticized for this in the run-up to the 1996 Olympics. That said, jumping immediately to "we all know how those darn Southerners and Midwesterners are" doesn't seem to jive with the facts.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study
This is very much a problem but it is incorrectly stated as California's problem. This America’s problem. It just so happens that because California is relatively rich, tends to have some of the most tolerable year round weather and the people are relatively compassionate a large percentage of the homeless of all of America are moving to California.
How many times have you heard some politician or just an ordinary person from the south or the midwest say something to the effect “we have a great homelessness policy, we buy each homeless person a bus ticket to California and send them on their way!” They usually say this with pride or with a laugh instead of being embarrassed as they should be. In fact if i remember correctly this was part of the plot of a south park episode (although i do not exactly remember whether south park endorsed or mocked that policy).
So lets not treat this as some failure on California’s part. It is failure of the entire USA. The reasons are the usual ones— lack of mental health treatment for the poor, drug addiction, lack of social safety nets in general. And of course there is one new very scary reason — out of control health care costs that force people that were and should be fully functioning members of society into suffering and homelessness.
The answer is that it's not all about 'coworker', but understanding that the way society has treated black people and minorities has create a hostile environment. The reason why people don't want white men at the table is because they tend to make it personal and about themselves. There's a great episode of south park, the 'n word' episode [0], that kind of explains this. Stan exuberantly "gets it", by "not getting it".
[0] https://southpark.cc.com/clips/155500/stan-gets-it
> Americans have come to grips with its South Park-esque entertainment legacy for over a decade now.
Maybe it changed over the years, but the South Park I remember always went out of its way to explicitly call out the bad behavior earlier in the episode and provide a moral.
It was usually pretty easy to segregate those that actually watched it from those that didn't and have some vision of what it was informed by others views instead of their own, as this fact was generally left out.
Does this mean that Swiftian satire such as South Park's episode making fun of prominent Scientologists is now unfit for Twitter?
These Instagram influencers remind me of the South Park episode about Yelp reviewers.
Every time I see a company say "we're sorry" I can't help but think about the South Park episode where the BP CEO says "we're sorry!" It's either that or the one with the Time Warner employees with the nursing flaps in their shirts.
Mocking implies that the purpose was to make Muslim people feel bad, and I don't think that is the case. I see it in the context of works like The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan (1995), The Meaning of Life (1983) by Monthy Python, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006), and South park episode Trapped in the Closet (2006). The point is to illustrate and highlight the superstitious believes of religion in the context of existing culture that gives it enormous power and influence.
Among those four, two use comedy as the medium. Three of them has been banned in various countries. The only exception is the south park episode and I suspect the only reason is because scientology is not the majority religion in any country or state.
Same story, but not as glamourous, on a Windows NT4 Rollout (1997). Also recall us downloading South Park at a (then) stellar speed - only took half an hour to download a highty compressed half hour episode, a thing of sheer magic at the time :)
The same happened to South Park where the network ended up censoring a depiction of Muhammad - well, in the one episode, in an earlier one it was still up. And thankfully they didn't quit, they ran with it because it points out the hypocrisy, double standards, and weird morals that the US networks have.
Eh, it's just like having a song from an old NES game start playing in my head while I'm cleaning the dishes. Except dumber and more annoying. It's not like it's constant or anything. Usually it's one of their songs ("Blame Canada", that Game of Thrones intro song where all the notes are the word "weiner") or some line or gag that was repeated a whole bunch of times in an episode. Like the worst and most persistent friggin' ear-worms imaginable. But not a day goes by when I don't have one or two things from South Park pass through my head at some point. Just a small annoyance that was made worse by my recognizing it. It's probably true, or nearly so, of many other things too (see: NES music) but those don't bother me.
It reminds me of the south park episode about the margaritaville mixer.
"What we do is find people who want a carbon neutral environment but can't afford one and package their investments up into one giant carbon emissions security and chop them up in a way that we can sell them to banks."
Problem solved!
Could be interesting to see the robotics. Also reminds me of a South Park episode.
Lol, just saw the South Park episode about this. Hope they don't give him back the same thing those four did to their parents.
That's part of the premise of that one South Park episode / season about the 2016 elections[0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skank_Hunt#Plot
Have you ever seen the south park episode, "minorities in my water park?" lol
South Park gets it best: https://imgflip.com/i/2t3msg
From the episode of "Canada on Strike": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN_h_HBzZnc
I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive.
I guarantee those people would be as well if they were effected by it personally. If you're not personally doing the kind of jobs an illegal immigrant can do for less, then you can only benefit - it lowers the cost to you for many things in your life. As a bonus, you get to pretend that makes you a good person.
An episode of South Park addresses this brilliantly, though people conveniently only remember the first part. Time travellers from the future come into South Park and take all the menial jobs. The blue collar americans yell "they took our jerbs!" Randy - a geologist - admonishes them as racists, until he finds out his own white collar positionhas been given to an alien, and then he too is complaining about how they took his job.
The day the wealthy Californian tech companies start hiring illegal immigrant developers at a lower cost is the day the echo chamber changes its tune.
I'm sure there's a lot of legitimate reasons to criticize Al Gore. The problem with the South Park episodes is that:
1. They did not talk about any of those valid criticisms
2. FAR more people saw those South Park episodes and, at least somewhat, adjusted their views of Gore to be more negative without even realizing it, than came in contact with anything that DID talk about those valid criticisms
A key part of the article seems to be that PewDiePie's channel is largely satire, which is inherently under attack and worth protecting. Maybe I am getting old, but I find satire a lot less valuable than I once did.
The article mentions South Park too. I once loved the show, and still remember many moments in a strangely fond way. But the problem of Poe's law and the like means satire is sometimes taken seriously, and the cumulative effects of that have serious and real repercussions.
The creators of South Park, for example, recently "apologized" to Al Gore[1], who they ridiculed mercilessly. Many people believe that ridicule seriously hurt the climate change movement. I can't imagine what a real world solution would look like, but I would gladly live in a world where those episodes disappeared and we were in a little better spot regarding climate change.
We probably don't yet know what the lasting legacy of PewDiePie will be, but personally I'm doubting the positive aspects of it will outweigh the effects of many of his viewers taking some of his satire seriously.
[1] https://www.salon.com/2018/11/08/south-park-apologizes-to-al-gore-and-admits-it-was-wrong-about-global-warming
sounds exactly like one of the recent South Park episodes
> it's not that South Park turned into this right-leaning children's TV show.
I have no idea what you're referring to with the South Park reference and George Soros, I don't really follow the show.
But South Park has actually long been considered right-leaning by some people, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican
As far as I can tell the main people who hold this view are right-leaning, e.g. https://www.city-journal.org/html/we%E2%80%99re-not-losing-culture-wars-anymore-12482.html
I usually see the creators referred to as libertarians. E.g. Matt Stone saying "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals."
Everyone should read his comments[0] about Facebook and Google, before you criticize the guy.
> what their motivations might be by doing research is just common sense
The rhetoric that you guys use, especially when you talk about someone who's probably as genuinely committed to a civil, liberal world as George Soros: you sound like a South Park character. You can watch a clip that uses conspiratorial rhetoric (and makes fun of it) here: [1].
And I think the amazing thing is, it's not that South Park turned into this right-leaning children's TV show. It's that Republicans, libertarians and just cocky, downvoting male engineers alike have all started to turn into South Park.
"What you gotta understand [Hacker News], everyone has an agenda."
[0] https://www.georgesoros.com/2018/01/25/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum/
[1] https://southpark.cc.com/clips/mqwfxt/its-right-there
I was born in Tulsa and left before my teens (to us, Oklahoma was the South West/South as opposed to Midwest). Lived elsewhere in the United States, Germany, and now live in Switzerland.
I have a lot of fond memories of the place, but returning there after 25 years completely shattered my romantic childhood feelings. The city was not doing great when I lived there, but it felt far worse now (husk comment earlier). You want to know where MAGA came from? All you need to do was live in Tulsa 25 years ago and compare it to today: the rust and rot. The place is sprawling; you’ll need a car. Summer is oppressively humid against biking. It is far more diverse than it was, but I have doubts about the true level of comforts minorities (all stripes from ethnicity to political) feel. I felt somewhat insulated from religion with Unitarian parents, but the prevailing religion runs strong here. I don’t think they’d accept me if they really knew what I thought today. Infrastructure is laughably in poor shape. My father tells me corruption/nepotism/patronage still drives most appointments in OK civil service. I recall fondly of the — can’t believe I am saying this — sweet smell of crude oil refinement from West Tulsa that permeates the entire town and ambient sounds of the pump jacks (yes, sporadically in the neighborhood).
Food is certainly better than what it was. Folks in their early 20s seem to be pushing for more. I actually had a respectable bowl of ramen there. Growing up, there were two Chinese restaurants only. That tells you a lot!
I always appreciated how direct the people were — zero pretense or two-faced behavior. A lot of small talk. You’ll have to be OK with the provincialism. Miss the intense Thunderstorms a whole lot.
My parents were not especially political or conveying of class or social consciousness. I recall a few trips to Arkansas when I was young and crossing the border from OK into AR and wondering what the hell was wrong with that place. It seemed like that much of a step down.
Tulsa has — or had — it’s quirky charm. Everyone knows about the South Park episode about that Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita. Well, guess what, that one in Colorado it parodied is based on an original in Tulsa. Also: in that same strip mall (yep, you’ll love Tulsa if you love sprawling one-story drags of strip malls), there was Starbase 21, a store dedicated to Star Trek franchise paraphernalia, which I think closed recently (sadly). Let’s not forget the world’s largest McDonalds in Vinita that spanned an interstate. These days, the place feels dreadfully big-boxed.
I am a parent now. While nature access is OK (not great but not terrible), certainly faster to reach than in the Bay Area (sorry), I would be concerned with the schools. They have been starved to death and the school day largely cut to four days.
I realize this won’t satisfy anyone’s claims for empirical remarks, but it is just the perspective of someone who knew the place intimately and returned recently. My feelings are textured.
For me its the yelp reviewers themselves I dislike. That South Park episode really nailed. Oh you're a big Yelp reviewer, cool...
This isn't disruptive, it's evolutionary at best. Red vs Blue was a successful web series 15? years ago, made entirely from screen recordings from Halo 1. Look up "Machinema". As others have pointed out, lack of truly great artists/inspiration seems like the biggest barrier to producing entertainment. Look at season 1 of South Park - good content beats flashy trimmings every day of the week.
If you've never seen Red Vs Blue before, check out this scene:
https://youtu.be/9BAM9fgV-ts
Studies on happiness--as hard as that is to objectively study--show it is more closely related to social status than absolute and total consumption.
In other words, the SUV or sports car apparently has more to do with making people happy by making them look to be of higher social status than the actual utility of those goods.
This is also demonstrated in the South Park episode Smug, which criticizes hybrids. From a public policy perspective, the greatest reduction in CO2 comes from getting people into economical cars (like a 42+mpg --or higher in EU models--Civic) rather than in necessarily Hybrids or electrics which not everyone can afford. The greatest co2/$ reduced is actually going from average to a civic-like car.
Perhaps cultural changes away from materialism, as well as effective public policy may be important in reducing global warming.
But what we get is more "War on Poverty" style bureaucracies and activism which has become a self-perpetuating and wasteful industry of its own.
I've been binge watching all of south park for the past few weeks and it has definitely changed, along the same lines as people are saying about the Simpsons. It has not gotten worse. In fact, I think it is better than when it first started. But it has definitely changed. It's gotten quirkier and wackier, characters have become more caricaturey, etc. It's found its rut
I think it's because South Park has always been a vehicle to comment, usually specifically, on current events and popular culture. The world of South Park is really a sandbox for Trey and Matt to caricature whatever they're choosing to ream on that particular week.
The Simpsons, Futurama, when they address these kinds of issues, they feel like they're 'reaching' for it. Or, worse, just 'not trying'.
Someone else here mentioned The Simpsons, and the Family Guy, were much better at the time that they focused on the struggles of the families themselves.
I believe that this is because unlike South Park, where, even from the name, the town itself seems to be the focus. Which allows it to be moreso whatever they want it to be.
'The Simpsons' and the 'Family Guy', are meant to satirize, or at least revolve around, the daily struggles of the 'American Middle Class Family'.
When they don't, and they reach for 'current' events, which often usually feel dated by the episode release due to the extended 6-9 month production period, they seem stale and unfunny. South Park's 6-day production period, awesomely described in the fantastic documentary 'Six Days to Air', allows South Park to comment literally on things that happened the day before. It's incredibly hard to make that feel 'stale.' Really, worst-case scenario, South Park just doesn't seem 'funny' enough sometimes (this season hasn't been great), but definitely never 'irrelevant'.
The early seasons and episodes of the Simpsons are timeless. Many of them could've happened any time over the last three or four decades.
• 'Homer's Enemy' (S08E23) - A new employee at work gets jealous of Homer's 'easy' life.
• 'Mr. Plow' (S04E09) - Hijinks occur when Homer and Barney start competing snow removal businesses.
• 'Homer the Heretic' (S04E03) - Homer decides he doesn't need to attend church any more, and Marge doesn't like the example that demonstrates for the kids.
• 'You Only Move Twice' (S08E02) - Homer is offered a new work opportunity in a 'perfect' town. This episode does involve satire, but James Bond is such an old trope, and the films are still coming out, therefore it doesn't seem 'stale'.
None of these classic and fan favourite episodes rely on tropes of the era. They're still as funny today as when they were released. (Especially 'You Only Move Twice'. What a gem. Oh, Scorpio.)
Futurama, as well, does best when it focuses on it's sci-fi premise. It's supposed to be the future. We don't need comments about Apple products in there, we want the mind-bending 'Rick and Morty'-level plots of 'Roswell that Ends Well', or the genuine moments of emotion like Fry's dog at the end of 'Jurassic Bark'.
Again, it seems like early seasons of these cartoon sitcoms have a habit of sticking to their initial premise, and maybe perhaps the creator's visions. There's tons of reasons for this, but in 'The Simpsons' case, the death of Phil Hartman in 1998 drastically affected the show as a whole. I think a lot of the spirit was lost along with him. RIP, Troy McClure.
> Classic Simpsons would occasionally get a bit satirical or referential (like when Bush Sr made a guest appearance), but modern Simpsons seems more satirical than not. Episodes like the one featuring the "MyPod" with "Steve Mobs" basically had my eyes rolling into the back of my head. That's such low-hanging fruit that they're picking it up off the ground. It's not even good enough to be considered sophomoric.
And the Futurama take on this was just as bad (and I love Futurama). IMO, South Park is the best at doing this kind of satire... I can't point to exactly why, though. Being on cable allows them to push edgier jokes, but I'm sure it's more than that.
I know people whose use of cannabis has been a crutch for problems in their lives, who have achieved less than they likely would have because it is so easy to do nothing, and stagnate, when drugs come easy. I also know people whose cannabis use has (unproveably, but likely) triggered latent schizophrenia.
There are tradeoffs in everything, of course, and everyone is entitled to their own choices and ambitions, and these risks don't harm everyone who tries them, but put yourself in the shoes of the friends and family that see their loved one become a burnout. There can be real and justified hate of the drug when it has measurably damaged your family.
There was an episode of South Park that addressed pot in a similar way- it is dangerous because it is so much fun you don't want to do anything else.
And then South Park does an episode on "it".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OACjYGw6BkA
Plenty noticed, most either didn't care, or had no power in the matter. The phenomenon of people going to get "real" kfc across state lines was so popular a south park episode was loosely based on the premise. There is a clear difference in taste, for those that taste their food before swallowing it with a gulp of soda. It's never really been a debate.
The charity donation thing has been around for a while. South Park even had an episode 3 years ago about Whole Foods and the pushy donations.
The first problem is that these shows follow the Peter Principle. A show will continue to run until it becomes bad enough to be canceled. This means that many shows will have a bad, disappointing ending rather than a thrilling/touching/moving/memorable climax.
