Board 8 > Have the past six years changed your enjoyment/perception of media?

(+) Yeah! (+)

KamikazePotato posted...

South Park is largely conservative propaganda masquerading as enlightened centrism

At what point in South Park history did this start happening? Or do you believe this was always the case?

I haven't watched South Park in the last 4 or so seasons, so I can't comment on anything after that but...that certainly seems like an insane characterization to me from what I have watched.

However there are like 10 YouTubers whose careers you just summed up

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I agree with KP's South Park take and I think it was always the case, but I don't really have the energy right now to write my anti-South Park manifesto, sorry

The short version is that I used to love the show but as I've grown older I've realized that almost all of South Park's takes are shitty, some of them catastrophically so (climate change, trans people, anti-semitism), and I've realized that it's contributed to a lot of the toxicity of modern internet chuddery

Paratroopa1 posted...

I agree with KP's South Park take and I think it was always the case, but I don't really have the energy right now to write my anti-South Park manifesto, sorry

The short version is that I used to love the show but as I've grown older I've realized that almost all of South Park's takes are shitty, some of them catastrophically so (climate change, trans people, anti-semitism), and I've realized that it's contributed to a lot of the toxicity of modern internet chuddery

Pretty much yeah

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To answer the actual topic, the biggest change for me has been in liking asshole characters less. Like there's still some clear appeal there if they're otherwise well-written or funny or attractive but generally I just don't want to deal with the negativity, even in a fictional setting. So to take one example, I'm not sure I'd be able to put up with rewatching House, because to me the character has gone from "what a great doctor who happens to be a funny dickhead" to "what a shitty person who happens to save lives".

This goes double (or like 10x) for media where the entire point is shitting on other (often amateur) media. "Angry Youtube guy" as a genre seems like it's lost popularity in general so I'm probably not the only one who feels this way, but it's definitely something I just find immature and mean rather than funny these days. (And I realize this paragraph is kind of hypocritical but... *shrug*)

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Was their climate change episode just making fun of Al Gore? Because if that episode is their climate change take, I don't think it had anything to do with the broader topic. Literally the exact same thing applies to the Caitlyn Jenner episode - making fun of society suddenly worshipping Catlyn Jenner but not trans people.

Well uh Googling "South Park climate change episode" brought me this:

https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/11/14/18080758/south-park-time-to-get-cereal-recap-season-22-al-gore-global-warming-manbearpig

And now I'm sad I didn't go into that episode blind

Then Googling "South Park transgender episode" brought me this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indiewire.com/2019/11/south-park-trans-transphobic-lgbt-1202190642/amp/

And jesus christ that sounds about as terrible as it gets (to the point where I can see the "modern internet chuddery" comparison)

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Making fun of Al Gore being scared of a ridiculous boogeyman that doesn't exist is 100% disputing the existence of climate change. There's not a single interpretation of the episode where that isn't the case. Climate Change was a bigger topic in that episode than Al Gore was.

Reversing their stance 12 years later doesn't mean shit. The damage is already done. No one they influenced towards the right-wing in the past is going to change their tune now.

Don't remember the Caitlyn Jenner bits so I won't comment on it.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Making fun of Al Gore being scared of a ridiculous boogeyman that doesn't exist is 100% disputing the existence of climate change. There's not a single interpretation of the episode where that isn't the case. Climate Change was a bigger topic in that episode than Al Gore was.

Reversing their stance 12 years later doesn't mean shit. The damage is already done. No one they influenced towards the right-wing in the past is going to change their tune now.

Don't remember the Caitlyn Jenner bits so I won't comment on it.

Hey, I think you're right. Now that you said that, yeah, I remember the Manbearbig plot basically being the point of the episode and you're 100% correct.

But hey, my memory was just of a stupid episode making fun of Al Gore despite the (very blatant) subtext. Hopefully it had an equal level of meaningless impact on others.

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I would reason that South Park had a bigger influence on our generation's political views than literally any other show. People severely underestimate how effective of a vector comedy is towards changing people's minds; it's usually more effective than serious attempts at discourse. South Park was very funny, and it used that knack for comedy to consistently push right-wing views.

You brushed it off. Millions didn't. Especially impressionable kids without a fully-formed political compass.

