south park and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race. it brought in a whole generation of smug shitbags who love to attack anybody who believes in an idea, and that's it, that's as far as their ideas go. it's not even cynical, it's this absurd anti politics that is extremely reactionary towards progressivism that states 'maybe things could be different?'
There's been a lot of arguments over how much, exactly, South Park shaped the politics of generation of middle class white guys whose material conditions were going to push them towards reaction anyways. And I think the reality is that it probably didn't exactly indoctrinate anyone, but it did provide a shape for the reactionary tendencies of its target audience, and it kept mirroring that back on them and feeding them rationalizations and stereotypes and easy to digest lines that made those tendencies take on a particular character and helped to strengthen them. It's one reason why that generation of reactionaries looks like it does, why the self-serving, chauvinist libertines became a core part of the modern fascist movement instead of remaining alienated from politics because of their hostility to both the feminism and anti-racism of the left and the theocratic moralism of the old far right.
Because that's how reactionary socialization through media works: it doesn't create reactionary tendencies from whole cloth, it creates a sort of resonating space for existing reaction and helps propagate and teach the reactionary tendencies already present in society, along with their tropes, stereotypes, and aesthetics. Like cowboy shows and movies didn't give boomers brainworms, but they did help cultivate the dominant brainworms in society at the time and they helped to teach them a bunch of reactionary individualist nonsense with simple moralistic fables that exalted the archetype of the domineering, isolated patriarch that's at the heart of American fascism's warrior-cult identity.
it’s a comedy show for the hot couch guy in all of us.
I don’t believe any person who watches the show thinks “damn i should act like the people in this show”
The South Park brand of enlightened centrism definitely made an impression on a lot of viewers.
A lot of the show's humor was no more novel than casual bigotry, but then, that was a staple of mainstream humor for a long time. I don't have a good perspective on whether South Park is better viewed as lazily following this trend or amplifying it for a new generation.
clearly you have never met their 12 year old fans :doomer: (or adults who used to watch it at that sort of age)
you are correct i don’t converse with 12 year olds, or adult 12 year olds :grillman:
Sometimes I ask myself why the most visibly "conservative" cartoon from that era (King of the Hill) is one of the most tolerable of the bunch
I guess Futurama is the other
is King of the Hill really that conservative? like I know that most the people in the show are, but I feel like the show kinda mocks their politics more than it supports them
The show seems to simultaneously take the premise that Hank Hill is the most naïve, brainwashed American there ever was, but that he is also right about everything.
Hank is like an idealized version of Yer Dad. He's what everyone imagined the typical conservative to be like until Trumpism happened and they all ripped the mask off.
I just realized that a season of Hank getting radicalized into a QAnon guy could be one of the greatest TV shows ever. Every episode is a new euphemism dying, or norm getting violated, until by the end the character you have is unrecognizable standing next to where he started, and he alienates his family and friends and goes looking deeper into reaction to fill the void that his politics created. Then Jan 6 2021 is the season finale and the greatest day of Hank's new life, and the show's end credits play over him blowing up at an airport cop because he's been put on the no-fly list.
The punchline, of course, is that Dale rejects QAnon out-of-hand as made up by the Eff Bee Eye to hide the REAL truth
Hank Hill is the conservative that liberals wish existed/some West Wing types think actually do exist.
I remember a discussion about whether hank hill would've voted Trump.
Most people argued he would either not vote, or he would begrudgingly vote Trump and defect later on.
Mike Judge said that he would absolutely not vote for Trump, for what it's worth.
He's also gone against some Republicans for bizarre reasons. Like Bush's limp handshake. I could imagine him being anti-Trump but for a reason like he eats his steaks well done.
Holy shit I created that copypasta/shitpost.
I'm so happy you mentioned that. But, yeah, that was the end result he begrudgingly becomes a trump guy
Holy shit I created that copypasta/shitpost.