The second problem is that given that the story may or may not have to continue for another season, how can the main characters get any form of meaningful character growth? How can they get closure or a conclusion when the next season is around the corner and either a new problem has to be invented for them or the existing one has to be reopened/continued? This is similar to the problem that "villain of the week" shows suffer from, just on a seasonal rather than episodic basis.
This affects 1-season shows as well since: 1. If they only get one season it may be because they are bad. 2. The 1 season still needs to be written to allow for the possibility of a 2nd season, thus potentially making it less interesting.
Of course, for some shows those things don't really matter, since no one watches The Simpsons, The Office, South Park or Seinfeld for the character growth.
That isn't to say it is impossible to make a good plot-driven show with this format, just harder (and it is the reason why I rarely watch American TV shows).
I mean, what are the ways? If an American show fails, you'll get your beloved 1 season run. If it's popular, it keeps going. What's the problem? The Simpsons and The Office and South Park and Seinfeld all hit their stride at season 3 or so.
A lot of churn in the dotcom era (iOS is trying to correct dotcom to ‘sitcom’, how appropriate) involved people quoting that stupid Kevin Costner movie where the guy hearing voices plows under his corn to build a baseball field, and then he goes and harasses Darth Vader to find out why.
“If you build it, they will come” is not exactly the most auspicious start.
This was turned into the Underpants Gnomes by South Park, which seemingly slowed down but did not eliminate the practice. I wonder if Mike Judge is having more luck, but it’s probably too soon still to say.
> In terms of popular media, the early seasons of South Park and the Simpsons look absolutely saccharine compared to where culture's Overton Window is today. "Don't have a cow, man!" is positively benign.
I'd argue that South Park actually matured and toned things down on one hand, and amped things up on the other.
Their early episodes relied heavily on shock value. The later seasons are more nuanced, and rely less on gross out, bodily humor, or people laughing at cartoon kids swearing.
The Yelp episode of South Park is one of the best.
"I'm a food critic with Yelp.com... umkay."
http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s19e04-youre-not-yelping
Are you sure you are not just remembering this South Park Episode?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Homeless
Imagine if South Park did a completely serious episode where an adult Cartman's wife had a miscarriage. It would be mocked mercilessly. Whether it would be morally right to mock it or not is anybody's guess, but mocked into memedom it would be.
A South Park episode comes to mind... http://gph.is/2bjK3lK
I just don't know where you get off telling people they shouldn't have kids. Maybe you're just immature, I don't know, but there's nothing to be gained from it.
There was a special South Park episode for that, Zuckerberg shouting "you can't block me" to everyone.
I think the point is that users had to consent with Facebook. Maybe they didn’t read or understand. Maybe Facebook should directly ad “this will fuck you” to the consent form. But people would still ignore.
My issue is that they’ve always been transparent about collecting and sharing data. They just say it in a friendly way.
There’s a whole episode of South Park with the Eula. And people stil don’t read before clicking.
This happens in many places. Check out the effect of unnoticed binding arbitration clauses - http://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-supreme-court-california-arbitration-20151214-story.html
I’m happy if laws change to improve this. But I’m surprised too.
Same with Trump? South Park recently had an episode titled "Doubling Down", which I find a good descriptor for this behavior.
> A couple summers ago at the pool I heard a teenage girl exclaim “poned!” after besting her friend at something they were playing. It took me a moment to realize she’d just said “pwned” since I’d never heard it said out loud before and in my mind I’ve always read it “owned.” Now that was a “get off my lawn moment!”
That pronunciation was popularized by the famous South Park episode on World of Warcraft [1] [2] which first aired in 2006. So it's not actually particularly new at all.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPx__G9GkRY [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Love,_Not_Warcraft
Great episode
http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/videos/a39070/south-park-season-19-episode-5-shaming/
That South Park episode on smugness is relevant to the gp
South Park Seasons 18 and 19 are almost like a different series as compared to the previous seasons.
Reconsider. Watch South Park "Grounded Vindaloop" episode.
This sounds like the beginning of a South Park episode
> Television and Radio have had massive amounts of censorship in US history.
And at every step there has been aggressive active resistance to that by the audience. Even just recently, book publishers floated an idea a few years ago to put recommended age ratings on books aimed at the childhood and adolescent markets. Readers, authors, and all fans of literature exploded. They launched boycotts (and unlike gamers they're not lying when they say they'll boycott something), they got loud. Publishers quickly backed down. Gamers would never think of resisting age prohibition rankings. In the movie industry, we had the Hayes Code for awhile and movie fans opposed it unceasingly until it was eventually repealed.
And with games we face higher censorship than in any other medium. In movies, for instance, if the movie features animated characters rather than real people (as all videogames do), you can get away with essentially anything at all. Just look at the South Park creators and their movies. And you can get an unrated movie and pop it into your player and watch away. With videogame consoles the console makers have all declared they will never permit an unrated title to be licensed, nor will they ever permit any title given a rating that restricts it to an audience of 18+ gamers. And thanks to the DMCA section 1201, that edict of the publishers gives the ratings handed down by the ESRB the full force of federal law.
And you have to consider the 'Chilling Effect' as well. You can't even propose beginning a project in the gaming industry that has a significant risk of being black-balled with an AO rating. Most gamers look at M-rated games, which are equivalent to PG-13 blockbuster action movies at their most 'extreme', and think its equivalent to an R rated film. They would never think of standing up and saying 'content on a screen is not harmful. Ratings are restricting what we have access to in significant ways and need to be stopped.'
We don't have ratings on books. When you go to a bookstore, there is a 'childrens section'. That is sufficient, and no more is needed. No prevention of kids from grabbing books intended for an older audience, no group of 'concerned parents' declaring the appropriate age range of readers, no ratings agency charging tens of thousands of dollars to grant a rating which is used to determine whether a reading device will permit it to operate. Gamers are downright scared of such a system for games, though. And for no legitimate reason.
South Park is so much worse since it switched to its new, faster production schedule and a more topical focus. The show was better when it focused on the characters, like the LOTR episode or Scott Tenoman Must Die, rather than the topical episodes.
If they’ve run out of non-topical ways to explore the characters, then they should end the show.
> subversive
Seems like a claim no one ever asserted about SP. Maybe Simpsons (at one point).
"Much like a joke South Park made about residents of San Francisco: They smugly inhaled their own farts."
So the non-subversive series made a subversive episode about their own smug watchers? Or smug writer found that non-subversively applicable to non-woke whites?
South Park has gotten to obsessed with current events lately. Every episode seems like a transparent rehash of recent political news now. I think they are now interested in using the show to push their political opinions where it used to be about being funny and the themes and jokes were more timeless. It could also be that they just ran out of material after 21 seasons so they use current events as a writing crutch.
South Park and Simpsons both suffer from their own past glory. Where exactly do you go next year after woodland criter Christmas?https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodland_Critter_Christmas
Really, even in off seasons they often have great episodes, they simply suffer by comparison.
Somewhere between Armin Tamzarian, the first season of South Park, the first season of Futurama, and the first season of Family Guy.
The Silver Age ended when The Simpson's Movie came out. Almost no animated series survives the first movie intact.
I vaguely remember the photo but not the South Park episode (it might exist though)
Didn't South Park do an episode where Robert Scoble took a photo of himself wearing nothing but Google Glass in the shower, or did that really happen?
Actually, South Park just made an episode about this. Everyone was freaking out about North Korea while others were getting run over from distracted drivers without anyone noticing.
Rick And Morty has a great number of good "science" jokes, but really its more about general Sci-Fi tropes. (Time Travel, Multiverses, Clones, Aliens, and Androids aren't really "science" as much as they are about "Science fiction")
But the hardest thing for me was to get used to the straight up nihilism of Rick. True, there have been plenty of Nihilistic "protagonists" in other shows: Peter Griffin in Family Guy, Eric Cartman from South Park, Homer Simpson (depending on the season of course).
But Rick is different: while the other characters are arguably Nihilistic due to ignorance, Rick purposefully and specifically pursues the "I don't care" attitude and gets away with it due to his intelligence (while other characters in other shows seem to get away with it due to literally dumb luck).
That difference continuously pisses me off in Rick and Morty, and as such its difficult for me to enjoy a lot of the episodes.
Nothing against the fanbase or anything: I recognize that Rick and Morty is a huge following, and the enormous lines at McDonalds for the special Rick and Morty Sauce just a few days ago demonstrates that Rick and Morty are the new "mainstream" cartoon. But its apathetic and malicious main character really grates on me, and I personally an unable to enjoy it as much as everyone else seems to.
Good.
Apple is one of my favorite companies. I just absolutely love what they're doing and have done in terms of personal privacy.
I'm really disheartened that they've moved to an open office layout. It's a surefire way to lose huge amounts of productivity from their engineers.
Open office layouts are a travesty. They make literally no fucking sense. As engineers we're expected to maintain abstractions in our minds which can span hundreds if not thousands of lines of code.
So why would you put us in the middle of a fucking zoo?
I can hear sports TV while I try to work. I can hear my friends/coworkers shoot the shit about the new South Park or Game of Thrones episode while I work. I can hear people talk about their weekend plans while I work. I can hear my coworkers planning projects I'm not involved in as I work.
And here I am, expectected, as a full stack engineer, to abstract complex data flows while all of this is going on.
To produce, while all of this is going on.
And do not forget that even if every single person was a deaf mute, their mere presence can knock me out of the zone.
I remember college. I remember working on projects and losing track of time. Because back then I had a room where I could work without distraction. Boy, how wonderful, to be so absorbed as to forget how much time has passed.
I literally have never felt that in an open office layout. It sucks. I love what I do. Why take that pleasure away from us?
It burns me out.
These creators are just great guys. Not only is this again a sign of them being on the edge of healthy creativity, but they're also the only show that just has all episodes for free to watch.
There's a documentary on how they make each show "a la carte" each week, and never missed its deadline except once, but it's often been a close call of just a few minutes.
Edit: "6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ-Un8JjUwo
I found the fact "The Emoji Movie" getting 74% 1-star reviews in their ranked chart to be a more interesting fact. Climate change and Al Gore being controversial and highly politicized is nothing new. South Park has been satirizing Gore's hyperbolic approach for years. An approach which tends to draw tribalistic audiences who have opinions formed well before hearing the arguments.
But the fact Hollywood spent $50 million on such a disaster as T.J. Miller's big feature film is what is somewhat shocking. Especially given it had some big names like Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation behind it.
You'd think with the data-driven cookie-cutter focused-grouped-to-death process that is the modern film industry would be able to avoid producing one of the worst rated films in the history of online film reviews. I thought modern Hollywood was extra careful? Or are those resources only limited to hedging their financial performance rather than producing enjoyable content?
I appreciate your call to take a cause seriously by making changes in one's personal life.
That said, every time I read someone advise "stop having babies" to combat climate change, I am reminded of the South Park episode wherein the overzealous hunters claim that deer overpopulation will cause some deer to die, so they need to kill the deer to prevent overpopulation and future deer deaths.
Yea, I don't think the average show from the 70's was good.
Though, if your going to compare the average show, then the competition is more like 'Pawn Stars', 'My Teen is Pregnant', 'Tiny House Hunters', etc. Or you could compare similar longer running shows like Three's company (8 seasons) vs. Two and a Half Men (12 seasons).
So, my guess is a random episode of 'Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour' was probably better than a random episode of a random cable TV show. Though, it's also very dated at this point. It's also likely worse than say the best south park episode or whatever show you actually like.
Anyway, I am not saying the 70's wins hands down, hell I was not even alive then. But, I do think people are confusing shows about things they like with actual quality. I might like 'How It's Made' but it's not exactly deep.
> deliberately harmful speech
So there is harmful speech. Thanks.
> Otherwise South park / Rick and Morty could not exist.
South Park is freely shown on TV stations in basically any country that has enough of an audience to make economic sense. Every single one of those countries has more restrictive laws regarding hate speech, yet they also seem to have the capability to distinguish between a TV show and and armed mob with swastikas.
Not sure what got you downvoted. There's even a South Park episode about it where Kyle has a surgery to become a black basketball player, which kind of goes in the same direction.
I've been tuning into an episode South Park, Family Guy, American Dad or The Simpsons LIVE recently. They look like straight torrent uploads so curious how they are getting around the filters... They have ads, so money must be being made for anyone to pursue this.
They've made an episode on that in South Park. Didn't end well.
South Park did an episode about this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7OevEml84BI
Reminds me of South Park's episode on the 9/11 conspiracy.
Since you mention your age, there is a good chance you are just having a quarter life crisis (becoming more cynical, great South Park episode about it!)
This reminds me of a South Park episode.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJNRVptyb9Y
Perhaps in the limit, ads and content will become completely indistinguishable.
I don't know whether this is a deliberate reference, but there is South Park episode playing with this idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsored_Content_%28South_Park%29
Which episode was that? I don't generally follow South Park but occasionally watch particular episodes.
No one outside HN and reddit ever seemed to give a shit about this stuff, even in the Bush years.
All the noise I've tried to make about this and no one ever cares. The South Park episode about this was painfully dead on.
There's a South Park episode using that meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts
Either I and everyone I know have ADHD, or the symptoms you listed seem pretty benign, and affect almost everyone in the human race.
It reminds me of the Scientology episode of South Park.
"Do you ever make remarks... that you later regret?"
"Would you rather give orders... than take them?"
"Do you ever whistle... just for the fun of it?"
"Does life sometimes feel vague... and confusing to you?"
---------------
"Well, I hate to tell you, but you're completely miserable and totally depressed! Well, there's really no question that you're a perfect candidate for [Scientology|Adderall]. All we'll need to get started is $200."
The original post was "Can you explain how exactly?" You misread the comment.
The only confrontational word in that question was "exactly."
It's a fair question because of many people who do remember the pre-Walmart times (their big expansion was in the late 90s-early 2000s). The going narrative at the time was that local businesses were destroyed and this was a tragedy. Additionally, Walmart was one of the first retailers to primarily buy products from Chinese manufacturers instead of sourcing American-made products (after the death of Sam Walton). There were frequent news stories about how a factory closed and all the laid-off workers got jobs at minimum wage at Walmart, selling the very goods they previously made. Several municipalities enacted "no-Walmart" legislation and zoning regulations. Even South Park made an episode about the phenomenon.
Looking back, it might have been unfair to demonize Walmart for what was likely the rational decision to make in a competitive environment. But taken in context for the times, Walmart's growth in the late 1990s/early 2000s was controversial and frequently challenged.
Is this an episode of South Park? Or it just seems that way
$35 millions for doing nothing is quite impressive. I was watching the South Park episode "Go Fund Yourself" [0] just last night, and as often they are pretty much spot on.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Fund_Yourself
because no one cares about spelling any more, and because of that south park episode
The best interpretation of a troll was actually on "South Park: Season 20, Episode 10" Trevor's Axiom:
https://vimeo.com/194900488
While I understand Trump's motive to micromanage Saudi, Yemen, and Syria due to ongoing military conflict ... Iran makes no sense. Reminds me of a South Park Episode, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Yikes!
I think that (misleading) meme was started by the television show "South Park".
In it they routinely poke fun at Al Gore, having his character go around saying "I invented the internet!" among other things.
Somehow I don't think it is just the alt-right that has trouble suspending disbelief with a social justice enthused media. There's a good reason why South Park has a character called 'Token'. These political messages are shoehorned so bluntly into fictional television shows there is no reason to hold back from describing them as political propaganda. I'm glad I catch only brief snippets here and there through Youtube and Netflix.
It's the recent BBC Sherlock that really took the biscuit though. Sherlock Holmes could not be less interested in solving crimes when it is a proto-feminist movement murdering men. Great job guys.
No kidding, South Park's episode this week kind of pointed that out.
for a follow up to 3) I recommend investigating South Park's "TrollTrace" episodes where a town riots due to browsing/troll history lookup power given to the citizens.
