Go to ground.news/jacksaint to stay fully informed. Subscribe for less than $1 a month or get 30% off unlimited access to the Vantage plan here's a new video on several uncontroversial topics, looking forward to reading every one of your comments also I want panderverse kenny to hold my hand support links: 💰 PATREON @ www.patreon.com/jacksaint 🔴 UA-cam @ ua-cam.com/channels/dQKvqmHKe_8fv4Rwe7ag9Q.htmljoin 👛 TIPS @ ko-fi.com/lackingsaint Second Channel: www.youtube.com/@officalwordfromjack Bluesky 🦋 lackingsaint.bsky.social Instagram 📷 instagram.com/lackingsaint Twitch 🎮 www.twitch.tv/lacksaint Discord 🗣 discord.gg/pf5PXAzv8V TikTok 🎞 www.tiktok.com/@jacksaintreal
I'm done with this woke talk. I think this video sux, it just the same old crap that I been hearing too long and this is now my reason for leaving this social media crap. Why is it just people are being lame and dumb with pathetic idea of things having to have an agenda. It just a show .... If you didn't like the show then you could just read a book, go out and have fun or just talk to friends, family or love ones. This video is basically saying that a cartoon is having an agenda in politics and he isn't liking it views point, but this is South Park, it will always do something like this because that is how the show is. I'm tried of this crap, you kids need to just stop this lame talk about some outdated term that shall be replaced soon with a better word in the near future and people will not be using this language. Anyway dude, I think I can sum up what you are saying in under one minute here goes. There was an episode in South Park that I didn't enjoy and I not happy with the message of the show. So because of this I will take some time away from this show and move on with my life and focus on something better like how am I going to survive my next bill to pay this month. So that is what could have been said and you would feel better than being angry about a cartoon. Life is more important than some cartoon. Beside this is coming off as being sad and making me think that you are either doing this because of the views or you was some loser who trying to be angry because you're life sucks. Anyway terrible video dude -10/10 and I know that's impossible to give a grade like that but from the length of the and the boring topic choice it gets that score. Later
LOL. The Critical Drinker. Haven’t thought of that one in a looong time. Got into the channel for a week or so when I used to listen to endless UA-cam reviews while I was working. Then he started randomly ranting about typical anti-woke shit in the middle of one of them and I was like wait wtf? Ok unsubbed I guess. It’s hilarious how these dudes don’t realize that being obsessively upset about any and everyone who doesn’t look or act like them and forcing it into everything is the real reason people are put off by them lol.
Also, sometimes the media they are watching was made before they were born, so they have no idea what was going on at the time. Though, I find it hard to believe ANYONE would think Robocop is A-political . xD
Excellently said. Not enough people realize that their own limited knowledge, is itself, a bias. And that the world changes a lot more slowly than an individual person does.
Exactly. Whenever I get mad at myself for not being able to break out of neoliberalism it’s like... okay just because other children were able to do it doesn’t detract from how i was a child and dealing with things that didn’t lead to noticing the shape of the society I was in. And adults lie. When they told me racism was over and feminism had won, i believed them. When they said heinous shit about trans people, disabled people, I believed them. It’s still embarrassing that it took me noticing the violence of neoliberalism in fiction before I was able to clock it and leave it irl. Bigotry is learned. You have to unlearn it. It is not a child’s fault if they believe the things their parents tell them when we’re literally designed to do that. But learned helplessness and active ignorance are to a degree both choices, especially the older a person is. You kind of run out of excuses not to know better.
Fr, shows like Static Shock existed back when I was 10 and they delved into politics too like racism. Hell, the Proud Family had two episode with muslims post 9/11 and Penny reliving in the 60s dealing with racism
The problem with the South Park special is that inevitably the people being satired identify too much with Cartman. They relate to his hysterical fears of Kathleen Kennedy replacing them with woke pandering mary sues.
That's because that's the audience Matt and Trey have intentionally steered themselves toward. It benefits them to have an audience of angry, white, 12-year-old boys who will listen to everything they say.
I think so too. Like they know their audience. I remember when I liked South Park and thought the messages were good at being anti-Cartman and stuff - there was always one friend who watched the show because they were Cartman and loved seeing him get away with everything. @@AspelShuyin
@@DarkZide8 Agreed... I was born and raised in Atlanta,Georgia so I didn't run into many IRL Cartmans. Unless you count the anti-woman misogyny then yeah boys will be boys no matter the culture. Sure they might satire those people, but not so hard they realize they're being made fun of too. Like you said South Park knows their audience(s) which means ironically South Park is the one pandering all along. Edit: I said something slightly more accurate but UA-cam sent me a warning to not be mean. So...
The one thing I wished that had been pushed further with the genre of video games and not only on film. "Woke" isnt just used on race swaps, its used on ANYTHING someone dislikes; lgbtq inclusion, poc, women and etc. Hell, its so ironic how they had a Baldurs Gate 3 reference BUT not too long ago someone called the game "woke" for having a vitiligo option, some even HATE that you can be gay in the game. The month before the episode aired we had that thumb screaming about PRONOUNS options for Starfield.
The problem is there are, genuinely, cases of pandering and putting in token characters to tick off a diversity checklist. The problem with that problem is, good representation and bad representation are indistinguishable to the screaming manchild reactionary, and so we dismiss _everything_ they complain about (even if, rarely, they're on the money about something).
@@bugjams - "The problem is there are, genuinely, cases of pandering and putting in token characters to tick off a diversity checklist." That's not really a widespread "problem" though, it's a "problem" for properties that do that because those properties are often not particularly good for other entirely lazy reasons (like, you know, using a checklist to meet quotas rather than just having good writing). The "screaming manchild reactionary" demographic is wrong about there being a real problem at play, because there simply isn't one - bad media is bad, just don't watch it. If anything, the "problem" is that their incessant whining about race/gender/sexuality drowns out any other criticism and makes it sound like it's all just bigotry. If they actually cared about the media being bad, they could instead complain about the things that were bad instead of "zomg diversity".