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SP's record with trans issues is completely putrid, has been for ages, and still very much remains that way.

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Thanks for the article links, interesting reads.

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I think it's possible to make fun of Kaitlin jenner without being transphobic, and possible to make fun of people who aren't genuinely making an effort to be trans, but still want the recognition

"Heather" isn't a person that could exist in the Olympics because they have strict scientific rules

But other competitions may or may not

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Leonhart4 posted...

Centurion, I believe

Who?

Also there are pretty close to 0 gfaqs mods who have sane politics. The authoritarian egoism required to apply and do that "job" is totally incompatible with sane politics. It's the same effect that makes nearly all politicians terrible, even if they used to be good people at some point.

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South Park can have right wing or left wing ideas which makes it seem enlightened centrist, but the key centrist thing about them is they are anti-nuance in all cases. Their politics is about simplification and dumbing down. (Though sometimes that dumbed down idea is still more nuanced than how big news presents it.)

But now we have a generation who is proud of the ability to kill any nuance in any issue in less than 5 seconds.

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I definitely think more critically about copaganda in media nowadays. Like how CBS' (the highest rated of the big three networks) upcoming fall line-up contains twelve different cop or cop-adjacent, hour-long shows, compared to 6 half-hour comedies, two hour-long reality shows, and one courtroom drama (which might be cop-adjacent as well).

It also made me think back on media I used to watch. I used to watch CSI for its entire run, and I remembered a storyline in season 7 where a gang of miscreants is going around and beating up tourists (or people they think are tourists) for fun. And one of the characters, Greg (who is, I believe the only character to make it through the series' entire run, since George Eads left before the series finale), comes across one of these gang attacks in-progress. From the audience's perspective, we see Greg witnessing an attack, and if he does not intervene, the victim will likely be murdered. So Greg scares off the gang and is forced to run one member down when that gang member tries to attack him by flinging a rock. And as he's shocked by what he did, the rest of the gang returns, drags him from the car, and beats him within an inch of his life.

The gang is eventually caught, but the storyline doesn't end there. A few episodes later, Greg is brought to an inquest for the killing of Demetrius James during the above incident. Throughout the episode, one of the jurors regularly harangues Greg over various aspects of the killing, Greg is accused of having been drunk at the time of the incident...basically, Greg is put through the wringer, only to ultimately have his actions deemed "excusable". We, the audience, see this whole story play out from Greg's perspective. We have perfect hindsight on the incident and know Greg is innocent of any accusations leveled against him. As such, the jury who wants to ensure proper police oversight? The bad guy. The family of the victim? In denial about how evil their son was, and therefore also the bad guy. That whole plot takes an officer-involved-killing and paints it as completely unreasonable to expect oversight, and that anyone who doesn't immediately accept Greg's version of events is just some asshole, trying to make a political statement.

At the time it aired, I never thought about any of the implications of that storyline. I just thought that, yes, Greg was right and the "villains" were bad people for trying to smear his good name. I can't think back to that episode now without picturing all the recent events that had negatively-tinged the police across the country.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Reversing their stance 12 years later doesn't mean shit. The damage is already done. No one they influenced towards the right-wing in the past is going to change their tune now.

Well that seems kinda defeatist. If we're talking about people who won't change their minds on climate change after a decade was it really a cartoon that made their mind up? Sure it was a bad take but I'm skeptical it had a lasting sway on anyone's beliefs that they didn't already have
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I've never really liked/watched South Park, so I can't contribute anything to how that's changed for me, but to pile on with a random complaint, I never liked that "This is what they actaully believe" was seen as the crux of their attack on Scientology. Scientology is a bad cult because it brainwashes, kidnaps, and abuses people, not because they believe in some goofy theology! Who cares about that?

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I still greatly enjoy South Park including the episodes that you could say havent aged well or theres no way that would be acceptable today because it doesnt bother me. Still waiting for new episodes :(

Oh this became a South Park topic.

Got kind of unfunny a while ago, but I'd rewatch the first 10 seasons or so anyday.

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Oh I guess something that has changed for me is having less sympathy for the teen complaining about their parents' rules and more sympathy for parental figures trying to do the best for their kids, even though they get it wrong sometimes.

But that's probably a product of getting older more than anything else.

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