Movies are, in my humble opinion, not the best "standard" yard stick to measure fluency. First thing is that films most often use quite limited vocabulary, and it's wildly different vocabulary than, say, found in newspapers, technical writing or in business language. Moreover films present a wide variety of communication styles. It's much easier to understand James Bond than South Park, because humour is actually quite high and demanding register of speech.
It can also break compatibility. I built a PC for the first time in probably 10 years. I went with Windows 10, but most of the my stuff didn't have drivers and support. I couldn't tell if things were broken or just didn't have driver support. I cobbled together a version of Windows 7 to make sure everything worked, then moved back to Windows 10.
South Park Studios still uses an image compositor called Shake. It's cross platform (OSX, Windows, Linux) and Apple stopped development in 2008, but they still use Shake to make new episodes. There's a good chance it won't run on the latest version of the operating system, but they've made a huge investment in software and hardware that works fine. Forcing and update would shut down production.
Looks like Marc took some inspiration from the most recent South Park episodes.
Your point only holds as long as "arbitrary censorship" is tautologically defined as the types of censorship that would cause people to stop trusting the MPAA. And not only stop trusting them, but actively distrust them so much that retailers and theaters were economically incentived to not even humor the uptight busybodies that demand a censorship system.
Given that the MPAA already bumps a movie up to at least PG-13 for drug use, I wouldn't find it incongruous for them to treat cigarettes in a similar fashion.
If someone considers the Orgasmo/South Park case study, or many of the others in This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006), I don't know how they would come away with an assessment that the MPAA doesn't already engage in arbitrary censorship (unless they were to agree with Matt Stone's more serious accusation that the MPAA is an economic cartel).
Sponsored content. http://www.hulu.com/watch/873050
It is South Park (so you get all the crude/offensive humor that comes with it), but this episode is a pretty good microcosm of this sort of thing.
If you haven't watched Season 19 (which includes the serial saga with P.C. Principal mentioned in the article) I'd highly recommend it. It really embodies South Park's unique ability to be simultaneously mature and immature. And its ability to be hilariously relevant after all these years while delivering thoughtful social commentary.
I watched plenty of South Park when it came out, but hadn't watched it in many many years. I checked out Season 19 after I saw it mentioned as one of the best South Park seasons yet--and I have to agree. Most seasons have a few brilliant episodes and many average ones. Season 19 is great throughout--its foray into serialization means more thorough criticism of big topics and is able to weave several issues together over the course of the season that would seem forced within a single episode.
Yeah I still love the show, and even half baked South Park has a lot of laughs and meat to chew on. It's just a shame that a lot of the time it feels like potential was squandered or the episodes resolution is completely out of nowhere.
I'm down voting you because I think not only is your assessment wrong, your telling of history is too. One of the first episodes of South Park was a Jesus vs. Santa episode where they fought over the meaning of Christmas.
There was toilet/uncouth humor then along side political/social commentary, and there is basically the same product now.
I used to love South Park. Now I can barely stand it. Am I getting too old? I rewatch old episodes with pleasure though. It's the new episodes that make me cringe. It used to be about fart jokes and silliness. Now it's all political crap.
I grant that "coolness" is tricky to define, but (if you're not restricting the domain of discourse to a particular group or subculture), I think it has to include either popularity or "outsider-ness". i.e., you can be cool either by being popular or by being controversial enough to get everyone talking about you, even in a negative way.
I don't think South Park meets either of these criteria anymore. It's not a pop culture locus like it used to be, and even their controversial episodes are ignored. Part of this isn't their fault- it's probably the continued fractalization of culture where we have ever-fewer shared experiences- but I also think it's hard to keep anything fresh for 20 years, especially something trying to be "edgy".
Note that that doesn't make it "bad", and it doesn't mean you can't still like it. But I think "coolness" can only be defined in terms of broad opinion.
If you enjoy South Park and you haven't seen "6 Days to Air" you really need to. I had no idea that the entirety of the episode was created within a week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Days_to_Air
One of the keys for South Park is that it can quickly address really current topics because of its production schedule.
Its shocking how much South Park affected my life. No other show that long lasting I watched all episodes of and because the focus of the chaacters shifts from the children to the adults it also stays relevant with me as i get older.
It was so painful to read. It's like they are marching toward the "Safe place" South Park episode with full thrust.
I remember watching an interview with the creators of South Park in which they described the transition from animating using cardboard cutouts to a system with CorelDraw and other pieces of software which helped speed up the process. The bulk of the efficiency improvement came from carefully defining all the frequently used objects (characters, houses) once with movable components, and reusing those objects in the per-episode animation pipeline.
I can easily imagine an animation system like the one presented here enabling another massive improvement in animation efficiency. In the same way animation software allowed South Park to reuse pre-drawn objects, a deep learning system could enable south park to carefully define the entire drawing style just once, then generate complete episodes based on simple story boards and animation directives. Fortunately, South Park already has a significant amount of training data available, specifically every South Park episode yet produced.
Reminds me of that South Park episode where they take cough medicine to get great ideas, decide to write it down, then when they get conscious again they find out all they had written were some squiggly lines. Could be an urban legend of some sort?
South Park is actually fully CG. Done in Maya IIRC. The original short it spawned from was construction paper being moved around on an animation stand, but now it's completely virtual.
The entire industry does not do it like this. I worked in the industry around the turn of the century and saw a lot of new shows starting up on full-digital workflows. I am really surprised that it is taking some overseas shops this long to switch from roughing the animation on paper to roughing the animation in the computer.
Building it in 3D and making the computer "draw" it is another thing. I mean, we still have people doing beautiful stop-motion work because that's what they like the look of, even though CG movies tend to have a similar look. It's very much an aesthetic choice. It's art, and sometimes art involves weird choices.
They want to be rich without having rich-people problems (like too many new people moving to your hometown). I have a friend who works in city planning, and disturbingly enough, he told me the gentrification episode of South Park ("The City Part of Town") was completely realistic.
Really sad about what happened to blog author. This reminds me of the South Park episode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HumancentiPad manifesting in reality.
MUST-WATCH in this context: South Park S18 E6, it's about Freemium, Mobile, Addiction, Dopamine in very educative AND funny way
Here full episode in HD (you can switch to English): http://www.southpark.de/alle-episoden/s18e06-freemium-gibts-nicht-umsonst#source=e3748950-6c2a-4201-8e45-89e255c06df1:c6cbd5e3-7eae-4cc3-94b7-119c8d412f99&position=6&sort=!airdate
yup, thanks for pointing out it was season 19 episode 5, safe space
i failed to because i refuse to link to that hulu run abomination
bah, south park, the show where the creators themselves put their work on the internet to be viewed freely and for free
what a unique expression of the creators' personal beliefs
a stance that had a profound impact on me, and my peers
when hulu bought the rights i felt my skin grow cold, but i held out reservations in the hope that someone at hulu was just a fan and wanted to improve south park studio's backend whilst respecting the implicit wishes of the creators that their work is free and readily consumable by anyone regardless of manufactured scarcity or paywalls
now this shit is the new normal:
"Safe Space" This episode is currently not available at South Park Studios
and
There was an error playing this protected content. (Error code: 3365)
i lament the loss of a future's exposure to the challenging ideas innate to the show
hulu has zero respect for the series or its creators opinions on how open it has always been, and should be
fuck you hulu
> Problems faced by transgender physicists included colleagues who failed to respect their gender
> identity — for example, by using the wrong name or pronoun to refer to them — and a lack of toilet
> facilities that they felt comfortable and safe in using.
That's a bit harsh against the colleagues who might've had no ill intent, and simply forget to use the "proper" pronoun.
As for toilets.. really? -- I have a big problem with peeing in a urinal with people standing next to me, can I call myself discriminated if there are no means to have a toilet to myself?
This article reminds me a lot of a South park episode of last season.
Hasn't anyone seen how kids obsess over Let's Play?
I've talked to several kids who almost prefer watching Lets Play over playing any given game. That South Park episode was spot on.
Developers should be alarmed!
That does make me think of Randy Marsh at Whole Foods in the South Park episode "Safe Space" last season.
This reminds me of the recent South Park episode on ads, for some reason.
This implies there aren't future episodes upon which this type of statistical analysis could be applied.
This also strongly implies you think the author is a 'budding data scientist' out of his/her league.
This is very much a 'sample' given the context that South Park is still releasing new episodes.
FYI all elitist 'statisticians' ...
It's not some grand conspiracy. There's no secret committee toasting to their success. It's just what has happened when the press and a lot of people believe all of the vitriol that comes out of people like Jackson and Sharpton, or lesser known race-baiters in other communities. South Park did a whole episode about this phenomenon (episode titled "With apologies to Jesse Jackson").
I've been a member of multiple institutions that have fallen on the wrong end of this kind of activism. My Catholic high school has been dragged through the local media for not listing a gay marriage in the Marriages section of the alumni magazine. The inter-fraternity council at my alma mater has a speech code for offensive language and a dress code for offensive clothing, like Indian mascots. I saw the behind-the-scenes arm-twisting by the college administration to make them do it. Every big tech company has to pay the protection money here too. Jesse Jackson and his allies in Congress started saying that the tech industry was racist for not having enough black people, a totally absurd accusation because the only reason why there aren't many black employees is that there aren't many black applicants. Then he got invited to a few board meetings, extracted some donations, and went on his way.
Anyone see that episode of South Park lately where Jimmy is the only human that can identify an ad from real content?
Now, when I read something like this, it's obviously an ad.
It remembers me a south park halloween special episode, where Stan facetimes with it's iPad [0].
It's my personal opinion, but even though idea looks rather good (give a physical presence, by working remotely), wouldn't it be just a very strange and awkward (and maybe smug) to use? Like the original segway, which was very cool invention, but did not gain much traction, due to how awkward it is, how people look smug using it, etc (even though 'hoverboard' gained a lot of popularity, but is IMHO an inferior gadget).
All in all, cool, though IMHO people will need to take a lot of time to be accustomed by such device.
[0] http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/screencrush.com/442/files/2012/10/sp_1612_promo01.jpg
P.S. cannot compare to segway robot, as their servers seem to struggle to load the content at the moment of writing this comment.
Somebody saw that South Park episode on them.
Except that Netflix is constantly adding/removing content. Movies become available and then stop being available.
This is one of the major reasons Netflix is hitting "Original Content" so hard.
They can take away South Park (or whatever it is NBCU owns) but they can't take away Orange is the New Black or other Netflix Exclusives.
The real problem then becomes what happens when Amazon Prime has exclusives. HBO GO has exclusives. Netflix has exclusives. Hulu has exclusives. etc. Now, to legally watch all the popular shows, you have to pay 3, 4, 5, etc companies $~10 a month on top of your internet bill.
à la carte that everyone has always said they wanted (Why should I pay for sports when I don't watch them? Or Holy TV? or spanish channels?)
I wonder how i is that South Park did a great episode[0] on this subject of addiction to freemium games, and neither the post nor anyone in over 100 episodes mentioned this. Is South Park completely passé?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium_Isn%27t_Free
I like to think of Gravity as a result of mass deforming space in the same way a brown turd deforms toilet water as it spins inevitably toward the outlet during flushing. Standing atop the turd you are affixed to its mass, but the entire system is affixed to the spinning, evacuating forces of the great flush. The Bono/Kurick South Park episode was instrumental in this theory's formulation.
Go back and read the post to which I was responding where the author stated that in his mind he thought that officers signed up for a dangerous job knowingly because they're heroic and self sacrificing.
I'm saying it's a job, in many ways similar to your job and my job where putting all this heroic self-sacrificing burden on them isn't fair.
Interesting how you criticized me for creating hypotheticals which are almost direct quotes from everyday stories on HN and then tried to prove your point by referring to a South Park episode - a cartoon that features fictional characters doing outrageous things for the sake of comedy.
Are you justifying unnecessary force and unnecessary force multipliers by invoking hypothetical situations? This is madness. When any hypothetical situation is a valid excuse for use of force, all uses of force will fall back on hypothetical situations as justification.
And most do, when it comes to the police and use of force.
Have you ever seen the South Park episode where they forbid the killing of animals unless in self defense, so hunters shout "it's coming right for us!" before lighting them up with automatic gun fire?
Yeah, this is like that.
I believe South Park prefers to be a "middle voice" seeing both sides as completely polarized "you are with me or against me" and trying to entertain all ideas.
One perfect example for me was the episode where Kenny was left brain-dead in the hospital. Cartman wants the plug off to inherit his toys and the other kids want him to stay plugged because they think that's what their friend wanted. Cue a whole episode of "my side vs. your side" until we learn that Kenny DID want to be plugged off should something like this happen. Cartman was right for the wrong reasons and Stan & Kyle were wrong for the right reasons. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Friends_Forever_(South_Park)
Or the 2008 episode about the american elections where both sides are obsessing about how the other will turn America into hell by the next morning only to discover the world is still there. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About_Last_Night..._(South_Park)
It's really pretty impressive how quickly they churn out episodes. "Six Days to Air" is a really interesting documentary on that process. I wish they had included more details on how they manage to get all of the animation and artwork done in such a short time window. They've got to have invested some considerable effort in their tooling and processes to support that - and they do touch briefly on the original way that the pilot and early seasons were produced, stop-motion with construction paper.
Just the facial animation to sync up the mouths with the script, limited as it is in South Park, has to have some interesting automation underlying it. Unless they've got a huge army of animators chained to their desks pushing sprites around that they didn't show.
I think "scripted" is the right word in this case.
"Procedural" refers to a specific type of scripted television, typically but not always a legal, medical, or law-enforcement drama. A procedural show follows the same format every episode: a mystery of some kind is introduced (medical, crime, or what have you), and the characters go through the procedures of solving the mystery. Law & Order: SVU can be described as a procedural; South Park cannot, unless you're using a very very loose definition of the term.
If you're looking at this in terms of nested sets or categories:
- Scripted vs. Nonscripted
- Comedy vs. Drama (usually also means half-hour vs. hour)
- Episodic (every episode is self-contained) vs. Serialized (the show follows an overall, evolving storyline that builds each episode)
- Subgenre
So a show like L&O: SVU would be a scripted, one-hour drama in the crime procedural subgenre. (We could also describe the show as episodic, but given that all procedurals are episodic, this would be redundant.)
South Park is a scripted, half-hour comedy in the animation subgenre that typically follows an episodic format, with occasional serialized story arcs spanning multiple episodes (and in the case of this season, the whole season).
From the article:
> But in a way, its project and theirs are the same: to deal with tensions by prescribing more conversation, even if it’s uncomfortable, not less.
Are you kidding me? The show does the exact opposite if you've seen more than a handful of episodes. This comment summarizes the show much better than this article:
https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3tsd5o/south_park_is_written_by_reddit/cx8xc4o
> Uncritical, detached acceptance of the status quo is the only morally upright posture, and those who draw a distinction between is and ought are all smug bullies, outlandish freaks, and/or closed-minded zealots.
> It's a show that teaches its audience to become lazy and self-satisfied, that praises them for being uncritically accepting of their own biases, and that provides them with an endless buffet of thought-terminating cliches suitable for shutting down all manner of challenges to their comfort zones.
Or in video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TttI60-mjQ
I read somewhere (on Facebook FWIW) that the storyline for this season was originally pitched as another South Park movie. When it didn't get up as a movie, they decided to make a season out of it instead.
I once watched every episode of every season back to back consecutively (over the course of a month and a half) in order to test a thesis that I have about the long term themes in the show. I and a friend of mine had an informal theory that there was along term plot line involving the cows of southpark and the aliens, and that in the end each major character's story line will wrap up in some way that brings closure to their particular character story line.
tldr if there is a long term story it is very loose.
There has been long term development of some themes, each of the four characters has a key characteristic that I do think develops over time, but not with the same hidden strong continuity that I expected to find when I set out on this journey.