@@KingBobXVI I mean, I still think HBomberguys "Woke Brands" is a very good way to talk about the whole topic. The video isn't exactly about this type of pandering, mostly about corporations using "progressive" virtue signals to sell stuff by making the reactionaries mad and the progressives defensive of them and just to stir up controversity. I guess one of the big problems is simply that reactionaries think about it in the wrong order. They will take a piece of media with problems, point at any sort of representation and say "See, they spent all their money on wokeism and couldn't afford any quality anymore". Which is stupid, because writing a black character or hiring a gay person is not more expensive in the first place and would also not magically make everything worse in quality. It's more that some pieces of media are bad because it's a soulless cashgrab by big companies and actual artists often have less say than some stupid managers who don't care about quality. Or in some cases it starts with genuine passion by artists but then it gets streamlined and destroyed by the decisions of those higher-ups. And just putting in some random minority characters to fill a quota is just one of many decisions made by such people to tick off their checklist of things that have to be in any modern media. But it's not done because those corporate people are woke or whatever, many of them are probably raging sexists and homophobes, it's just soulless calculation. They would force cruel jokes about minorities into everything if we lived in another political climate. And then reactionaries think it's the existence of marginalized groups in media that makes everything bad, even pointing towards genuine art and good movies/games and calling them bad because they have such characters/themes in it. But at the same time, we obviously progessed as a society and many things that were absolutely taboo a few decades ago are now accepted and with that there also comes a lot more representation of marginalized people just because it's not longer that much of problem to include those characters/themes. Like I really like Ursulla K. Le Guin and she actually wrote a lot about her decisions, like why she mostly wrote her fantasy and sci-fi stories with male protagonists, why she didn't use they/them pronouns for her civilization of not just gender-, but sex-neutral humans and why she had to kinda sneak in a few mentions of her protagonist in Earthsea being not white; because in her time (we talk about like the 60s and 70s) it just made it harder to even publish her stories and publishers just outright changed such things to make the books more viable, because they were of course mostly interested in making money with it; and she had to comply or she wouldn't have been able to have a career as a writer. So a lot of modern representation is of course also due to genuine decisions of artists who can just have it their way and want that representation just because it's their vision. But reactionaries will look at that too and will claim it's automatically bad art because of the representation, even though it actually make the art better because it's a much more authentic version of what the artist wants.
I’d be more willing to hear them out if they didn’t plug their ear and close their eyes over the part of the show that said also decrying everything as woke is equally as lazy and dumb. Now I disagree that these things are equal but most of these people seem to flat out ignore that was a point made in the special.
This seems to happen with literally ever single time a syndicated TV series has a recurring character whose main purpose is to just spew reactionary politics regardless of the showrunners' intentions, these folks are just so starved of validation that they'll just cling on to whatever they get. Ron Swanson from 'Parks and Rec' is another often overlooked example of this.
The wild thing is that both of my younger siblings are white. My younger brother was in middle school when it came out and my younger sister was in elementary. They both didn't see any representation in Black Panther but they loved it because they both really really like Panthers and other big cats. Both grew up with cats. My sister calls him the Cat King. It's so silly to think just because it's not made for you doesn't mean you can't like it.
but then you meet black people online crying about how they can't relate to white characters and need more black representation, wish it worked both ways@@bunny-dl2fi
@@bunny-dl2fi oh no that's my point. As in, even if it's valuable for representation, it's for everyone. Everyone has something they can get out of it. Even a love for cats.
But if a thing is made for everyone then why are we even talking about representation? I agree that I don’t need to see a white character to enjoy something (me being a white male) but it begs the question of why we see all these race and gender swaps. It either matter or it doesn’t but these things always go one way and I think it’s valid for people to criticize that.
The problem is and always has been, those who refuse to admit they have prejudices. We all have some, the difference is those of us who have the courage to admit we're imperfect are the only ones who can evolve beyond said prejudices. Those who never have the strength and courage to look inward, are fear-based thinkers who naturally become emotionally imbalanced. This leads to their prejudices becoming bigotry and hate.
I did laugh when the boys realized Black Female Eric Cartman was really Cartman, they were expecting her to be different. Turns out she was just trying to play Baldur's Gate 3 at the end of the day and didn't give a damn about trying to fix the panderverse.
god i just love that the starfield guy immediately became a poster child for being big grumpy about the no-no words that they absolutely 100% understand just fine and simply pretend otherwise.
@@Luciry123 Its especially funny because sci fi has always been left leaning/progressive, from Iain M. Banks or Terry Pratchet to Douglas Adams and Isaac Asimov
@@cyrollan Well, Robert Heinlein had some very leftist views too. He was very pro-sex, pro-women and anti-racist. But yeah, there were always very Right-wing scifi authors. I mean, Good God, have you ever read the original Buck Rogers novel?
This brings back recent memories of people calling the Gorillaz "too political and woke now" even though 'Dirty Harry' from 2005 was literally a criticism of the Iraq war.
Gorillaz making albums with anti war, anti violence and warnings on climate change while having a diverse cast from the beginning of the band allowing them to explore as many music genres as possible The band was born as a critique to fake bands lmao
@@mangoman7346 Only thing I can think of is that they have a song called "tranz" no clue if it's actually about being trans but i can see people calling them woke for the title alone.
I've been getting back into Gears of War lately, and honestly, the way people act like somehow the anti-fascist message is new when the second game had a concentration camp mission is just shocking.
The people who think the message is new were literal children the last time they played the games. No surprise children can't understand political messaging.
The COG being bad guys is so blatant from the very beginning where Marcus has been left to die in a prison overrun by locust. Marcus and Dom clearly distrust their leadership and are cynical about the war in general. Carmine highlights this as his naive optimism is clearly presented as coming from ignorance compared to the cynicism of the two veterans. The whole war was ultimately caused by the exploitation of immulsion (oil) and lead to the destruction of both sides as well as the planet. Woke AF
I mean people did freak out about Gears of War back in the day, its just that instead of the fascism it was about...men crying. Which I guess people being mad over men having emotions is an improvement over fascism denial.