A lot of different people did, I'm talking about one I saw on reddit a few years ago. Must have been asked dozens of times on different forums
he's right about some things, wrong about others- mostly he is "right" in that he is a good and moral person, although he doesn't connect his values to some of his disassociated political views (which are basically Republicans/LBJ good because Texas). I do think the show does a good job of explaining that the real world is not nor never has been the way he imagines it, it's just not surface-level text. Hank's mom mentions that she drove a taxi to help make ends meet after Hank says he wants Peggy to be a stay-at-home mom and his response is that "I remember you had a yellow car for a while". If you haven't revisited the series definitely give it a whirl- the first season is not my favorite, but the snow storm episode in season 2 through to the end of the series is great in my opinion. Obviously a few duds in between, but fewer than I remembered.
Maybe. Any mocking is very...subtle. It has highly conservative vibes but it also doesn't feel like a normal conservative show
I meant that it was tolerable to watch (like KotH)
family guy/south park, not
This is a petty reason, but nobody ever called me "ginger" until that episode came out when I was in middle school. Bullying got like, orders of magnitude worse afterwards.
South Park and Family Guy bear 80-90% of the responsibility for the resurgence of western antisemitism
Tens of millions of South Park and Family Guy fans had never met a Jew in their lives. That was their introduction.
I remember when I was in Middle School, at a time when South Park and Family Guy were very popular, kids were using “Jew” as a casual insult. I was in a very small town in a weird part of the country and to my knowledge there was a single Jewish family in town at the time, and they had a child either in my year or the year below me. And they found out about what the kids were saying and I remember we had several class periods mostly dedicated towards telling kids that antisemitism was wrong. Of course the kids weren’t really being anti Semitic, they were just repeating something they heard everybody else saying. I guess I can’t speak for all my classmates, but at the time I didn’t really know what or who a Jew was. I mean, I knew they were a religious group that were victims of the Holocaust, but even that didn’t mean much to me. Even the Holocaust was just something I’d heard about in passing. I hadn’t yet read any survivors or victims’ accounts, I hadn’t seen any Holocaust films even. Anyway I’m glad my school took the time to say “stop being assholes,”
For the record, I never called anyone a Jew as an insult. At the time I thought it was a cuss and I thought children who cussed got in trouble so I wouldn’t do it.
Of course the kids weren’t really being anti Semitic, they were just repeating something they heard everybody else saying.
And then a decade later, half of the kids calling people "Jew" as a joke had been doing bigotry for laughs so long that they became earnest bigots. Especially after they went online and rubbed shoulders with neo-Nazis who very deliberately use joke bigotry as plausible deniability.
Oh for sure, it’s a slippery slope. Actually, I know at least one guy I was friends with in High School is a genuine antisemite today and I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t know any actual Jewish people.
I don't think it was either of those but I definitely first found out about Jewish people from an American cartoon where they were portrayed very badly.
You ever been to Colorado? Found out they're very on brand for Colorado. I just got a job there, and I'm kind of dreading heading over.
Thought it'd be like the midwest....NOPE. One of the whitest places I've ever been to and I've been to Denmark. Not East coast, not west coast, not Midwest, not the South.....Like snobby chud central with a liberal aesthetic, absolutely bizarre place. Would love to live out in mountains but turns out the entire state is expensive as fuck, like a fucking raggedy ass looking town in the middle of nowhere will have the cost of living of DC or some shit.
Denver? Dude what even is this city? Indian food made with mayo, made out of glitzy architecture from the past 10 years, homeless everywhere, marijuana is a purely capitalist enterprise there literally zero cultrual aspect to it in Colorado.
Colorado is a very mixed bag. It's a Bernie state and if you're on the front range there are good orgs. It's when you go into the mountains or cattle country that it becomes insane Lauren Boebert-types, and if you go into Wyoming you'll see white people juche.
But for that, you're like an hour from this: https://www.coloradophotosource.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/colorado-photoscolorado-photos_DSC9319-HDRa.jpg . From dozens of that. Wave after wave of wildflowers blooming across mountain ranges that have fascinating delicate ecosystems. Camping that outclasses anywhere else I've lived, largely for free. For anthropology/history/natural science nerds it's paradise.