Most notably Randy's deteriorating marriage to Sharon, Stan's loneliness and insecurity about his family, (and Shelly) progresses from season to season
Cartman's relationship with his mother and his coming to terms with his weight, possible homosexuality, and finding his father progresses from season to season.
I looked to find development in Kyle's moral compass but could not discern anything.
Kenny overcoming his identity as "the poor kid" for lack of a better term seems to progress as well.
I watch the show less often now because that sprint was enough South Park to last a lifetime but I look forward to seeing how the show wraps up and if there is any closure instead of just ending in a fart joke.
> "South Park" used to be so anti-continuity - its episodes are often written days before airing
That last fact needs extra emphasis. The multi-month lead time needed for every other scripted show on Television means that South Park is the only show that can pull Ripped-From-the-Headlines commentary without things being dated by the time the episode airs. (Law and Order: SVU is show that is guilty of this to a hilarious degree)
Having just watched the most recent South Park episodes Sponsored Content and Truth and Advertising, I'm honestly not sure if this a real story or very well placed native advertising... Oh, Lifehacker.
I think he was referring to this episode of South Park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicar
There is funny South Park episode on this: http://uk.businessinsider.com/south-park-sponsored-content-ad-blocking-episode-2015-11?r=US&IR=T
In perfectly sponsored content there should be no ads you can click on. :-)
I don't get the South Park reference and how it relates to weebly. Confession: I didn't watch the whole episode - gotta work :)
South Park actually had an episode on that recently..
"You're Not Yelping" (S19E04): Cartman considers himself the top online restaurant reviewer in South Park.
The anecdotes on corporate and cultural acquiescence to the Chinese state are not all that convincing. Overall, industrial interdependence and trade is employing way more people than otherwise, in a strictly macroeconomic sense. Normatively, it might result in executives in jail, but fewer people everywhere are starving. Americans aren't killing people all over the world at the same magnitude that they used to—especially not killing Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese people, whom they're now trading with. Surely that's a good thing.
But let's examine this accusation that culture has acquiesced. Gravity's trading the real Chinese antagonist for the fake Russian one is pretty damning, but has the author ever watched an episode of South Park? Trey and Matt do not trade in the most friendly opinions. The best point you can make from an example like Gravity is that mainstream cultural products are cowardly. But that isn't really all that surprising. I don't see the author writing a big cautionary tale about how Disney stars don't write enough songs about climate change and cuts to food stamp programs. That self-censorship started long ago, way before there was a Chinese market for American media. Self-censorship and the dumbing down of mainstream media—i.e., endogenous U.S. state and corporate propaganda—is a way bigger threat to our way of life than the organization of Chinese markets ever will be.
What about the other corporations, like Walmart, Apple, GM and Rio Tinto, who got their executives jailed for not accommodating Chinese state demands? I can also say: so what? These companies make a bunch of physical junk, they don't make political statements or cultural products. And they make this junk primarily for the benefit of shareholders.
Asceticism (in its many forms, like lower demand) is a bigger threat to junk makers than Chinese market controls. Ask Paul Krugman: A slump in global demand put way more American workers on the street than a free trade deal ever has. Germany's savers and domination of the currency union puts way more people on the street than reckless borrowing in a small country like Greece ever has. One man's income is another man's expense. The system by which that exchange happens is sort of irrelevant, depending on where you normatively value people like shareholders in the grand scheme of things.
The Chinese state, through blunders, and Western regulators, through austerity, magnified unemployment—they're both equally stupid. You can't blame trade—demand has to come from somewhere, and it seems totally reasonable that demand comes from people outside your national borders. It's something that the Soviet Union never figured out but the Chinese government did. Demand is a more fundamental economy property than the author admits, and it's not obvious how to increase demand while reducing global trade.
But the few billions of dollars shareholders miss out on out when the Chinese state strongarms executives? Who gives a shit. The author's blaming the very industrial interdependence that in a macroeconomic sense is keeping millions of people employed, while at the same time kvetching about some bad deals some companies got sometimes.
I think he gives Google too much credit for not having business in China. Besides funding the author's think tank, whom exactly are they employing? Which millions of factory workers? At least the junk makers are directly putting money into the pockets of many millions of Walmart and Apple/Foxconn employees.
Google's search engine facilities an absolutely colossal amount of commerce that must employ millions of people indirectly. But so does Baidu. It's a Pyrrhic victory for free speech. At the end of the day, Chinese people don't need Google. They need rice on a plate.
The alternative world, where American "relies" on "itself" for everything, is not one we want to live in. Billions of people—Chinese people, Indian people, the world's people—stuck in a much worse poverty because they can't make something Americans can buy. The subsequent wars due to poverty. The nationalism and jingoism a closed-trade policy breeds, and the consequences like institutionalized racism, colonization and vindictive foreign policy. That was reality up until the 1970s, just when global economic liberalization started to reach billions of people. If you weren't born among a lucky few prior to that time, you wouldn't want that system. This "Chinese master" worldview is ridiculous.
As a European, this just reinforces my belief that South Park is a documentary, not a comic extrapolation of reality... :/
I mean.. to begin with, what can they accomplish with 6 cars with 2 cops each that they can't with a third of that force?
Not to start with how much more complicated it must be to coordinate 12 cops compared to 4.
From a foreign perspective: Americans always seem to try brute force, as opposed to something balanced.
My theory: We get better police officers in Scandinavia since it's not a low-paid job here, relatively speaking. It's not a way of the local power-hungry losers to get the positions of power they crave. I know few local and young police officers here; it's my honest assessment that none of them went into this line of work because they craved power.
Just to cross the beams of pedantry here for a moment, a widespread and well known --- if less than serious or systemic --- cultural/social bias against red haired people, probably first coming into public consciousness in North America due to the infamous South Park 'Ginger' episode, has in fact primed you to select "redheads" as a non-contentious example of a plausibly ethnic group that might be discriminated against, something that every red-haired person knows, although you apparently do not. This means that the choice is statistically insensitive and the social methodology is poor.
Actually, choosing an identifiable group at random would be both socially and statistically unwise, as, following Patero distribution, there are vastly more minority/extreme minority distinguishable groups of people than there are majority/significant minority ones; this means, firstly, that any group randomly selected with equal biasing between all groups has a high probability of being subject to actual discrimination, mooting any social benefit of choosing a group at random; secondly, that the generalizable qualities of the group chosen would therefore have a distribution with very little deviation (if I'm using my terms correctly) and would be highly predictable, thereby obviating any possible statistical benefit of doing so.
Summary: Author made comments on a message board in the context of the Texas clock-bomb thing:
X => "Anyone building a clock for their hack?" Author => "We're building a bomb actually looks just like a clock though" Y => "yeah my clock is the bomb come check it out"
And got thrown out of the event for violating code of conduct.
Relevant South Park IMO: http://www.cc.com/full-episodes/h4o269/south-park-stunning-and-brave-season-19-ep-1901
> these movements are not about everybody living much longer, only selected wealthy elite
This is probably what concerns me the most. And in fact this is already reality. E.g. in my country if an average person discovers they have cancer, their chances are pretty grim in contrast with e.g. Switzerland. And there are countries which are really poor where a infection which is curable for $20 can kill people.
An interesting movie to watch on topic: In Time (2011) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/ . This South Park episode is also exactly on point: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1198003/ .
I had never smoked weed before moving to California (from Europe) in my early 20s, at which point I was fairly quickly introduced to it. I had no experience with drugs of any kind besides alcohol either, and I quickly became fascinated with the effects it had on my brain. Picking it up with the same intensity I would pick up any other interest, I read a lot of stuff about the subject (Timothy Leary, Sam Harris, Aldous Huxley, etc.) and tried a few other psychedelics.
Then for a couple years I had a job that made me utterly miserable, and I smoked as soon as I got home every night. I don't believe it strongly affected my intellectual performance (a lot of my highly upvoted HN comments from that time were written while high), but it made me okay with not doing nothing productive, merely aimlessly consuming media (this is summed up really well in a South Park episode, where Randy tells his son Stan: "Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but, well son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored, and it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything.").
Now I have a job that I really like and am in a generally better place in life, and smoke maybe once a week or so. My personality tends to be fairly inwards-oriented, and I get anxious fairly easily (like many hackers, I presume), and weed helps me step back, and get perspective on my mental state. It's also a good social bonding agent, and also an interesting substance to use when you've been working on a creative problem for a while and are stuck (my experience has been that it's harder for my brain to learn completely new things while high, but easier to make connections between things I already know, or see known things under a new light).
Consent is cemented 72 hours after a contract has been agreed-upon, unless fraud is involved. In this case, agreement to future contract amendments/changes is consent.
Your fault for clicking "Agree". Didn't anyone watch the Human Cent-iPad episode of South Park?
This was the premise of a South Park episode last year.
It's amazing that Trey & Matt are so dead on when it comes to current events and culture critique that they sometimes even parody the future.
South Park had an excellent episode explaining freemium games: http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium-isnt-free
This comment reminds me of South Park's "Dances With Smurfs" episode.
Generalizing, dogmatic attitudes, some of which are religious - and some of which are expressed in your comment - are harmful.
It's just as silly - and intellectually easy - to blindly condemn culture and religion as it is to blindly follow them.
There's a wonderfully epic two-part South Park episode that makes this point:
http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s10e12-go-god-go http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s10e13-go-god-go-xii
LoL is capped at lvl 30. With boost, it will take you 1 week instead of 2 to reach lvl30. It does have any in game effect. Furthermore, they are not an item that you are trained to use as a currency.
The South Park episode about freemium game is very good at explaining how the freemium market model is based on addiction.
I'm not an expert on what kids are doing on their phones, but my phone does not encourage interactions. When I packed my computer and took it to a friends house I didn't read Slashdot and play Simfarm alone, we'd hook up Starcraft or Diablo.
I think of the Pewdiepie episode of South Park where Ike and his friends each have their own device and each consumes their own media separately when I think of kids having sleepovers now.
There is an interesting south park episode about this. It ended up with police drones brutally destroying civilian drones. I think it was parody of violence occurring during protests. However it still made me wonder, whether drones will become avatars for people who don't want to leave home, and how much history simply repeats.
Daily Show/Colbert are so incredibly dumbed down and mainstream though. And South Park has the annoying tendency to reiterate its point throughout the episode.
This reminds of South Park episode on the drones: http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e05-the-magic-bush
> Only on torrents, Comedy Central has tried to erase it from history.
That's bizarre. A quick Google search led me to the full episode here: http://pollystreaming.com/South-Park-Season-5-Episode-3-Super-Best-Friends_v5773
I'm not sure if this is due to the Streissand Effect.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have actually said basically what you just said.
In episode "201" (S14E06) all the celebrities South Park has parodied over the years collectively sued South Park town for making fun of them. The town would be ruined by the lawsuit, and beg for the celebs to drop the lawsuit. They agree to drop the lawsuit for just one thing - if the city could give them Muhammed.
The celebs had developed a machine that would extract the magic goo that makes it impossible to mock Muhammed from him. Eventually they get Muhammed and extract the magic goo. Tom Cruise eats it, but is shocked to discover that people can still make fun of him.
Comedy Central, ironically, totally beeped out the speech that followed (but thankfully it leaked Jan last year):
Kyle: That's because there is no goo, Mr. Cruise. You see, I learned something today. Throughout this whole ordeal, we've all wanted to show things that we weren't allowed to show, but it wasn't because of some magic goo. It was because of the magical power of threatening people with violence. That's obviously the only true power. If there's anything we've all learned, it's that terrorizing people works.
Jesus: That's right. Don't you see, gingers, if you don't want to be made fun of anymore, all you need are guns and bombs to get people to stop.
Santa: That's right, friends. All you need to do is instill fear and be willing to hurt people and you can get whatever you want. The only true power is violence.
South Park was right as always.
All their Muhammad episodes should be watched, in this order:
1. S05E04 (Super Best Friends). It's the only uncensored episode with Muhammad, and ironically he's a pretty cool guy. Only on torrents, Comedy Central has tried to erase it from history.
2. S10E03 (Cartoon Wars Part I)
3. S10E04 (Cartoon Wars Part II)
4. S14E05 (200)
5. S14E06 (201). Comedy Central actually bleeped all mentions of the name Muhammad in this episode plus the speech above. Watch the censored version first before you torrent the real version - the censorship is downright tragicomical.
To a lesser degree, Comedy Central did too, when they refused to fully air the South Park episode featuring, apparently, Mohammed hidden inside a bear costume.
You've lost me. Nobody described the South Park episode that way. Honestly I think you just want to be mad about something and you found a trigger.
The funny (or scary) thing is that South Park predicted exactly this 100%: An Uber competitor hires a criminal to be a Uber (Timmy) driver to sexually assault the first female passenger it gets[0] and get it really bad press.
BTW, this also happen in taxi cabs, but somehow they don't make the front-page of hacker news[1][2][3], I wonder why that is.
[0]7:40 at http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e04-handicar
[1]http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl-lauderdale-taxi-driver-charged-20141126-story.html
[2]http://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/2370444/taxi-driver-assaulted-female-passenger-before-raping-another/
[3]http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/bail-refused-for-taxi-driver-accused-of-raping-two-passengers-in-his-cab/story-e6frf7kx-1226506843629?nk=bdaf38fb02bd248e8f55a540d369ebec
Actually, the only reason I mentioned movies/TV shows was because I had just watched the Black Friday episodes of South Park and used those as inspiration for the introduction.
I concur that something needs to be done about these consumer Terms-of-Service type contracts.
There's a contract system in place, and it may work fine for people who have the incentive and the resources to look over them (mergers and acquisition deals, house purchases), but a lot of the time the document is very long and written in legalese.
How many people are really going to hire a lawyer to read their Apple Store or World of Warcraft terms? Writing a hugely lengthy contract is simply a way to discourage you from reading it, and then pretending that you've agreed to whatever the terms are. I guess there's some help from the legal system - ridiculous clauses are thrown out - but that doesn't address the fact that you are discouraged from reading about relevant information.
I think someone must have written a post about how long it would take to just read the everyday ToS type docs that we're presented with. And South Park did an excellent episode about this (The Human CentiPad).
That's essentially true whenever you wake up. If you can remember your dreams you are at height of creativity wave.
Dreams are merely snapshots of random neurons firing, that your brain for giggles sort into a cohesive dream - because for it can't be symbolic.
I used to sleep a lot with South Park blaring in the background. From what I've gathered brain takes stimuli from the last 50 to 30 min, just before waking up and turn in into cohesive whole. How do I know? I read some research and additionally by accident, in my dream I recognized parts of it as South Park episodes (yay lucid dreaming) that ended in my dream. Since the playlist was going sequentially, I could track that it was from a previous episode, however the current episode was halfway done.
South Park did an episode last night about some of the HOOK model aspects like triggers, rewards and how addictive the new model game developers are using. Found it quite funny and timing is impeccable with your bookrelease. Do you think the hook model should and could be applied more to school? Mostly thinking short term, since alot of students dont see (or believe) the long term rewards.
Not all my time, but as much as I can bear. Everyone needs to relax and enjoy themselves. I do watch movies and tv shows, but I generally try to choose forms of entertainment that have some educational value (even if it's social commentary, such as in the Simpsons and South Park). Between Netflix and Amazon Prime (and Vimeo and Crackle and all the other options) there is no need to go to see a movie in the theater. I do not go to concerts any more, there are free ones available on YouTube. I read free webcomics like Dilbert and XKCD. I buy PC games during Steam sales. Some forms of entertainment are egregiously expensive in my opinion. That level of inefficiency deserves criticism.
This exact subject was covered in South Park in the episode "Bloody Mary": http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s09e14-bloody-mary
Often they layer it on pretty thick but South Park can be pretty incisive satire, especially as many quickly dismiss it for crass\childish humour.
South Park did an episode on that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Tourette
Cartman fakes to have tourette so he can be asshole to everyone
A related argument had been made a lot lately about how "free" can lead to scummy business models like surveillance and manipulative black hat media tactics.