This is always such a tangled subject to talk about because half the people who are upset about diversity and inclusion in mainstream media are just angry about having to see women and minorities in anything, and the other half are upset because we see ourselves being tokenized for other people's bottom lines (see the critical reactions to Activision-Blizzard's diversity calculator). It gets even thornier when you run into cases where things like colorblind casting undermine conversations that a work of art was originally trying to have about complex sociopolitical issues - whitewashing through diversity rather than facing down hard conversations about oppression. If you try to speak up about these problems from the perspective of caring about the way the plights of women and minorities are treated or erased by media corporations, you get a lot of people immediately assuming you're from the camp of bigots and refusing to listen.
I agree so much with this! Trying to write a comment but I don’t think I can state it better. The amount of lacklustre bad characters I’ve seen that are kinda - as you stated - Tolkenized; I have a huge issue with that. Yet when there is awesome 3D characters, theres so many push backs internally (like owl house comes to mind). And I’m mad about the lazy writing and then it being used an excuse for pandering when it’s like no- don’t be lazy…and also maybe try and platform shows that idk, have good writing but are diverse?
@@sentimentaltrash 100% agreed. I write for a living and at this point if I'm not attempting to get something off the ground now in the wake of A.I. exploitation my entire plan for character modeling is: a) myself with a different coat of paint slapped on it b) a fuzzy Muppet alien whatchamacallit with large chunks of me still present. c) acquaintances of myself because writing anything else would end up with both sides of the political whirlpool breathing down my neck and I am so goddamn tired of it.
yes, exactly. and the cure for corporate white supremacist media was never to just start telling stories about every race and minority all at once with the same suits in charge and thereby diversify differences into meaninglessness in a post-racial, post-feminist, post-fuck universe; but instead to empower races and marginalized groups to tell their ownmost (actually truly their own) fucking stories with the freedom to be different, and most importantly to take the noose of data analytics and twitter trends off the creative process--that same noose being tied around every fucking enterprise being the clearest sign to anyone with a forebrain (and even to the goobers who lack one) that they're being cynically pandered to in the drabbest of timelines.
You know, there is a third group of people who _aren't_ minorities but are still angry at tokenization of characters. Just saying. The only people who are upset "for the right reasons" aren't always minorities themselves. I say this because I see people who aren't minorities get slammed for complaining because, "you're just mad cuz you're white" (etc), when that's not helpful at all, and turns away allies who might genuinely want to help.
I started reading the X-MEN at 12 years old and I didn't understand the political context or messages within the comics but by 16 I had started to get it. Queer coded characters, not explicitly gay because the comics were from the 80's and I was reading them in the 90's. The allegory for racism was baked in at the beginning but writer Chris Claremont took it to the obvious next level, creating a multi-ethnic team, hinting at LGBTQ identies. The X-Men were always woke.
Not many youtubers would be able to get me to click on a video about this show, but I guess my fondness for Jack Saint outweighs my dislike of South Park.
I honestly think the "Diverse" designs are genuinely good and they slay and they're sort of girlbosses. And the fact that they even say "Wow you really are Cartman" when they realize she acts exactly like Cartman just shows how carrying abt "forced diversity" just doesnt matter and the character can still act like themselves even when played by a "Diverse" woman as they call the characters from that universe
My God your dumb. The problem with diversity is obvious. On its own it's fine. However when it is the onky requirement to create a show, movie or other form of entertainment you get the garbage we see today. Diversity is fine but writing, plot, character motivations etc are far more important.
I stopped watching South Park two years ago, and it was nothing to do with the actual show. I watched Bloom's ranking of every South Park episode. Bloom is a great example of someone who eats up South Park's enlightened centrist ideology. He was fully convinced that even the cigarette industry and the Iraq War had two sides to them. It was then that I was like "Shit. This is the world view that South Park pushes to people".
The climate change denying episodes are known to be badly aged, but it's even weirder to look back at the episodes about how people who are against the Iraq war are stupid, because I think both sides by now admit that the war was a huge mistake
@@gaebril131 I mean it wasn't because of a specific moment in the show. The last episodes I watched were from the COVID specials which I mostly enjoyed. I was already aware of South Park's tendency to be enlightened centrist but listening to someone parrot it unironically for two hours straight left a sour taste in my mouth.
@@lukaszzylik4437 No, you do get mad. Whenever people critcize South Park; South Park fans foam at the mouth angry that people don't get the satire or that there's too many woke people. Ya'll have an ideology, just don't wanna admit it.
So, sometimes it critiques what you like and sometimes critiques what you hate 🙃. Nah I'm joking they have some ass episodes ngl, some that don't say much politically but rather aren't funny, or some that are too on the nose xd.
@@Gaming_Legend2 I didn't find the panderverse special that funny tbh. It wasnt awful but it was mostly just them saying Kathleen Kennedy and Baldurs Gate over and over again. Though most episodes were made in a week (not sure the schedule now) so they can't all be winners. Also usually I don't like potty humor so episodes that focus on that I don't like usually either. The best/funniest episodes are the ones that explore character dynamics I think.
Exactly. Comedy wise, I think it's one of the best cartoons out there. But I think the main issue other then it's "enlightened centrist" type episodes it's the way the message it's delivered. Sometimes it feels like the show treats itself like they're the smartest people alive delivering this obvious message to a bunch of idiots. Which while I can completely agree with the message, the way it's done feels incredibly full of themselves.