Colorado is definitely beautiful, don't get me wrong. Do you have any recs of where I can find a place to rent? I will work in that Boulder-Denver-Golden area and I really just want to live next to some trails and camp out often, not living next to many people while also not being stuck out in the boonies where the mega chuds will get to me (kidding, mostly).
Longmont is a bit cheaper and I-25 isn't that terrible that far south. Loveland is also affordable and within a reasonable commute but their police are psychotic. Avoid anything in Weld County or south of Denver closer to CO Springs. Those areas are super chuddy and Greeley is one of our COVID hotspots. The closer you are to highways 34 or 36, the closer you'll be to Rocky Mountain National Park and the best trails in the state with free entry before 5am. West Denver has some cool trails around Red Rocks, an ex living in Littleton had a great location for those, but the real gems are further north. Boulder's local trails around the Flatirons are insanely packed but a good workout, while the ones closer to Loveland and Fort Collins are great for all kinds of dayhikes.
The amount of unhoused people everywhere is so fuckijng depressing there. Denver doesn’t give a single fuck about its residents unless you’re a liberal rich weed #BossBoy hippie
The entire point of that dumb show was “if you hold strong opinions on something, you’re an idiot”
The only cool thing they did was take acid and dress in drag at the Oscars
While, on their dumb-shit show they compared being trans to (checks notes)... surgically turning yourself into a dolphin. Yeah, those are totally choices on equal ground.
Don't worry, I wasn't implying that. Just pointing out how, to them, they view themselves as epic and hilarious for going to the Oscars in dresses, but heaven forbid a trans person dress and medically transition to the gender they identify as! To Matt and Trey that's as grotesque as outright body horror!
Motherfuckers just bought the ACTUAL Casa Bonita after covid shuttered the place.
For decades, libertarianism was the only somewhat-influential brand of politics for Americans who didn't really like either major party. It obviously didn't get there on its own merits (lol); it was astroturfed by the Kochs since the founding of the Libertarian Party back in the 70s. But if you took a look at Republicans and Democrats and weren't thrilled with either, your choices were basically libertarianism or even smaller, even less-effective groups that you sometimes had to start from scratch. Because those other groups didn't get much done and libertarianism didn't get much done and was an incoherent ideological mess, a lot of people who initially looked outward would eventually filter back into the major parties or disengage from politics altogether.
Now we have more people who are dissatisfied with the major parties than we've had in at least a generation or two, and there are increasingly credible political movements outside both parties. Who the fuck knows where that's going, but a fun side effect might be libertarian cranks slowly going extinct.
For decades, libertarianism was the only somewhat-influential brand of politics for Americans who didn’t really like either major party.
It's pretty funny hearing from my mid-aged libertarian coworker whine about politics (as you do) and say "... yeah anyway.... it's just part of being a libertarian, you kinda never get what you want..." lmao
I just replied to you one level up, but I would say that Community was the spiritual successor of Arrested Development. Malcom in the Middle (also on my list) would be a strong recommendation as well, especially if you were raised as a male with male siblings.
I'm going to just list some off, but let me know if there are any that you're unfamiliar with or that you do/don't vibe with based on the Netflix description/trailer and I'll add context as needed:
- Atlanta
- Malcolm in the Middle
- Community
- Bojack Horseman
- Sound of Your Heart (not the reboot version)
- Letterkenny
- Norsemen
Have never heard of Sound of Your Heart.
It's a Korean sitcom. I think that it has enough of a cultural difference that the slapstickiness of some of the episodes loops over and becomes genuinely funny. I laughed out loud at a few of the episodes.
I have heard of Norsemen… or so I thought. That one’s a comedy? I’m probably getting it mixed up with Vikings or something.
Yeah it's a comedy, apparently they filmed an English and a Norwegian version of each scene. I like it and some of my friends really like it. Might be worth a try if we have a similar taste in the first place.
+1 for Atlanta, MitM, and Community. For Community make sure you get the D&D episode from season 2, it's not streaming anywhere.
Better Off Ted was good, Southside is new and pretty funny.
South Park had a brief moment of popularity here in the early 2010's and hasn't really regained it since. Used to watch it out of amusement and nothing more. Matt and Trey sound like every other loudmouthed libertarian.