You can do free sustainably if your costs are low and if you have something a tier up you can sell. That's freemium and it can work for some things. But if your costs are high or if a paid tier does not materialize... Now you have a big problem. You own a liability, one purchased via massive investment and employing many people. You must find a way to make it pay, so you start looking at what you have a little differently. Your users... Now there's a product.
South Park parodied the grow-first-monetize-later gambit in the "underpants gnomes" episode:
1) collect underpants
2) ...?
3) profit!
Nobody knew the second step back then. Of course now companies like Facebook have shown us what step two is. It's:
2) sniff underpants
:)
When we expect, and depend on, the truth coming out, entities involved in spreading information take on responsibilities they may not have expected. Yes, that means Twitter, and even Comedy Central.
Anyone remember the South Park episode with Mohammed, but in a bear suit so it would be "okay"? Comedy Central showed where they stood on free speech by letting that episode air.
Then, when Comedy Central employees were threatened, they also showed where they stood on free speech by aggressively censoring the following episode.
Chilling effects ...
So now there's Twitter. I pray for the best for their employees, and I hope they're secured in ways they can truly trust ... because I'd hate to see Twitter bend to such threats. Actions set precedents.
It's amazing what chilling effects can do. Hell, just today, the Dutch Safety Board said the Boeing 777 passenger plane shot down near Ukraine was "downed by high energy object outside of plane" [1]. The whole planet knows it was a missile, but the Dutch are afraid of pissing of Putin, so they tone down their language to the point of saying as little as possible.
[1] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/9/malaysia-flight-17-likely-downed-high-energy-objec/
Not accurate at all. The vast majority of stock photos, tv show cast of characters, hypothetical situations, etc, all feature "diversity"; race, ethnicity, religion, whatever.
It's done to be politically correct and to protect yourself from accusations of racism, and it's laughably obvious.
It's the reason why the black kid on South Park is named "Token"- the shows creators needed at least 1 black kid, so he's the "token" black character.
This is hilarious. Sadly, this employee probably got a promotion internally for being absurdly fantastic at his job. It sounds like a South Park episode, "Ohhhh, that's too baaaaaaaaaahhhhd."
Did you see this fun South Park episode?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Centipad
I was on the first Tiger Woods PGA team for the first PlayStation (the one that had the South Park 1st episode hidden on the disc.) The PGA source was legacy code, having been ported and rewritten for every console to date. It was a serious rat's nest, with the compiled code far too large to fit into memory, so EA had developed their own code segment loader to enable their too large to fit executables to run on the consoles. I was put in charge of the "menu front end", the statistics tracking, and some of the AI logic. It was over a week just to read the logic and figure out WFT. The designs I had to implement were simply not possible with the existing framework, so I started over. I wrote a series of small finite state machines, fully documented their use in the source code, and then replaced the entirety of all the portions of the source code I was in charge of with my miniscule finite state machines and their paltry data. The segment loader was no longer needed for the front end, because I'd left 800K free (on a 1 MB system!). I spoke with a Tiger Woods PGA developer about a decade later, and my code was still there being used. And a year later, EA had me do the same thing to the AIs for NCAA Football, where I finite state machined their AIs, clobbering the memory required down to about a 6th of what it was previously.
I use wikipedia for this: List_of_Your_Favourite_Show_episodes always works:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mad_men_episodes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_Park_episodes
and there are usually links to individual episodes pages.
Depressing that someone facing death would worry about Disney World and Casa Bonita. I spent a vacation at Disney World when I was 9 years old and recognized it as a plastic mold-injected bore--not in those words at the time, but good god I knew it was a tiresome waste of life, even at that age. Casa Bonita is a South Park episode. Enough said about that.
But hey, you're the one who didn't buy life insurance like a responsible parent, so a non-sad sob story is your only chance of paying off your SUV. Great. Why do I care about your SUV? Also, why do I care whether you get a pricey funeral rather than a county funeral? Also, why are you more important than all of us who are born to die?
Also, why was this posted?
> You've never played an MMO...
It's true, I confess it. :)
My favorite South Park episode is the one where the boys spend their time immersed in World of Warcraft -- http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s10e08-make-love-not-warcraft
The thing is, this basically suffers the same problems. It's not so much technical shortcomings (although the sound desperately needs work...but I'm a sound guy so I would say that). It's just that special effects, ultra-violence, money shots, and showdowns are not the backbone of a movie. Now, the eye-candy stuff is the most expensive in production terms on a real movie, and trailers are always full of eye candy because a) you want to catch people's attention and b) you need to sketch the story very quickly and pictures are the most efficient way of doing that. But the backbone of the story is the relationship between the characters that you care about, and you can't ever get to know characters enough to care about them if they're just walking around turned up to 11 all the time.
Look at South Park - visually speaking it looks terrible, the character design and animation is about as basic as it can possibly get. But it's involving because the characters act out their personalities in a consistent enough way that the audience can identify with them by mentally modeling their behavior. South Park sin't to everyone's taste of course, but you can think of lots of other examples, I just picked this one to point out that the visuals are the least important element. The surprise in a storytelling reveal comes from discovering that a character is not who you thought she was, or or from having a resolution between two conflicting elements within the same character.
The reason that tragedies are tragic is because there are many things you like about the lead and it's painful to see them lost because of the lead's poor moral choices and eventual downfall. Likewise the enjoyment in seeing a hero's triumph is in watching them transcend their weaknesses. Rocky wouldn't be a success if it was just 90 minutes of Sylvester Stallone boxing to victory. the film seems like it's about boxing, but it isn't. It's about a dead-end guy who wants love and self-respect. Only his girlfriend knows what his real goal is, because she's the only person he's able to be completely honest with.
The problem with Deathknights in Love is that nobody in this story seems to have any life outside of Being Epic, whether they're Casting Epic Spells, Fighting Epic Battles, or Making Epic Whoopie. I can't relate to them because they're not real people, they're WoW avatars. I think Valve's Team Fortress & source toolkit are a far more fruitful tool for Machinima because the characters are more cartoonish and have clearly delineated strengths and weaknesses, so while none of the related Machinima is Shakespeare there is plenty of scope for comedy. The relative lack of realism makes it easier to focus on the dramatic elements rather than the purely visual ones (camera moves, impressive entrances and poses, special effects etc.). I think this was also a key aspect of Red v. Blue's success - it's much easier to transcend production quality constraints with humor.
I work on a lot of low-budget films, many of which are dreadful - and what makes them bad is not the lack of production value (sets costumes, cinematography, FX etc. etc.) but the lack of life in the characters, who are usually so bad that the actors and crew hold the fictional characters in complete contempt; at least if the characters are ridiculous the film has a chance to be tongue-in-cheek funny, but often they're just awful. This is the opposite of the film school problem where the characters tend to be richly textured wonderful people (because the writers and directors want everyone to know how interesting and pleasant they are), but there's not much budget or time for production value so you get a lot of films where Nothing Happens and the nice people who live in the world of the film are never put under sufficient stress to make for an interesting story.
With Machinima, the temptation is to use the computer for all that stuff that would be impossibly expensive to do otherwise. And I don't blame anyone for wanting to do something that looks epic, because while comedy is easier to stage it's harder to write, and if you want to be dramatic then awkward/comic stuff lets the air out of the balloon and can actually be depressing. But the strength of epic stories comes from the character development and that ultimately means characters have to overcome their natural tendencies in pursuit of something else. I would be much more interested in (and forgiving of) the Deathknight story if started out with a character that was actually fearful and whose sole interest was in escape, survival, and relief from being someone else's target all the time. That's a situation where good and evil start to actually matter, and courage has to be found rather than just being a character trait for the people on screen to measure each others' bad-assery. Apocalypto is a good film exploration of this theme, not least because it has so little dialog and all the action is motivated by the lead characters need to escape.
Alternatively, I'd be intersted in a story where I find out why the villian is so bent on exterminating everyone else. It's not Because He's Evil; nobody goes through life doubling down on the belief that they're a bad person, people do evil things because they believe they're superior and that people who get in their way are obstacles to be overcome in the pursuit of some worth (by the villain's standards) goal. A villain that just wants everyone dead doesn't have anything much to struggle for; even if s/he's a sadist, then there needs to be a struggle against boredom. If the villain completely succeeded in taking over the world and eliminating all opposition, what would s/he do then? Villains are either fleeing fears or pursuing goals just like heroes; when a plot revolves around Good vs Evil it's usually a sign that the story is basically Zombies vs. Zombies. Even in such a situation, audiences still want o pick a side; so the Alien vs. Predator movies succeed as action movies because we can anthropomorphize the Predator character more easily than the Xenomorph. If it was, I dunno, Aliens vx. Giant Spiders or Terminator vs. Predator (or any plot where both sides are intent on the destruction of the other and have little or no instinct for self-preservation) then it isn't that interesting to watch any more because questions of success or failure become so abstract as to be meaningless.
In short, I need a reason to care for characters other than their merely wearing metaphorical white hats or being the first people to appear on the screen before the Villains.
They're all done together. A typical show with a standard release cycle is actually holding back completed episodes.
The glaring exception is South Park, which is done pretty much days before release.
Also, sitcoms that are filmed in front of a studio audience tend to be filmed just a few weeks in advance, since they film whole episodes at once. Something like HOC is filmed more like a movie, where all the scenes in one place are filmed together.
This is a worthy cause, but I find it ironic that the page has so many links to social networks that engage in spying on a scale comparable to that of the NSA. And while the NSA was probably just collecting the information we know that Google and Facebook actually use it.
Saying that those services give you a choice not to use them is throwing sand in our face. We know that Facebook and maybe Google, too, collect information about people not using their services. They also track their users' behavior when they're not expecting it. Worst of all is the fact that most people don't fully grasp the deal those companies offer: they give you free services in exchange for your private information.
This reminds me of that recent South Park episode where Cartman goes to investigate the NSA while tweeting his every thought[1]. This kind of fight requires serious thinking about privacy in this day and age. Sure, it's bad that a government spies on people, but it isn't any better that some of the world's most powerful corporations trick people into being spied on and into becoming unknowing informants on their friends. This is a very serious and very broad issue. Let's not make it just about the NSA.
[1]: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s17e01-let-go-let-gov
Also, South Park Episode "Crack Baby Athletic Association" skewers the college sports system in the US.
http://beta.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e05-crack-baby-athletic-association
So, it looks like the South Park episode where they explained how Kanye had no sense of humor and was a gay fish was right.
My childhood exposure of Canada was through the movie strange brew. Still a favorite of mine.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086373/
I figured all Canadians were hosers who scarfed donuts and drank beer.
Then I watched Kids In the Hall and I figured they were mostly funny gay fellows.
Then I watched South Park . . .
South Park made a whole episode about this (re: Apple's terms of use) a few years ago:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e01-humancentipad
>Perhaps Cinderella was a poor example due to its origins as a folk tale.
I used Cinderella specifically, bc my understanding is the folk tale was very unlike (violent, gory, ect...) the Disney version tailored for children.
In general satire is a much easier and obvious legal analysis as well. Say for example South Park's episodes with Mickey (although more of a Trademark issue than copyright), more on point with copyright is South Park's Star Wars episodes. However, to answer your question, is it possible to make a non-satirical Mickey story that does not violate Disney Trademarks? The answer is yes, but admittedly much more difficult and likely to infringe than a satirical story.
>Hackers tend to view any involvement of the courts as a failure.
As a lawyer, I see lawsuits as a cost of doing business and inevitable for any successful enterprise. I would encourage all hackers, especially, to view lawsuits in the same light (e.g. I am not successful until I get sued). I say this because hackers particularly set out to disrupt established industries, take Uber or AirBnB as good examples, but even YC itself has been sued, that is not a failure that is the cost of success.
> At some point, the public deserve to own their own culture, not megalithic corporations.
This is simply where we disagree, I am not saying you are wrong by any means, because I do not think their is a right answer, your point is sincere and well reasoned. My counter, is that the free market decides. Moreover, if Mickey is not going to win in the market place because society wants to take the character and run with it open source style, well then Mickey will lose in favor of another cartoon Mouse created by an pro open source artist, but I would say the reason Mickey became a cultural icon is because of the tight control of the story and character vis-a-vis Disney ownership/investment. In contrast and in support of your position Japan has a thriving culture based open source character, where even iconic corporate mascots are adopted by the public and the public creates their own stories, comics, commercial products, virtual concerts, ect...
If Southpark does an episode on Google Glass that's anywhere near as hilarious and insightful as their Segway episode "The Entity" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park) -- then it's doomed! Matt and Trey's commentary on The Entity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WweVv41qQpc -- "Well, I guess you don't HAVE to do that..." -- Full episode: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s05e11-the-entity
"IT" can go up to two hundred miles per hour, gets three hundred miles to the gallon, and is an all-around better mode of travel. The only problem is that "IT" is controlled by a quite painful and uncomfortable method; using four "flexi-grip handles" that somewhat resemble erect penises; two held in the hands, one in the mouth, and a fourth handle which is inserted into the anus. It also transpires that the vehicle can be operated with buttons too, making the phallus-like controls an unnecessary discomfort. Garrison invites many important investors such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Yasmine Bleeth to see how "IT" works. Despite this unorthodox control mechanism (which is uncomfortable to the citizens of South Park), "IT" is still considered better than the airlines and Garrison is a smashing success.
Reading this article made me realize how disconnected I am from popular culture. I only know of Duck Dynasty because my relatives watched it while I was visiting them. All I know about Miley Cyrus is that she's a singer. Until recently, I thought Hannah Montana was a different person. I have no idea what the Dolphin's "Jonathan Martin versus Richie Icognito feud" is, but I'm guessing it's related to the football team. Finally, I only know about George Zimmerman because a friend told me to watch the South Park episode he was in. That's also how I found out that there was a World War Z movie starring Brad Pitt.
If you want to have more free time and be a happier person, cancel your cable subscription. Unfollow Twitter users who talk about pop culture and news. Unsubscribe from subreddits that are full of this tripe. (Or even better, stop visiting Reddit.)
If you're in your mid-20's, you've got about 2700 weeks left on this planet. If you want to minimize future regret, spend them on more worthwhile things.
> You should have no problems working in a creative and potentially offensive environment.
For some people, talking about the latest South Park episode can be extremely offensive, for others it's epic fun.
You piqued my curiosity, so I went looking. According to Know Your Meme, that most prestigious and reliable of sources, "derp" originated from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. First it was in a movie (where they were sniffing underwear), and then in South Park. Now, having not seen the episode, I can't really comment on its contents, but I assume that the character that first used the term in South Park was either simply stupid, or suffered from some form of disability. Either way, the term has since devolved into making fun of stupid people - which I believe the grandparent was also doing.
I like the "south park episode with ancient aliens" part most. http://i.imgur.com/ZDoYFdR.png
Maybe it's a silly theory, but just I thought the other day that the increased fear of disaster is a result of less spirituality in the west. (= decline of christianity, increase of atheism) And also a result of detachment from nature (= life in cities, spending lots of time in cyberspace etc.)
Perhaps the less you believe in life after death or a meaning of life, the more afraid you are of terrorists. The less likely you are to smoke cigarettes. The more you start to believe in technology. And so forth..
As if any of that would prevent the inevitable..
These thoughts are probably just the direct result of my current location (Buddhist Asia) and the South Park episode about NSA-surveillance. ;) (but its a good episode.)
I guess my point is: People need/want/tend to believe in something, and if that something isn't religion, it's something else.
Reminds me of the recent South Park episode on the NSA/public privacy.
Why on earth is this on the front page of hacker news. I understand that HN is not all about tech, and interesting articles of all kinds should percolate up. But why is this at the very top for so long. It's about Internet hate, and we all know that Internet hate is due to the anonymity that Internet provides, nothing more or less.