@@bruh......2005 exactly! And even the messages I agree with are delivered so on the nose that it's just like eh... The best episodes are the ones that go into character dynamics I feel. (my personal favorites tend to be the older ones when there was a rivalry between "Craig and those guys" and the main four. I think they should bring those back honestly)
The drinker's content is actually pretty okay when he doenst go balls deep in "the message" its different from his bros who just talk like "the woke" killed their grandma
South Park is legit one of my favorite shows of all time, but I would be lying if I said that it has not had a negative impact on political discourse or that the show is absolved of any and all criticism because they ‘make fun of everyone’. South Park’s main issue is that the show really popularized this ‘both sides bad’ mentality you see a LOT of centrists and libertarians sticking by. This idea that you’re stupid for caring about issues just takes away any ability to have genuine political discourse with a person, since they’ll just insist that the issue doesn’t matter since it doesn’t affect them personally and it’s a waste of time to even care about or discuss those topics. Issues regarding race, sexuality, and gender especially seem to get the brunt of this mentality, and it’s really getting old seeing people act like marginalized groups caring about the shit going on in their community is somehow on par with the people doing bad things to their community because ‘they are caring about it wrong’. Just far too many people get this idea that they are the rational realist in politics because they simply choose not to pick a side, even when it is VERY clear that they have picked a side and just are too scared to admit it. Trey and Matt definitely showcase a willingness to grow and learn with the show, which I think helps it. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is still quite a bit of fence sitting in the show that I think is just tiring to see.
I don't think it's had a negative impact. I think most people who buy into the "oops all centrism" interpretation of the show are usually pretty young and will ultimately grow out of it and forge their own identities as they grow up. I think the show is useful to a lot of people who are essentially raised to share their parents' political beliefs, and who might not really question them because they're not really taught to see anything from other viewpoints, ever. I think it's quite healthy to have a bit of centrism injected into you, to teach you not to revere any viewpoint automatically. It's a better starting point.
I think this is a really well written critique of some of the negative impacts of the show and I agree with all of it. I'm curious though, why do you consider it one of your favorite shows despite all the harm it's done? Genuinely asking because my brothers love this show and we have a lot of the same political beliefs but I personally could never really get past the ickiness of presenting punching down at minorities on the same level as making fun of genuinely stupid and ridiculous people.
It still amazes me how some people don't realize that the Cartman character is a mirror and joke about America (or the capitalist West in general). When he insults another culture the joke isn't what he's saying. It's instead "haha, a spoiled American would say that." It's in the same vein as Borat, a character created to bring out the very worst of the people he interacts with. It's not about what he's saying, but how what he's saying plays into your expectations of him.
That's true about borat, but is it about cartman? genuinly curious, because that would you require knowing the creators intentions or thoughts. have they give an interview or something pointing it out?
@@magical571yeah I’m also not sure, he’s definitely the less rational of the four main characters, and is the catalyst for most of the crazy situations in that show, but he also often serves as the “brutal voice of reason.” But I could be wrong.
@@magical571 Beside Matt Stone being from a Jewish family, I think it's pretty clear to me because Cartman is not aspirational at all. Cool lines are usually said by cool characters, characters that the audience may want to be like. Cartman is the opposite of that - a self-centered, obnoxious, spoiled brat that basically everybody in the show hates. Cartman is the joke. Not what he's saying (what he's saying can still be funny regardless though). Another character written in a similar vein is Michael Scott. What he says isn't necessarily funny, but the feeling that it creates is. The fact that he's saying that thing in that company at that time is funny. His character is the joke, and again, not aspirational. I honestly think Cartman is an incredibly nuanced and brilliant piece of character development. Him being a mirror is also not always bad. I think often he can be and is the voice of reason, because there's a time and place for his line of thinking. He's unmovable in his line of thinking, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. A comparable character to this would be George Costanza.
@@magical571 Yes it's true about Cartman. But being a white American myself, I would add a qualifier of "white _reactionary_ American" or something to that effect. "People like Cartman" are a relatively small, yet extremely vocal minority of white people in America. The way OP phrased it as if Cartman represents white Americans, or Americans in general is just as ignorant as the "white American idiots" they are laughing at. If Cartman represents white Americans in general, who are the other characters supposed to be? But yes, Cartman has always been the show's conduit for all the worst aspects of American culture. Different people might use different words, but they're all saying basically the same thing. Doesn't require reading the minds of the creators. Just requires.... watching the show? It's not like they're subtle about it... Basic media literacy means you don't need explicit confirmation directly from the creator's mouth in order to get the gist of what they're saying.
I used to be a huge South Park fan and honestly they were a bit inconsistent. A majority of the time he’s supposed to be the example of what not to do, but there are multiple episodes where he is the audience stand in or straight man. It can make it a bit confusing as to which things he’s saying that are supposed to be seen as good or bad
The creators positing “what if the cast of SP were replaced by a quartet of hot, diverse, thiccfit femmes?” as a bad thing seems like absolute madness.
The creators positing “what if the cast of SP were replaced by a quartet of hot, diverse, thiccfit femmes?” as a bad thing 𝒊𝒏 𝑬𝒓𝒊𝒄 𝑪𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒎𝒂𝒏'𝒔 𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒔, especially within the context of the episode--seems pretty obvious.
Edit* Rot in piss Henry Kissinger I’ve been talking with my friend about this for a few years now, and I think the reason why for years I personally just don’t feel any spark from South Park is Parker and Stone don’t really punch upward anymore. They’re almost billionaires now, I don’t think they have any idea on what the pulse is for whatever any issue they cover is really about. Their Dickenbaus episode really illustrates their split from normal people, Parker and Stone completely embrace stupid stereotypes of a lazy workforce and completely miss out on an opportunity to illustrate real, comedically ridiculous things we all experience. Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s there totally was a serious hypocrisy in mainstream PC culture and how it would whitewash or savage topics it didn’t feel comfortable with. And they made fun of that for years. But we don’t live in those times, and it’s like Parker and Stone still have beef with being politically correct even though now, the idea of PC is completely different, and being anti-PC puts you in the same bed as assholes and racists. This special honestly had like 3 moments that were funny, and it had a point about media using a formula to shit out things they think people will eat up with zero thought, but the special itself is just not that good and misses the mark badly. And honestly, Matt and Trey would probably make fun of me for having this opinion but the show is dying in popularity and it’s not edgy or cool to be known as a fan anymore. So yeah, they made out with a lot of money but the reputation of the show is dying and that’s their enduring legacy that they’re fucking up.