This has little to do with hipsters or counter culture. SOME People on reddit don't hate hipsters, or puppies, or anything else. They just hate, period. They hate because there is a % of human population which just likes to hate. Think about the Sexual Harasment Panda episode of South Park and the "we don't take kindly to..." line from it. That kind of attitude + anonymity = net hate. The good thing is, net hate very rarely = real life.
Any way, I think this guy is pretty cool. And it makes perfect sense to me that he uses a typewriter. He sells stories to tourists. He needs to give them a physical object, rather then an email, to inspire them to give him money in return. I know I would pay more money for a story written on a typewriter and given to me, rather then one emailed to me for the following reasons:
1. I know it's original, or at least typed just for me. 2. I will own the only exact copy of it. 3. I know some one actually spent time to type it out, which takes skills and effort.
Besides, if he wants to give people a hard copy, what is he supposed to do, lug a printer and power generator with him.
Reminds me of the South Park 'Whale Whores' episode.
A lot of people who probably are happily eating chicken getting incensed by another culture doing something the same to a slightly different creature.
Came here to say the exact same thing; thanks for saying it better than I ever could.
I don't get the basic income thing - pay people to not work? What?
Where's the money come from? How to you prevent massive inflation and a massive decrease in economic output as people quit their jobs? Who decides who gets this basic income?
This all reminds me of a south park episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts
An episode of South Park comes to mind 'The Entity',
"Despite this unorthodox control mechanism (which is uncomfortable to the citizens of South Park), "IT" is still considered better than the airlines and Garrison is a smashing success".
> I bet if we invoked some type of placebo security where the guards just watched a rerun of South Park instead of the xray screen, we'd be just as "effective."
I think they already do, except they're only showing that one early episode where Cartman goes all RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAYH
South Park actually did that very thing in one episode, where satanic animals were celebrating Christmas by sacrificing babies or something similar.
Was in it poor taste? Sure. But no one went to jail for it, no one was at all punished for it, no one really cared. So when the person I responded to decided to admonish these people for doing something "offensive to muslims and non muslims"... well for one that's objectively false, and for two that's ridiculously backwards from the culture of tolerance that I was raised in. His comment was more offensive to me than the action these folks took by several orders of magnitude.
It's impossible for me to fathom any serious repercussions stemming from offending the sensibilities of religious people. Because where I come from, that's basically a national pastime.
For the record, BBC, living "as a robot" and "through a robot" are completely different things to me. I was imagining the 116th episode of South Park had come true.
There will be two ways of looking at that episode if I know anything about South Park.
Ever see the episode of South Park where San Francisco is overrun with smug? You think Trey Parker is secretly just afraid that he loves to smell his own farts? I mean this is textbook logical fallacy. Just because some groups of people react to internal fear (e.g. Homophobes) by lashing out against those that have the characteristics they fear they have, does not mean that any time people are critical of other people its because they harbor secret fears.
The problem isn't that people individually are making photosharing sites. That's way cooler than 90% what people do. But so is being an advertising exec like Don Draper in Mad Men. Very cool job that many people would love to have. But Don Draper doesn't tell himself every morning that he's changing the world. This is of course something you see on Wall Street too. "I'm changing the world by securitizing these income streams." And how do tech folks react to that?
Also, people love to complain, about everything. Try writing a new GUI toolkit and prepare yourself for the barage of complaints from people asking why you didn't just contribute to GTK.
The part I really had trouble with was the shows had kind of a pervasive cynicism to them while the dialog consisted largely of biting sarcasm. The message seemed to be "whoever is fastest on the draw with a sarcastic insult is coolest."
Just taking an episode of South Park and s///g'ing the profanity with disnified words like "dweebiod" doesn't alchemically transmute it into "wholesome family entertainment". If you talk to your real life friends like the "friends" do on these shows, you're not going to have many of them.
If you weren't aware, Family Guy is a fairly popular low-brow humor cartoon TV show. It's in the same category as The Simpsons or South Park.
Does this remind anyone else of the South Park episode "Free Hat", where Cartman writes "Free Hat" on the advertising poster in the belief that freebies are necessary to attract people?
I hope some company will pick up the whole producing team and will continue series. Even though someone can say quality of "after movies" episodes wasn't as high as "before movies" but it's still the best western world animation there is (considering South Park decline). Also, Futurama's main theme has been my only cellphone ringtone for many years :)
I agree, you can't put South Park there, makes me think all the satirical points just went above your head. Have you actually seen an episode and get the point of the episode it makes (usually at the end by either Stanley or Kyle)
But then again I'd even go so far and put Abercrombie under racism. You seen their Singaporean ads?
There was an episode of South Park based on this. They specifically send all the homeless to California (because it's "super cool to the homeless"), too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Homeless
My point wasn't so much about rate of errors or cutting through the bullshit.
My point is that it is thoroughly, truly annoying to see masses "smart" but still obviously ignorant people apply religious qualities to scientists and statisticians because the outcomes are either a source of divine comfort or blasphemy.
Watch either of the "Go God Go" episodes of South Park if you want a more concrete example of the behavior I'm describing: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s10e12-go-god-go
> South Park episode ("Over Logging;" S12, E6)
Available online along with all the other South Park episodes on their official website: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s12e06-over-logging
What's old is always new, especially on the Internet. I'm constantly reminded of the "Simpsons' did it" South Park episode whenever I'm reading press briefs about new startups.
I grew up in the Midwest, and that south park episode was the first I'd ever heard of ginger-bashing. Or the term "ginger" for that matter.
"Unlike in the UK, there is no anti-ginger prejudice in the US, she says - Americans think of warm, comforting things like gingerbread."
As someone who grew up in America (with not ginger, but slightly reddish hair) I find this to very untrue. There's even a whole South Park episode* making fun of gingers, and there's few things more American than that. Maybe it's a relatively new thing, but I doubt many young Americans think of warm ginger bread.
* http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s09e11-ginger-kids
"But people raised to believe that physicists are more reliable than Hindu priests will prefer molasses to milk. For those who cannot follow the mathematics, belief in the Higgs is an act of faith, not of rationality."
This reminds me of the episode of South Park where Cartman travels into the future to play Nintendo only to find a post-religious world mired in faith-based fighting.
If your quest for understanding takes you down the path of science or of religion or both, at some point you are going to have to take something on faith, and to succeed you will eventually have to defend that faith - usually against someone else's faith in something else.
We all have our cross to bear.
There most certainly are people who have become celebrities off fostering the notion that true and abhorrent racism is everywhere. They make the news, they travel to picket, they write for newspapers, and in one case have actually been the subject of a South Park episode about creating racism out of nothing.
Likewise, there are religious figures who are making money off going on TV and shouting about how their religious freedoms are being trampled on and how it literally is an "us vs them" fight and if they lose it's game over for their deity.
Likewise, there are celebrities who get their paycheck in part or full from finding sexism in daily life. Ryan Singel just became one of them.
It's the power these people, few though they may be, hold over the discussions in society, the power to push political correctness and make people second-guess their words and actions to the point where it's impossible to keep up with what is polite to say and what will get you fired, beaten up, or cast out. There's money to be made in controversy, and that money isn't going uncollected.
That's exactly the problem, i.e. those people who endlessly promoting git so that they can be seen as elite developer. Their favorite past time is to share their "get it" stories with the rest of the world.
Not unlike the "Are You There God? It's Me, Jesus" episode of South Park.
I would not be hirable there. I have had the misfortune of only working at jobs where there has been (1) a lot to do, (2) much of it very interesting, and (3) the quicker it gets done the better. Trying to throw in any significant open source work on top of this would push me past the burnout point.
When I get off work, I sit down on the couch, put on something relaxing on the TV (Science channel, Discovery, History, Nat Geo, etc. or a sitcom or Futurama, Simpsons, or South Park), and then pull out a math textbook or a theoretical CS book or an interesting research paper, and work on expanding my theoretical knowledge. I've also added a lot of Udacity and Coursera to the mix.
(I assume it goes without saying that I also waste a vast amount of time on Reddit and HN...)
> Do people really complain if a south park episode is taken down from youtube?
Actually, it does kind of annoy me:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/layout/common/img/geoblock/messages/au.jpg
I've been seeing that for yonks now...
In fact, this is one of the things that pisses me off most about copyright law: the fact that it's still rooted in a pre-internet past where content owners are able to exploit geography for financial gain.
The Oatmeal's content is owned by the creator and is made freely available. FunnyJunk did not even credit Inman, they were effectively stealing his copyright, not merely pirating content.
"Most other copyright holders" -- this is much too general a claim.
Do people really complain if a south park episode is taken down from youtube? No, they don't. South Park episodes can easily be viewed at South Park studios.
Do people really complain that their bootlegged copy of Avengers got taken down from a filesharing site? Yes, but not from a vigilante-style moral high ground. What people really complain about is when invasive DRM-schemes are deployed that prevent normal people from, say, making a single copy of a movie they paid for.
Do people complain when a short youtube clip is taken down (eg, a highlight from a sports game)? Yes. Why? When the clip is not available anyhwere else and it kills the conversation. People linked that video in articles and forums and emails and discussions and now it's gone.
Do people complain when mashups involving copyrighted content are taken down? Yes, because mashups are believed to be fair use.
Do people complain when a home video gets taken down because for several seconds you can hear a copyrighted movie playing in the background? Yes, because that's just fucking ridiculous and I'm sure you agree.
I think you can now see some distinctions between what internet vigilantes tend to complain about and what actually happened with TheOatmeal, and the contradction only appears because you've abstracted and stereotyped way too much.
I have no clue as to how life was before books.
I can tell you I have incredibly good and fresh memory but it's much worse when it comes to web-accessible stuff, like what's PHP's function for this or that, while at the same time I can recall conversations from south park episodes I haven't seen in years.
I have googled the same function at least a dozen times while at the same time I could recall every detail of the Silmarillion after having read it only once (that was a while ago and I had much better memory but still).
It is highly likely that accessibility lowers the ability to retain knowledge in its raw form, as increasingly the brain relies on pointers to base a google search on instead of keeping track of the whole thing.
That almost sounds like a South Park episode. Take the empty hole where Steve Jobs used to be and fill it with douche to make a Jack Dorsey.
I liked Jon Stewart's take on this question in his segment on the question mark. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-13-2006/the-question-mark
Cartman also uses the just asking questions tactic to antagonize Wendy in a South Park episode where he takes the job of school announcer. http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s13e13-dances-with-smurfs
So it's like that episode of South Park?
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/411094/the-newest-meme
South Park Episode 1: Jesus vs. Santa, viral in 1995.
Simple results are better than Google - including the summary of the term grepped from wiki. Complex or rare queries aren't as good.
I use it at home - it's quicker to find out when the new South Park episode is out. But it's less use at work for finding the solution to that weird problem
Ok, so then I'll use Youtube as an example. The reason it became so popular was because it had TONS of copyrighted content on it in the beginning. I can remember back in my college days sitting and watching full episodes of South Park with my study group instead of doing homework. I could very easily have made the argument back then that Youtube was "built on piracy" (whatever that means).
This reminds me of an episode of South Park:
[http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154597/find-the-heart]
The kids try to find the "heart of Wallmart" so they can destroy it (being the evil mom-and-pop store demolisher that it is). When they finally locate the mythical Heart of Wallmart, it turns out it just a mirror. In other words, the problem is not Wallmart (or Google, or whatever), it is us.
On another note, games (in general) are not so bad (although the ones they were advertising probably were). Even the games many people might view as mindless (such as your average FPS) are actually deeply embedded with strategy. I actually learned a lot from games - not just strategy or spacial intelligence or hand eye coordination, but many of the same things I would have learned if I picked up a science fiction or fantasy book. Children today are glued to screens, and I think the only cure may be to embrace this and find a better way to use games as educational tools.
"Piracy has put the impetus on media companies to more quickly strike deals to make television and movies available on the Web legitimately. In 2007, Erik Flannigan, now the executive vice president of digital media at Viacom Entertainment Group, pulled up the Google search page on a giant screen at Viacom’s Times Square headquarters. He typed in “South Park” and took senior executives on a tour of Web sites offering pirated episodes.
Today, Comedy Central makes every episode of “South Park,” “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” available free online. The efforts, Mr. Flannigan said, put a big dent in piracy. As for the television industry as a whole, Mr. Flannigan said: “You might not like the windows, or that shows go up and come down, but it’s a far cry from where we were.”
Still, Comedy Central shows do not make billions in syndication or in DVD sales like some TV series. The industry has been reluctant to make available shows like CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory,” which sold for $2 million an episode to Time Warner’s TBS and Fox. That makes piracy a tempting option.
“If they don’t make content available where consumers are, they’re just shooting themselves in the foot,” said Ron Conway, a Silicon Valley investor and the head of the SV Angel investment fund."
CBS' concerns stem from the fact that if the web delegitimizes a television channel's status as the go-to source for viewers, then the whole process of the concentrated industry's livelihood, one which they have established as essential to stay afloat, let alone profit, is irreparably diminished.
If advertisers do not think the money they paid in the past is what they need to pay TBS now, given other advert opportunities, they will to want pay less for commercials, which support TBS' model, and would bungle up their plans. (TV Industry would go off of Nielsen ratings, which were strong estimated guesses of # of ppl/demos tuning into particular programming; this information provided Advertisers an idea of where they should their energies and money, for maximum appeal.)
TBS will want to pay less because they won't rake in as much from commercials, pissing CBS off since they rely upon $2 mil/episode syndication deals of their most popular properties to subsist and survive.
And CBS won't want to spend as much on their properties (production budgets, salaries, etc) because they will be uncertain if it will even pay off. We are past the days of Must-See TV Thursday and 30 Million Viewers for 30 mins of Friends. Sorry Burbank, they are not coming back. ---- At least Comedy Central recognizes their new competition in distribution and knew to bite the proverbial bullet and stream for free what is going to be out there for free, no matter what. Because of that, they build up brand loyalty (less and less of an influence on TV, more and more of one online) and can make money advertising -- centralizing properties, distributing, and payoff -- within the company. Establish an optional low-cost subscription fee for complete access to their library, and enough people will pay for it to justify its creation, too!
I am 21 years old, and hardly anyone my age watches TV. They WILL subscribe to Hulu, and they WILL subscribe to Netflix -- but look at the volume of content, and the amount of control the viewer has with those services! The television is a box of content that asks for passivity from the viewer, especially in choice availability. That does NOT work in The Game anymore.
Those that look to "Remember When" and long for systems of the past are individuals who are losing to progress, because they did not -- or COULD not, in much of Hollywood's case -- look past their at-present business models for more innovative means necessary for industry survival.
Now is the opportunity for independents all over to seize the unprecedented access to the consumer they now have and make a living doing it.
People do not care if Paramount Pictures made a movie or Uncle Regis' buddy two towns over did -- they just need it offered to them, they want it when they want it, and above all, they want it to be worth their time. Anybody can do that, and anybody can make money off of that.
--stepping off the soapbox--
South Park makes one episode a week. From script to airing. They work very long hours during their season. If you're not part of the creative team you're still on call 24 hours a day during production.
There was a Comedy Central special on the process last year.
This is great info (that you gave in a reply about production costs), but I'm very interested in something which you may have some knowledge on.
All of the production you're talking about is live (as in using real people, locations and equipment.) My question is, what about digital cartoon production, wouldn't the cost of producing a digital cartoon show or movie be dramatically less than the equivalent length live show or movie? There are no sets, cameras, costumes, or natural location permits in cartoons. On top of this, voice actors more than often portray multiple characters, you do not need an actor for each person, etc.
Lets take the show South Park for example, which differs from cartoons like The Simpsons, Spongebob and Family Guy in that South Park is produced completely in house, they produce each episode from scratch in under a week I believe using various digital production methods.
You still need the basic essentials, script, storyboards, sound, voice actors, audio recording equipment, etc; but I (and I've had some small experience here) would think the cost of the equipment needed to put out a digital cartoon, of tv quality and length, would be significantly lower than the equivalent live tv show.