Yes. The hotdog stand episode really puts into perspective how out of touch the writers are nowadays. Its message is something you would see in a 90’s sitcom. Want money? You better work hard for it. Ignoring that most Americans now already work their assess off just to afford the bare essentials
"using a formula to shit out things they think people will eat up with zero thought" is actually a great description of what South Park is now. The formula is: Identify edgy wedgy issue ---> ride the fence like it's your favorite dick ---> use all the stereotypes ---> profit! Been that way for at least a decade.
convinced they forgot this special under a desk or something in like 2018 and they forgot to write an episode one week so they had to scramble for something
I think the debate is what conclusion to draw from that narrative. Obviously the narrative is false, so they must either: A) Not be pandering to anyone, or B) Pandering to everyone. I'm just inclined to believe it's option B, because this is fucking Disney we're talking about. Pandering to everyone = more cash flow, it's that simple.
@@bugjams south pale being so fucked off about seeing a woman of color they think Disney is legitimately trying to do anything progressive for any human reason instead of “those outsiders? They have to use money also. Money delicious” is the most libertarian shit I can think of besides being a ukulelephile/walshphile
I think we need to talk about the real media pandering going on here, which is how Jack keeps bringing his mum and dog onto these videos to please the audience (Please never stop pandering to us, Jack)
I saw the ads for the special and instantly wrote it off (haven't watched for years anyway), really appreciate you making it part of the focus of a great video topic
@@Infinite_Repeat well, to be fair (and balanced, and nuanced, and other bs), he has as much right as we do to say "those idiots make us, the reasonable ones look bad". Not saying he's right in drawing the line between him and "the idiots", but it always makes sense, at least emotional sense to try. Especially if he feels he has to vindicate South park in some way because he's already invested in approving their political leaning.
@@ElvalleyAnd to be even more fair, he is far and away the “anti-woke” channel with the most substance. Like, buried beneath all that bitterness there is at least something there, whereas with almost all the rest (Quartering, Nerdrotic, Yellowflash, I could go on) it’s just repeating the word “woke” over and over to sucker in people who don’t have enough brains to power a lightbulb.
The discussion of 'media has always had political commentary' really reminds me of how disappointed I was when I saw the latest Texas Chainsaw, because it was so muddied with a confused centrist instinct to say everything and nothing at the same time, that it absolutely failed to be a spiritual successor to the original Texas Chainsaw. The original had several very clear political statements to make, and made them. I watched the newest one and was BAFFLED at how badly it tried to "Both Sides" several issues it brought up. I had to ask my girlfriend if the movie was TRYING to say 'young adults with ptsd from school shootings are stuck up and need to get over themselves' or just sort of implied that on accident. G*merg*te was a weird time to be a queer woman who liked video games, because the internet was deeply obsessed with the idea that I was some sort of imaginary demographic that didn't actually exist, and if I did it would destroy the entire industry if some studios ever represented my existence when creating art. I remember a lot of guys in college telling me I was 'never bullied for liking video games as a kid', and let me tell you: nerdy tomboy videogame playing girls were definitely also bullied in the 90's, they were just choosing to not extend empathy to the fact that it happened to us too. edit: dont know where the question went but the answer to why ppl censor 'gamergate' is that its way funnier to censor it like its an unspeakable curse word
Gamergate singlehandedly made me quit going to meme websites specifically because I kept getting random posts about ''ethics in games journalism'' and I didn't even fucking play video games. But more seriously I clocked it as a very bad time for memes. It's when memes got political
There's a lot more you could say that "doesn't help" than stretching how the colors of the mascot's hoodie got chosen into saying the entire mascot is a rape joke.@@Byakurenfan
The Saint video doesn't go far enough into how GamerGate was deliberately crafted by alt-right hate groups to give a neutral political face to their deliberate harassment campaign, CONSCIOUSLY crafted to pull in disaffected gamers as a recruitment tool, and that we've seen literal receipts and screenshots from *chan boards of all said planning. You can look up some good videos by others like Innuendo Studios for more on that though. Key figures associated with the movement went on to literally work on Donald Trump's presidential campaign and help build the alt-right to provide him memetic support ahead of his first election.
I really like that you brought up August Wilson. Its hard to criticize the diverse casting because for this reason because people assume your approaching your criticism from the right
this is part of why i really don't like the polarized two party system: you try to criticize one thing in a vacuum, and then you get accused of holding every single idea of the opposite side of the spectrum. it kills critical thinking because analyzing issues one by one isn't presented as an option, you're told to pick basket of opinions A or basket B in its entirety.
@@MediecreGoddess simplifying a large and nucanced sociopolitical landscape into 2 factions is like taking a jpeg of a mural and compressing it into 2 pixels
I know this is a potentially weird parasocial thing to say, but I genuinely love seeing you and your mum in your videos. I don't have a relationship with mine so I just find it really sweet.
we also have improved access to philosophy and political theory, giving us language to articulate how we feel about certain subject, the words are new but the opinions have always been there, there was no "woke uprising", people have always had opinions on these subjects.
Also being able to tell that the joke is nothing more than a schrodingers douchebag, aka "if the response to my comment was negative, my comment was a joke If the response was positive, my comment was not a joke but truth".
The only way this episode has a cohesive message (especially the way the critical drinker summed it up with his "moderation" argument) is if you believe that diversity and representation in media has gone too far or gotten out of control, which it absolutely hasn't. That conclusion is still basing itself off the idea that diversity in media is inherently a bad thing that there's too much of, which is still firmly placed in a false narrative being pushed by bigoted anti-woke goons.