Also, I stress that I'm talking about digital cartoons, not traditional animation which can easily take months (tv) / years (movie) to produce. I've produced many digital cartoons myself, but not quite at the level of quality that would be required for a tv show (I will give examples if asked.) From my experiences a very small group of people with almost no money can produce a high quality cartoon in a reasonable around of time. Time being the main issue which, in animation, can be solved with more people, and overtime is reduced because of digital software.
Marketing and distribution would still be the same more than likely, but there is still plenty of room to innovate there online; take Louis C.K.'s recent example of making a lot of money (over a million dollars?) selling his stand-up routine directly to the consumers.
I'm very interested in your thoughts on all this, especially if there are production costs I've ignored (for cartoons) that would even things out. Basically, do you think a cartoon with the production value of South Park, can be produced for significantly less money than the equivalent length tv show or movie?
I think this is something that can be done (independently produced cartoon show at the level of South Park), but really hasn't been tried yet online (a show that pushes boundaries and talks about critical topics,) at all. I know it can certainly be produced faster and adapt to changes more quickly than traditional live tv.
I'm a person who basically gets frustrated thinking of all the people right now who are waiting for The Daily Show, Colbert and South Park to "say something" about SOPA or other major topics, as if those shows are our voice (which they are the best example of on tv sadly.) In the end though, they work for Viacom, so even though people think those shows are pushing boundaries (which they are) just remember, they can only say so much. Where as an independently produced show released online can say pretty much whatever they want and can respond to topics IMMEDIATELY. Thoughts? :)
(NOTE: I am the author.)
I did try to get the episode from the Fox site. (I watch South Park on line this way all the time.) It didn't work. I also tried -- successfully -- the get it from iTunes. It cost me $6 (because I somehow accidentally downloaded it twice). But then IT WOULDN"T PLAY because my display is a DVI display and not an HDMI display!
Anyone watch that South Park episode with Walmart?
A quick Googling didn't turn up anything, but I'd be shocked if Matt and Trey supported SOPA. Comedy Central, maybe, but not them.
Allegedly from the South Park Studios FAQ: (http://www.idealog.us/2006/10/matt_and_trey_w.html):
> Matt and Trey do not mind when fans download their episodes off the Internet; they feel that it’s good when people watch the show no matter how they do it.
I guess... and of course I defer to Ebert on all things cinematic... but these are all critiques you could have leveled with equal force in 2002. There've been good years in the preceding decade.
Except for 3D. But how much of an effect is 3D having? Most movies aren't 3D.
I'll say this: I went to see Super 8 at an old 60's-70's style theater in the far-out suburbs, one almost identical to the ones I saw movies in when I was a kid. No stadium seating. Simple seats. No cupholders. Massive screen. Minimal concessions. Maybe it was just the movie I was seeing --- like how watching South Park on your computer enhances the experience --- but it was awesome.
Ultimately, my bet is that the problem with theaters is simple: for the core market (the family of four that wants blockbuster mainstream product), the substitutes are just too good now. Mainstream consumers have, relative to 1995, spectacular home theater setups, and diverse options for feeding content to them. Is it any wonder theaters suffer?
The real problem here is that many parents have very strong opinions regarding teaching sex in school.
obligatory south park reference (nsfw): http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s05e07-proper-condom-use
There's some truth to that. However, most of the USA is not like season four of The Wire, and still manages to have public schools that are mediocre at best. If it's valid to use fictional schools from TV shows as examples, my experience is that schools in small to medium sized cities in the USA are shockingly similar to the one on South Park.
Actually, I had trouble figuring out what to say that's non-offending when someone sneezes. I ended up picking "Gazuntite", which means health (pls. don't ask why I need to say anything at all).
Also, there is a hilarious south park episode that delves into this issue. Here's a clip for some yucks: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/230805/science-help-us
reminds me of the south park episode that ripped from the human centipede
> I don't consider that sexism at all.
There is no attribute that mothers have in common other than being female.
> It reminds me of the South Park episode that circled around the word "fag".
It reminds me of when I moved to South Dakota, and I learned that negotiating for a lower price was called "jewing you down". Doesn't mean the people had anti-Semitic beliefs; they just used a vicious ethnic slur in their everyday speech because they were used to it.
> and don't mean it as a negative connotation towards a homosexual.
Son, I reckon before you start using them big five-dollar words you oughtta learn what they mean.
I don't consider that sexism at all. It's a common term and everybody know's the meaning of it. It's not implying that women are less technically competent than their male counterparts, it's simply a term that's now used to define simplicity.
It reminds me of the South Park episode that circled around the word "fag". While it originally was a derogatory term used towards homosexuals, thats generally no longer the way it's used. I know myself, and many many others that occasionally drop the "fag" word and don't mean it as a negative connotation towards a homosexual. The same can be said for "so simple your mom could use it". The sex of the subject has very very little to do with the message being portrayed.
I personally think, if anything, people need to start being less sensitive to this type of stuff.
I'm pretty sure I saw one of those on an episode of South Park. It doesn't end well.
Which is exactly what the South Park episode parodies. Oh, the meta-irony!
There's a recent South Park episode parodying the length and absurdity of Apple's EULA's and terms of agreement. The whole episode is great and does a pretty good job of goofing on Apple fanboyism.
European who loves watching USA TV shows: it can literally take YEARS before very successful US shows make it to (non-pay) TV over here and quite often they are not being shown at all.
I was honestly surprised "Dexter" was on regular German TV here rather soon - I was on season three when they started season one here. I cannot say "Breaking Bad" is being aired yet nor "The Shield", "The Wire" or any other of my favorite shows. Not even "Battlestar Galactica" or "South Park" made it to non-pay TV.
Well, at least "Two and a Half Men" is on if you are so inclined.
As an Australian, hypothetically our US counterparts are often viewing and discussing brand new popular television as it comes out in America.
In Australia, hypothetically said episodes tend to come out a number of days later for very popular shows and often weeks or months later for less popular shows.
This is due to hypothetical dinosaur age licensing of said programs from hypothetical Australian media companies.
I have heard hypothetically on a number of occasions, hypothetical Australians downloading hypothetical series only hours later than they were literally aired in America.
The exact same things happens (hypothetically) with DVDs and whatnot. Contextual shows like South Park make less sense when aired in countries like Australia many months after they were aired in the US.
What do these companies expect is going to happen?
---
On a side note, a television series that portrayed the story of a number of gangland murders was produced, and was to be aired WHILST THE TRIAL WAS STILL ONGOING. Now the magistrate in their epic wisdom decreed that the show was not to be shown in the state that the crimes were committed, as it may contribute to biasing the jury of the case (there's a correct legal term, which I forget).
What happened was that the show was aired in all other states except Melbourne, as ordered by the judge, and the very next day there were people STANDING ON STREET CORNERS IN THE MELBOURNE CBD selling DVDs of the episode to people as they were stopped at red lights. I kid you not, this actually happened.
Anyway, long story short the main man was convicted and later murdered in prison, but I hope this illustrates the utter lack of understanding and wisdom of Australia in these matters. Hypothetically no wisdom at all.
LOL. I wish the writers of South Park read this... This is material for a very hilarious episode...(Cartman would be the interviewer :)
I guess innocence has died with the internet.
People have been doing this since the beginning of time. There was a south park episode about "the girls" having a list like this. There was a "Recess" (another cartoon, this one geared towards adolescents) with the same plot.
It's a common theme because exactly this behavior has been happening forever.
This type of thing is part of childhood. It sucks, and the kid should be ostracized by his peers for it, not locked in a cage. You're not going to be able to legislate social interactions between kids, and you shouldn't be trying.
/I was teased relentlessly as a kid. It sucked, but nobody was arrested for it, thank god; we were kids.
If you haven't seen it, South Park did an Apple episode recently and it was all about the iTunes agreements:
90-sec clip #1 (SFW): http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/382781/business-casual-g-men
60-sec clip #2 (NSFW): http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/382785/im-gonna-clickdecline
Full Episode (NSFW): http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e01-humancentipad#w=05.27.2011
Note that the full episode is down until May 27, 2011 due to "contractual agreements" (e.g. bookmark for later).
It sure seems like the new South Park episode got people to read terms and conditions ;-)
The only reason I know Bieber exists is the South Park episode where Cartman gets Cthulhu to kill him.
Wow, reading this didn't give me any sympathy for her at all. I'm reminded of the episode of South Park where Cartman feels bad only about getting punished, no actual guilt or remorse for his crime, and fails to understand how the other kids can feel bad in any way other than because of punishment.
She steals someone else's work, gets caught and sends an arrogant, rude email with absurd claims (web is public domain) and then when she is hit with the internet backlash, she writes a post that it's not her fault because she was overworked and throws in an insincere apology where she still clearly doesn't believe she did anything wrong ("I think I did a nice job for you").
The original article didn't irk me nearly as much as her rebuttal. Quite frankly, if this really does put them out of business, they deserve it.
I have a love/hate relationship with SF after living here for many many years since 2000.
I'm from NYC originally (and finally back) and here are my thoughts after shuttling back and forth for many years.
PROS
1. It's probably the safest, relatively big (~ 1M) city that I've ever been to. And I've traveled a lot throughout US and the world. If something bad happens to you in SF, you've really, really should hone your street smarts. And no, Tenderloin is not dangerous at all as I've lived a couple of blocks from there for few years.
2. Probably the only other city (NYC is the other) where you truly have a diverse selection of food. That's pretty impressive for such a small city.
3. It's probably one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to. I love the rolling hills and some great views especially of GG bridge and Bay Bridge. I wanted to move to SF for a long time, and it took a while for me to sink in that I was actually living in SF.
CONS
1. It's a city of wannabes. Basically everyone lives in the future (they "wanna/hoping to" have a startup, or "do art" etc). Ambitious people are good, but I feel SF definitely goes a bit far in this regard. For startups, it's due to the availability of venture capital in the city, where you don't need to be profitable from day one. In comparison, New York is about hustling and making money FROM DAY 1, not tomorrow, not in few years.
2. The bohemian/alternative/smug feel of the city. South Park had a funny episode about this. For example, people drive Prius in order to "show off" how green and environmentally friendly they are. Some of my good friends (non hipsters or art people, etc) only eat organic and only shop at Trader's Joe or Whole Foods. Apparently Safeway is not good enough. Organic is good, but try going to a restaurant with someone who is stubbornly organic about food content there, and will refuse to go. I mean come on, you're not gonna die if you eat non-organic once in a while!!
3. It's too laid back. If you love New York or East Coast in general, I think you'll find the slowed pace of the city irritating. In some ways this is a consequence of (1).
4. Nobody grows up in the city. This is a big one. I've seen some girls who are 35 and still wear clothing that a early 20s girl would wear. Same for guys. You can be 40+ or 50 and still live with roommates, etc. I've always felt that a cutoff for living with roommates is like 30 or maybe even early 30s, but 40+ is a bit too much.
5. The weather plain sucks. You have windy/sunny-turning-to-foggy weather (65-55F) pretty much all year except about 2-3 times a year when a heatwave (75F+) lasting about 3-4 days comes in and you can finally walk around with a t-shirt at night. There's really two seasons: dry and wet. I respect East Coast's weather much more because I know that in June I will be rocking a t-shirt all day and night and don't need to carry a jacket "just in case". Mark Twain said the coldest winter he'd ever been to was a summer in SF. SF's summer months are typically the coldest in the whole country.
6. Don't get me started on dating. As a guy, I still stick to my theory that it's probably one of the WORST cities to hook up I've ever been to. Most of the places are just full of guys which makes sense since West Coast has statistically more single guys than single girls. East Coast is a bit better in this regard. I always told myself if ever I move back, and that's a big if, I'll have to be married or have a serious girlfriend. And if you're a girl, don't get too excited; I've been told from female friends of mine that the guys are no prize either.
7. Pretentious Hipsters. Need I say more?
It would be a blatant lie to say that South Park doesn't use gross out humor as one of it's primary tools.
Scott Tenorman Must Die is still their best episode ever.
I agree. Like everyone else I was really excited when the new series was announced but the jokes and characters feel like they've been written from bullet points on a whiteboard. Bender steals, Amy is sexy, etc.
But what bugs me the most is that South Park already did it. These episodes seem to close with some life lesson the writers feel we need to learn. Even South Park is getting ridiculous with it's preaching and Futurama should just stop trying.
Generically: Learn your tools. Whether it's bash (can I recommend this? http://www.catonmat.net/download/bash-history-cheat-sheet.pdf ) with the ability to do very fancy stuff with the command line, vim, emacs, Eclipse, or the MS tools, learn them. Backwards and forwards. You aren't done until you have hundreds of keyboard shortcuts memorized and in daily use. Learn how to use grep, find, less, xargs, and awk. The returns on learning these tools well are amazing.
Also, do less. In order to be good at something, no matter what that is -- programming, math, entrepreneurship -- you need to focus and spend a lot of time on it. In order to do that, you need to find that time, and the easiest way to find time is to prioritize what you are doing and do less. If something isn't important to you, then don't do it. For me that's TV -- I don't own one. South Park, all 14 episodes a year, are available online both legally and illegally.
It is, however, really the only alternative to legalization.
Decriminalization is stupid. Dispensary systems are stupid. Coffee shops are stupid.
Decriminalization is stupid because the implication is that cannabis is evil, and the only reason people want to smoke it is that they're addicted. This is false. The "push toward treatment" isn't helpful for anyone who isn't addicted and doesn't want to be treated, like me. Plus there's the implication that selling someone to someone who asks for it is somehow evil, which is even worse ("Selling is legal! Fucking is legal! Why isn't selling fucking legal?!").
Dispensary systems are stupid because dishonesty is baked (haha) into the system. The South Park episode Medicinal Fried Chicken is a decent explanation, but the short of it is that people fake illness to get weed. Granted, this is like people faking illness to get painkillers -- but since cannabis is significantly safer than opioids and benzodiazepines, doctors are significantly less likely to care. It's not an issue with physical consequences, since cannabis is extremely safe when used under medical supervision, just the fact that lying becomes so much more prevalent.
Coffee shops are lame because free markets work[1], so why don't we have one? They're not that bad, though -- the implementation of such a system would bump the legalization of cannabis way down my priority list.
What really gets me on this is that people conflate the question "should cannabis be legal" with the question "should you smoke cannabis". Nobody conflates the legality of trampolines with the safety of trampolines. I find it incredibly disheartening when people I know -- smart people, in most respects -- respond to legalization with the idiotic knee-jerks "but it's dangerous!", "but my friend does nothing but smoke weed", ad absurdum. I know people who do nothing but play video games. I know at least one person who quit his job and left everyone he knew to become a paragliding instructor. He took a huge pay cut, too. And this latter example, I think, illustrates the biggest issue I have with arguments like yours:
Who the hell do you think you are that you can dictate what someone does with their life? If it's what they enjoy, they can go for it. Even if it is a bad decision -- you really can't outlaw bad decisions, because it's hard to say what is a bad decision. Thing is, the sort of "always-on" lifestyle, that sort where cannabis (also other distracting activities) is most likely to interfere, really isn't a good fit for some people. Some people burn out on weed, some burn out on other things.
Thing is, sometimes people just burn out. I think there are a lot of people who come into this argument from a pro-prohibition point of view because someone close to them changed after they started smoking marijuana. And I think that this is akin to blaming a spark for a bomb. The thing is, that your stock-broker friend may in fact have been unhappy as a stock broker. It is possible, even likely, from my anecdotal experience, that he latched onto weed because he didn't like where he was in life. It doesn't really matter if you think he should have liked where he was in life.
There are plenty of harm reduction arguments for legalization, but I prefer the libertarian argument because, I think, it most directly refutes the central point of the popular anti-legalization arguments.
[1]: with a few exceptions.
I disagree with you.
When I first watched the south park episode I was very confused.. then I watched the backlash unfold.