Something I notice more and more is that people whose personal brand is to rage about how nostalgic IPs that they loved when they were kids are now being made "woke"... ...all seem to have deep nostalgia for, like, EVERY IP. They were fanatically absorbed in the lore around every superhero; they had every console and played every game on it and loved every game on it; they watched every movie, ate every comic, etc. ... ...but somehow avoided *all* the nerd culture bickering about the subtext because, y'know, they didn't actually care as much then as they seem to now. The nostalgic IP is being used as a hook to promote bigotry, is what I'm saying. The passion is fake. The fandom is fake. Yes, individual fans could sincerely hold these views, but I find it statistically unlikely that so many individuals would have the same passionately held bigoted views about EVERY nostalgic IP.
It _kinda_was at one point (at least as much as one can be while on network television lol), but certainly not now. I mean ffs if your show has more than *_twenty seasons,_* then you are, by definition, not even slightly counterculture.
@@idontwantahandlethoughWell some things to make it more nuanced. Simpsons was also called ‘counter culture’ in the 80s. It was actually also anti-republican that many republicans talked about it decrying american values. “Bush SR even said himself he wanted to make more families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons.” Then, it just became culture. That is what happens. ‘counter culture’ is really a misnomer. It is still just culture, just uhm, ‘non-normative’ culture. South Park was the same in the 90s, probably 2000s. I don’t think it is now. And I don’t think the team and creators really…get it. When Groening Left Simpsons in like, Season 7 or whatever can’t remember, doesn’t matter, he left on a high note. The show was still ‘good’ and people started to integrate it in their culture. But he didn’t overstay his welcome, and he bounced backing making another series. Matt and Trey, and I love them and their souls, really need to touch grass and not judge the craziest for the norm. As a huge south park fan, I know they have done plenty of episodes where something seemingly reasonable and somewhat accepted become scatched as shitty snowflake propaganda, or something.
there is absolutely nothing countercultural about south park. it’s an unfunny pair of libertarian’s circle jerk that may occasionally say something of value.
She controls everything and is absolutely influenced by a little boys opinion. Their villains always have the plankton paradox, extremely capable yet absolutely incompetent.
To be "woke" is yet another thing stolen from black american culture; originally meaning aware of and opposing social injustice. It was then re-appropriated to the cultural (white-supremacist) imperialist's definition, which forces an assumption that these injustices somehow don't exist, or do not matter, ghoulishly, substituting only a bigot's favorite scare-word, "cancelling". In this way, bigots can lazily deflect any reasonable appeal to a the humanity of a person of any marginalized group. (edit: spelling of deflect)
This is an incredible youtube comment.. wow it really encapsulates the true colonialism of the language re: the word 'woke', and I'm pretty sure this comment by itself is _WAYY_ better than this video I didn't even watch. No seriously, I came here first to figure out the video's tone and luckily stumbled on your comment). Thanks!💖✨
@@lafemmedevastation 🫶 Thank you. I am only passing on what I was taught by wiser minds...in my own journey reckoning with overcoming repression as a queer person (5 years out now). Through all these monetized platforms...we should all remember there still are human beings reading, watching and searching for connection...and that these platforms would be nothing were it not for that humanity and our activity here. I'm grateful what I could pass on reached you, and anyone else who may be reading. Stay strong, we will persevere over these many injustices.
I spent A LOT of my time on the web and processing how it's changed over the last decade has made my stomach drop a bit. I've used the platform as a crutch for so long - it's really helped me understand myself in ways that might've never happened otherwise - but I no longer enjoy it here. People don't really want to engage with the internet to its strengths, they want to commodify it with a cynical approach similar to TMZ or Fox News. There's so much free knowledge and stuff to learn here and instead we've sunk back into celebrity worship and culture wars. I've worked on community projects where people have wildly different beliefs and while there's a mild bit of discomfort to that, it has its limits and you can't always talk it out, you're at least making something. The stuff you make, lasts, and everyone can enjoy it. That viscious reddit argument you had on a gaming subreddit will be gone one day and only you will remember it, and the anxiety, and wished you didn't. We should be directing our focus to just making art and learning things, and have the rest be a "sometimes food".
Honestly i feel like the platforms are the ones to blame the most for this. The media has admited time and time again that outrage and "stupid politics" get engagement a ton more than anything else. Video Games journalist, Reddit, meme sites, YT and virtually everything becomes this mess of negative feelings, that get people to wanna engage in it for whatever reason they find justifiable, be it to agree or disagree. One exemple to mind rn is ifunny, used to be a generic meme site, now is filled to the brim with reactionnary racism as content, and mods don't do anything about it, because these posts constantly did good and now the whole site is a fest of altright vs everyone just tryna enjoy memes and leftists coming in to try and counter act the flocking of right wingers. But Number go UP, so the show must go on...
One thing that really bothers me when people complain about ""inserting wokeness"" into their games is how they always complain about their escapism being ruined. Im a black trans guy so every single day I am reminded of politics 24/7. My own existence is inherently political, I am seen as a subject of debate. I do not get to stop thinking about politics for even a second because eveything I do or say is taken as political. Hell even me trying to use the bathroom is an arduous task because I have to assess if Im safe enough to piss. The fact that people complain about having to see people like me in their escapism annoys me so deeply not only because they see my me and people like me as political, but also because I dont have the luxury of escaping politics ever. The little bit of representation that gives me a small sense of being seen is immediately trashed on by people as "forced" and "pandering".
God this In my case I'm transmasc, genderqueer, autistic, pansexual, whole bunch of things that I'm reminded everyday that people obsessively hate. My goddamned EXISTENCE is considered "Woke" and that gives me a sense of dread like little other. I'll say it, we're at a point where even escapism is seen as a privilege not for people like us, and that makes me that little bit more ready for the apocalypse to happen already.
I recently rewatched Kim Possible and I wonder how those episodes would be seen today... . I mean, 90% of male characters in that show are cowards and idiots while a lot of the female characters are absolute girlbosses. I mean, the protagonist is literally named Kim Possible and her sidekick Ron Stoppable. And one of the more serious antagonists is Shego. She-go! They didn't even try to hide it. And then I think about the fact that people today instantly go mad when any woman in any media slightly disrespects any man and it's instantly seen as "man-hating content" by those dorks. Like I remember, people wrote essays on why Galadriel in the LOTR series is not just a girlboss character (she definitely is; but that was not something that bothered me personally) but some sort of man-hating witch because she disagreed with men I guess (and I use this point irrespective of how anyone may view the quality of the show itself)
Journalists usually lie. If not constantly. Gameragate has no corporate backing compared to journalists who play games to moralize and not ot have fun.
@@gabby3036 Yeah, it is, and it sucks that journalists have tarnished the reputation of their career so much by acting so dishonestly. Do not blame someone for acknowledging reality.
I'm so happy to see people outside my normal gaming circle mention Giantbomb. I've loved their content over the years. It's not the same since the last set of departures, but still love everyone who was and is at that studio.
26:32 Y'know, as a combination of Minority Groups myself, I often find myself wondering this when I see conservatives raging about the existence of "woke" characters and giving their parody mock-up version of one. Like... where's all this suddenly great, wonderful representation for people with physical disabilities or chronic health conditions? Severe mental disorders that aren't demonized and are treated like characters worth respecting? People of diverse (like, actually fat) body types that are allowed to just exist without being the butt of a joke? Any Indigenous characters and their specific tribal practices being respected and treated with dignity instead of an entire stereotype or generalization? Seriously, WHAT popular character even has vitiligo?! As a trans nonbinary person I'd love to know of all these games that allow me to exist without shoving myself into one slot of the binary. I'd love to engage in all this media that seems to not only acknowledge that I exist, but treats it as the norm...! Unfortunately I've gotten tired, and have resulted in writing my own stories. ... But then it hit me. I think they just get pissed off at seeing Twitter/Tumblr/DeviantArt artists either 1) redesigning established characters with their own headcanons or 2) making their own OCs, often times based on their own experiences, and therefore being more diverse than anything you'd ever see portrayed in a blockbuster movie or AAA game. Like, that HAS to be a factor, right? Some artist with 10k followers redraws an established character with their black/disabled/trans headcanon and gets made fun of to hell and back by these guys, or a small artist has some "diverse" OCs for a story they might not have even published anywhere that gets similarly picked apart. The only time I can actually count on seeing "diverse" content that might come close to mirroring my life experience or the experience of people I know comes from is, shockingly, fandom content (and by larger extent, the communities surrounding fandom artists/writers). People making different AUs to share their stories through established media that would be impossible to reach an audience for otherwise, at least with the lowest possible barrier of entry. From the same people who often employ the "well if you don't like OUR media, GO MAKE YOUR OWN", I have a sinking feeling they still have a very huge problem even when people do make their own...! Otherwise why would the mere CONCEPT of someone EXISTING with this condition make you so upset? Very provoking rest of the video too, by the way. Been a long time fan and the recent stuff you've been uploading has been some of my favorite you've made!
I'm pretty sure that 99.9% of all people who have TALKED about Anita Sarkeesian have never actually seen any of her content. Not complained, talked about. To most people she's just some ghoul that exists for the sake of whispering about in hushed tones, or outright mockery.
You're right. However if you HAVE actually seen her content you then know she does only really deserve mockery because of how vapid her critiques are on actually tackling the issue with sexism in media and because of how much low hanging fruit she provides to dunk on for the chuds. "Batman's cape flaps back down quickly to hide his male presenting butt" is indefensibly weak. It's a vicious catch 22.
You'd think she was talking about having women take over and punish all men as subservient humans... not "hey maybe women can be more than plot devices more often please?" Her opinions are so **mild**. It's crazy that people used her as a scapegoat, when what she was saying is the mildest of mild feminism these days.
i remember when i was 16 and doing media studies and all of gamergate started to kick off and me and my friend decided to actually sit down and watch this series that everyone was talking about, and we were genuinely shocked by how mild it was, even then in 2014. like, literally sub-101 level media analysis. tv tropes has hotter takes.
@ltbq yeah same, I got into anita without knowing about any of the gamer gate stuff in 2014 and it was mostly judt a nice intro to some feminist talking points that i didnt really know before. The only way you could really see it as extremeist and not mild and introductory is if youve literally never had your misogyny challenged at all, or if youre being told by someone else that its extremist and believing them without checking for yourself
But Jack, you don’t understand! It is impossible to have good writing and a diverse cast at the same time. Scientists have proven that Disney remakes with all white casts would have 1.31% better dialogue and 5.006% better special effects, approximately. Live action remakes of beloved animated classics being bad has nothing to do with them being very boring conceptually as most of what they do is throwing away the charm unique to the medium of animation without adding to it utilizing their own strengths… Except for 101 Dalmatians, that one‘s a classic in its own right.
The yaoi side of South Park fandom interpreted the "woke" South Park solely as slaying queens, so I thought the whole special is just genderbent South Park and doesn't have the whole Panderstone bullshit 😭😭😭
I'll never forget as an atheist for decades how excited I was to find so many like minded people on UA-cam in the early partn of the century. Then after Gamergate, suddenly half the channels I followed put out almost nothing but misogynist claptrap week after week. It really made me reevaluate how I judged character. I simply walked away disgusted, but I wonder what sort of choices I may have made if I had been someone with less real world context to fall back on.
This "South Park" joke doesn't even make sense: It's not like "The Force Awakens" cast John Boyega as Han Solo and Daisy Ridley as Wedge. There ARE some pieces of media that race-flipped longstanding characters...but none produced by Kennedy that I can recall. Her name is just a lazy reference.
You cant deny the new star wars movies and shows are absolute trash tho, i dont blame kennedy as a woman for that but i blame her for allowing star wars to fall, as a story and as a media campaign.
Yeah the main character of the sequels is a straight white woman the black character gets pushed to the sides and the only “pandering” thing I remember was the gay kiss in Rise that you can blink and miss and can be easily be edited out. I don’t like new Star Wars but diversity isn’t the problem
@@Infinite_Repeat exactly this. Also i think this is a rumor but in the chinese version isnt that kiss edited out. Like pandering didnt kill star wars, bad story telling did and their execution of it.