I think this movement is needed to get this out into the open. What would you say if Skin Heads, KKK, or any other racist organization threaten violence and we bowed out.. stopped the presses and let them have their way.
This is what we are doing by tip toeing around the issue in our country, censoring our media, and for what? We need exactly this movement because it is "uncivil and rude".
The problem is that the issue is Comedy Central censored this material, not necessairily that there were death threats. I don't think it's either smart or intelligent to deliberately provoke the people who are trying to promote fear through death threats - it just gives them more media coverage.
The South Park episode was clearly a fine piece of "offensive comedy" - not deliberately targeting Muslims (because of the context of the episode). However this is saying "hey you want to send us death threats, fine. Here's some more content designed to be offensive to you". It's a problem because then it begins to escalate (perhaps someone gets beaten up - so everyone prints T-Shirts with the cartoons, then a bomb goes off.... etc etc.)
Does this show us as not being scared? I think it actually shows fear - and crucially is the kind of reaction the extremists are looking for! It increases the media coverage; I'm sure there will be more threats appearing if this makes it "mainstream" and they will all be reported. And it is the response they want in a "war" where making us do offensive things wins them support in the Islamic world.
Not being scared would be to continue as usual, make our comedy as normal, including Muhammed when required - and ignore the death threats and extremism. Don't give them the platform. That seems the least fearful thing to do! :)
Not showing the scene was bad on the part of Comedy Central - and I feel it is censors like that whom we should be taking to task over this. Not the extremists - because if you do that they will delight in fighting back :)
Historically ostentatious shows of "no fear" never end well.
No, I can't support this. :(
EDIT: rereading there seems a slight emphasis on the idea of using all kinds of religious iconography. That's something I could get more behind - simply because it's no longer about the extremists, but about Comedy Central being censors. That is a good cause.
So long as this doesn't promote targetting religion or the idea of entering into a fight against extremists (rather than the censors) then perhaps it has merit.
I agree. Obviously, people have the right to depict Mohammed however they wish. Whether they necessarily should is another matter. Offensiveness for its own sake is the province of the Manhattan "high art" world, but (being outside of that world) I don't buy into it as a good thing.
I thought South Park was harmless and funny in its 200th and 201st episodes, because the poignancy-to-offensiveness ratio was high (they were pretty inoffensive in their treatment of Islam).
What's odd and somewhat inconsistent here is that Islam doesn't forbid only the depiction of Mohammed, but of any of God's creations (defined as the animals including humans). This aversion to depiction isn't rare in human cultures; Renaissance-era Christians considered theatre morally impure and actors were refused Catholic burials at one time.
Yet, as far as I know, few Muslims are offended when non-Muslims create cartoons in general, even though strict Muslims aren't allowed to do so. Yet when Mohammed is involved, it's considered to be on a different level.
Anything is fair game for South Park. Mormons are some of the nicest people around and their religion was roasted in an episode.
Sorry 'this' as in the south park case.
The result of the South Park episode will be various official (and unofficial) rulings in TV companies that if you put a Muslim character in a show there might be trouble. It doesn't have to be a picture of the prophet it just has to be a muslim character who isn't perfect, or is a sunni/shia and you get threats from shia/sunni. Safer to just leave them out - soon they will be as rare as black characters were in the 50s.
Now do you think you would have a black president if the majority of middle americans had never seen a black person in the flesh and the only ones on TV were on America's most wanted?
Almost all of Greenwald's counterpoints referred to situations in which public resources were involved: public funding of an art exhibition, public funding of a play via a university, use of public airwaves.
What's somewhat frightening about the South Park censorship is that cable is not regulated by the FCC for indecency as it's not a public resource. What's really frightening is that the cable company was able to censor the Internet "broadcast" of the episode.
I don't have a problem with Janet Jackson's breast on CBS, but I respect the complaints of those who do. Spectrum is a scarce national resource, so we should democratically allocate it. Cable, and especially the Internet, should be afforded a much greater degree of freedom of expression.
We no longer live in an open and free society when a man with a web site gets to decide what millions of people can and cannot watch.
For those interested, this week's South Park: NEW YORK, April 26, 2010 - JIMMY AND TIMMY head off TO SUMMER CAMP WITH ALL THEIR HANDICAPABLE FRIENDS in an all-new episode of "South Park" titled "Crippled Summer," premiering on Wednesday, April 28 at 10:00 p.m. on COMEDY CENTRAL.
Competition is the name of the game this summer. There is no time for Jimmy and his friends to slack off. They're working to be this year's champions at summer camp. Jimmy suits up and prepares to shred in the annual surfing contest.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/news/3880
Interested to see what lines they push given recent events. They certainly have been in this territory with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Fight & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_the_Down_Steroid
The best part of South Park exemplifying the double standard is at the end of the Cartoon Wars episodes where they show Jesus and the American flag in a pretty vulgar scene.
I'm sure Comedy Central received plenty of complaints from offended Christians, yet there was no censorship.
its easy to say something like that, but if you have seen enough south park you would know that they dont really draw any lines.
in the south park film they take black soldiers and strap them to tanks as "protection" to the tanks. they show spielberg and lucas literally raping indiana jones. they have entire episodes dedicated to bashing scientology, mormonism, judaism, and catholicism. an insecure, weak-willed jesus is a reoccurring character. a singing piece of shit is the christmas mascot.
there have been enough reasons for people to protest against south park, and they have, but never do they go as far as censoring characters except when muhammad is concerned. (to be fair, they do censor words that they consider extreme profanity [on occasion])
I've seen the South Park scientology episode a half-dozen times on Comedy Central UK. On all other points though - yes.
Aaa now I finally get the South Park episode! It was about this dude?
It's also a South Park Episode.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/912
Almost every joke relies on a some social preconception or stereotype... nationality and race are only some of the characteristics you can choose from. What can you find on that site that is worse than what you can see on South Park or any popular movies? It seems like a double standard that a page (which you have to look for) which contains obviously only bad jokes is somehow worse than half-serious stuff on TV (directly advertised and explicitly approved by a local company).
I haven't seen the movie yet but I saw the trailer a while ago and I just rewatched it then and from a pure CGI point of view it looks pretty meh. Like comparable to the first Final Fantasy movie perhaps but not much better. The first time I saw the trailer (at least two months ago, maybe an early cut?) I actually commented on how bad the CGI was before realising it was Avatar. Added to this story just sounds like an old retold story as Arrington highlights. I'm sure the film is actually really clever and the little I know of Cameron has led me to think he is a passionate and down-to-Earth guy so I'm sure it's good but I'm really not getting that impression so far. In fact, this has to be the most marketed film ever (I see adverts everywhere even online and in the App-Store as well as tie-ins with multiple TV shows (Entourage, South Park come to mind)) and this kind of marketing always makes me instinctively wonder why it's so heavily marketed. I've avoided learning too much about TC/Arrington because it seems there's often controversy but is this the kind of site where sponsored reviews ever appear?
This reminded me the iTunes that makes impossible to find an option, which I found by accident, to purchase Standard Definition videos (costs $1.99) vs. High Definition ($2.99).
As a challenge try finding that toggle I am talking about. Try purchasing an episode in Standard Definition of season 13 of south park, for example. You will be surprised to see where it's.
Actually, any of a long list of South Park episodes. Although, for the most part, SP tends to be far more blunt and direct with its message.
I haven't had Cable/Satellite since 2002. I started watching all my TV on DVDs that I bought from Amazon, but then switched to iTunes around 2006.
Now it's mostly a combination of iTunes/DVD - I'm pretty certain it's less expensive than subscribing to TV.
The good part of this (and it should be emphasized) - is that you now watch for a _purpose_ - Latest episode of Lost, BSG, Dexter, Weeds, South Park, Doll House, BtVS, Angel, The Wire, DeadWood, Heroes, The Office, Dr. Horrible, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Castle, Californication, Dr. Who, Kings, Sarah Connor Chronicles, True Blood, Torchwood.
Any time that might have been lost to just passively watching television, news, is now, of course, lost to passively reading ycombinator, nyt, wsj, groklaw... :-)
To defend the PS3 ad, he didn't say the Nigerian scammers, he said Nigerian millionaires. He left it to the viewers to fill in the rest. I've met some Nigerian millionaires in my lifetime (oil men) and they didn't get that way from pulling 419s. It reminds of the South Park episode of Randy going on wheel of fortune; N_GGERS, "People who annoy you". He filled in the mental blanks and pulled the wrong trigger. Be honest, who really thought the answer was naggers at first glance.
But the problem is that an entire country has become synonymous with a particular form of fraud and instead of trying to combat this negative aspect the people endorse it by celebrating it. "Yahoozee", should be a small-bit joke, not a national hit. And now that the negative connotation is out of the bag, everyone else feels it is safe to use.
For example, the word "nigga" has lost its sting. Depending on where you are it may or may not be part of everyday slang. I was a bit shocked when I went to the basketball courts and a group of chinese kids were calling themselves niggas.
I think the word "accountabilibuddy" was taken from an episode of south park.
I read RFS1 too, and contenture.com is not at all what I got out of it. Honestly I'm confused as to why that RFS led you to such a specific conclusion, not to mention one that doesn't match the RFS (why would contenture need a good writer?).
On contenture itself, I just don't think this is a good idea. Its been discussed on HN before, but my basic problem with it is that you'd have the top tier sites (i.e. NY Times) subsidizing the less known sites. No matter how the pot is distributed, you'd have the top tier site sharing revenue with the less known sites. Why would they join in?
I've got a lot of other issues with the contenture model, but that's the obvious dealbreaker. Also, micropayments are so boring, I don't understand why they are thought of as a panacea.
A more interesting approach is the Hulu model. Try searching for a show Hulu doesn't have, like South Park. They'll still show search results for it, and direct you offsite to watch the episode. As a result, the user learns that Hulu is the place to find online TV shows, regardless of the network. In this manner they've inserted themselves between the product makers and their customers, which is a recipe for $texas. And should they later arrange a syndication deal for South Park they can seamlessly change from offsite links to onsite links.
A key point with the Hulu model is that they still control a huge chunk of the best content. As much as possible, they're only "outsourcing" the long tail, low ROI content.
Its not a particularly new idea. Google largely operates the same way. Google has become the starting place for the web, even if your destination is offsite. When they find areas where they can replace offsite content with their own they do so (think Gmail, Youtube, and the ill-fated Knol). Blockbuster video does the same thing (owned by Paramount, who makes films), and so does your grocery store (with in-house brands where they see high-margin opportunities).
But that's exactly what I said. The Simpsons implemented an idea, then, as other people implemented as well, their original triumph became dated.
That doesn't always happen, because if the end result is really labored away on, then it lasts the test of time, at least to some degree. South Park is actually a good example, where even as it's no longer the most offensive thing out there, you can still get a big kick out of Season 3 because they were putting in some genuinely brilliant jokes.
In my experience it takes a day. I don't think torrents could top that, even if they tried.
I really think South Park gets it. 24 hours after a new episode airs, they put it online. That's pretty damn reasonable.
Seriously.
The South Park guys caught on, and with every single episode available on their site, why would you even bother to pirate the episodes?
Side note: Even when people were pirating their stuff, they were just happy that people liked the show.
I don't really share everyone's obsession with fighting "negativity". Actually I find the lack of nonconstructive bitching to be quite annoying: sometimes that's exactly what's needed.
I bet the public pressure to always appear "positive" makes people feel oppressed: perhaps that's the underlying emotional background that feeds audiences to shows like "South Park" and rants like Zed Shaw's. Because force-fed "positivity" is everywhere: from bloodless CNN reporting of wars to always happy-ending movies. George Carlin's famous "pussification of English" is like an entire nation wearing invisible bracelets like these. To me that's borderline to orwellian doublespeak.
Fake "positiveness" comes at a cost. Both big corporations I worked for were filled with always-smiling, "outgoing, positive team players" who'd pollute everything they say with "great, awesome, tremendous" and other positive reinforcers that lost all their meaning because of overuse, while real problems tend to be overlooked and forgotten - nobody wants to be that asshole. My experience at startups has been the opposite: no time/money for fake bullshitting, "this sucks and needs to be better" isn't a taboo, it's almost a mantra.
Does anyone remember the South Park episode about the Segway (called It at the time) that Mr. Garrison built that came out just after 9/11/2001? The one that used oral, manual, and anal controls?
This vehicle looks an awful lot like the one in that show :-)
It's not true that killed stories can't be seen by anyone except the submitter. They can be seen by everyone else who has showdead turned on.
You can easily check whether a site is banned by submitting something from it and seeing if it gets killed immediately. I.e. if it's visible on the new page to someone who's not logged in. (You may have to wait a minute because the new page is cached.) Here is the complete list:
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The great majority are banned for spamming and/or voting rings. Others (like url shortening services, squidoo, etc) are banned because they're often used by spammers. Others are banned for the reasons I listed in that recent essay: linkjacking, being offtopic, or characteristically being fluff.
South Park is a really great example of how to do online television from a user's perspective.
1. They are really good about getting episodes up quickly.
2. It's high quality.
3. Episodes are never taken down.
4. It's ad free.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/
Now granted it doesn't deal with big media's concerns. It's not set up to make money. There are no ads, and the show archive is great, so it could be argued that it removes incentive to by season dvds. think Matt Stone and Troy Parker might be making a little money because of it, but it's from product sales, not from ads.
When I was 15, I used to think the Pirate Bay guys were heroes. Not anymore.
Encouraging piracy and then acting like you're martyrs is not the best way to combat RIAA/MPAA. I really appreciate services like Jamendo, which might not be as effective as straight out theft TPB-style but are actual vehicles which "free" the information that, presumably, wants to be free.
DISCLAIMER: Yes, I download torrents from TPB. I know it's wrong, but they don't air Lost, Scrubs, South Park or any of my favorite shows in India so I have no choice. If they'd air it on TV, I'd be more than happy to pay my DTH provider an extra amount to get those channels. Heck, I'd even purchase episodes from an online retailer if only it didn't have that nasty DRM. (BTW, does anyone know if the iTunes store works in India now?)
I'm that guy too. I hate TV.
Except heroes and house. Ohhh. The daily show. Colbert Report. Gotta catch south park and sarah silverman. Six feet under was pretty good, too...
Other then that TV sucks. I watch TV shows, but have no TV. The trick is to download your tv from the internet so you can dodge the ads concentrated power scientifically calibrate to manipulate you, and still get a dose of culture and electronic sedation.
I think any serious answer would be preposterous and probably irrelevant. Even if it was spot on. Let's say we could prove we live in a computer simulation. Would you really stop living your life? Would you try to talk with the admins of the universe? Isn't that a bit pointless? Reminds me of the South Park episode where they discover the Earth is a giant reality show for aliens.
This is going to make such an awesome 2009 South Park episode.
Did you guys ever watch that South Park episode where one of the grade-school girls starts to grow tits? Suddenly all of the boys start thinking "she's so smart!" and "she's so funny!" and wanting to hang out with her, and they honestly have no idea that there is any connection between their new attitudes and her new tits.
There is no question in my mind that Macs are beautiful. The latest gadgets like the iPods and iPhones are real works of art.
Sometimes I wonder if Apple doesn't get cut a bit too much slack just because they are "cool". Just because someone is beautiful and smiling at you doesn't necessarily mean they do not have malicious intent. And especially it seems a lot of times, we are just so eager to believe in any credible opponent to M$ that we are willing to overlook any warning signs. I wonder if the peasants that supported the French and Russian revolutions felt the same way?
"Internet users don't want to watch TV shows online" != the truth.
Back in the dawn of Youtube I used to watch all The Daily Show I could fit into my over-sized head. I still love watching old episodes of Hockey Night in Canada and I have bookmarked a non youtube site that let's me watch South Park. I can't count HOW many times in University people would download, myself possibly included, episodes of Lost, Family Guy, America's Next Top model.
I'd say TV shows online are BETTER than on regular TV because you can watch them when you want. Hence the amazing popularity of TIVO I would assume since I don't have that service.