@@phht0568: I can and do deny that, but be that as it may, look at what you're doing: I'm sitting here like, "Huh, the thing this cartoon is attempting to satirize is totally non sequitur, this shouldn't be about Star Wars at all," and here's some stranger shoving your whole head into my window saying, "BUT YOU AGREE STAR WARS IS BAD RIGHT? TELL ME YOU HATE STAR WARS THAT'S OBVIOUSLY WHAT WE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT INSTEAD!" No, weirdo; go away, go outside, get a hobby, talk about anything else for a day, you fucking freak.
Very funny for Saint to release it then the very next day have Bob Iger do an interview at Disney where he throws the entire company under the bus for having "too many messages" in their media (messages is code for having too many diverse voices).
I actually just had a pretty good discussion with my dad about this…he tends to come across a little too much propaganda and ends up a bit more influenced by toxic black and white thinking. He’s very “back in my day, people didn’t get offended so much like these woke snowflakes”, and I’m very pro more liberal ideas like trans rights, gender identity affirmation, my body my choice type of stuff. But as an artist studying to go into the animation industry, I am so sick and tired of this toxic cycle of corporate cookie cutter films that prioritize business over entertainment. And I know my dad’s not evil or anything, he’s just a guy that grew up in a different generation, doesn’t like change very much, and likes to argue lol. We like to simplify our views in opposite ways from each other, but basically believe in the same stuff. This whole debate forgets how truly complex human beings are
This is the perspective all privileged people chose, bet you would change your mind if you realized you are trans and your totally not evil dad disowns or beats you, or you needed an abortion because you got r***ed after your dad voted to make them illegal
I guarantee you that back in his day, people were getting offended. He just wasn’t aware of it. Probably because mainstream media only showed a narrow range of opinions. Now, for better and for worse, everyone has a voice in an international public square.
@@catsmom129well, yeah, I know that. I think that falls under the umbrella of “grew up in a different generation”, or at least I meant it to. That wasn’t a literal quote, it was just like a boiled down version of his beliefs
As if there wasn't corporate sludge back in the day. I want everyone saying this to just check some basic film history. You're getting old and falling into the same beliefs of your parents, and that's an issue
I feel like there’s a strange paradox with ‘edgy’ humor (blue and black comedy) where they tend to attract 2 types of ppl. Left-leaning ppl who enjoy offending conservative pearl-clutchers & right-leaning ppl who enjoy offending ‘snowflake SJWs.’ And for better or for worse (as time goes on I’d say more for the worse) South Park’s longevity has come from them accruing an audience of both types, even if the right-leaning fans think they’re the main demographic. I think the left-leaning side of the fandom will continue to dwindle as Stone & Parker continue to both-sides everything rather than take a definitive stand and risk selling fewer Cartman t-shirts to chuds who identify with him.
I'm not mad at inclusivity and diversity in media. What I am mad about is how lazy brands do it and when you look behind the curtain you realize that they keep doing the things they say they are against
poor quality games and the rise of diversity are not correlated because diversity = bad games; its because greedy companies make bad games, and sometimes greedy companies will include controversial diversity as a desperate marketing attempts to get at least a little press coverage and interest in their game, even if the player is just buying the game to criticize it or to signal their political alliances.
South Park tries to police what types of characters work and what don't while simplifying how complex roles/characters are. Peter Parker and Miles Morales are two different characters. So is 1985 Ariel and 2023 Ariel.
Ya Peter Parker and miles are vastly different that’s why people like them it’s when there’s not a difference in the character just race or gender where people don’t like it and feel insulted
Are they? Now, I don't think Ariel's skin color matters at all, but I firmly disagree. The 1985 and 2023 characters are basically the same. They have the same motives, same like and dislikes, same friends, same love interest, even the same dialogue and songs. The only difference really is her skin color and maybe a little change in the way the actress' performance. Imo that doesn't constitute her being a different character
@asorlokirunarsson9864 Well, maybe not different characters, but certainly different iterations/performances. Ariel is no different than the roles of Sweeney Todd, Regina George, or the cast of The Phantom of The Opera. Anyone can play these roles.
@@Urmumlel7025 but I think that's South Park's point, whether you agree with it or not. Make new characters instead of changing the ones we have without a narrative explanation
@asorlokirunarsson9864 Nothing is being changed, though. The original iteration will always be there. It's like song covers. By your definition, getting rid of universal characters is the same as getting rid of covering songs.
SouthPark isn't saying anything, it's shouting at everything. It's like cinemasins with clever writing. Clever, but still fucking bleating and bad for the community of critique that it occupies.
Funny You brought up Blizzard. Remember when Soldier XX turned out to be gay? Not long after another controversy regarding the company's shitty behaviour towards its workers hit the fan? I feel like this is one of facets of the situation that is not brought up often enough: the idea of pandering to people in order to cover up some bad news (which is still happening to this very day).
Its become a running gag in some of my social spaces to go "oh hey, ActiBlizz announced a new/cool thing, what the fuck did they do this time?". Like its so *blatantly* transparent at this point.
great work jack :) this is the first time i've seen anyone (online) clearly explain how none of this "woke stuff" is new. i am not sure if i were to do so it would be able to hide my bewilderment and exasperation; i mean if you are like 18-23 it is more understandable but i find it particularly funny coming from men ten, twenty, thirty years older than me [a 30-y/o]. i for my part happened to read certain texts from the early '90s when i started uni all the way back in 2011 now, and so even a decade ago (i mark 2014 as the year things "exploded", which is to say leaked from internet cloisters into irl and mainstream media) when social justice, intersectionality, trigger warnings, pronouns etc. were all of a sudden "new" and topical, and political correctness emerged from the abyss of cultural amnesia and became new again too (after being such a focal point of the '90s' "culture wars"), i was like hey guys, you know this isn't really all that new, actually people were kind of obsessed with it around the time i was born, see look at this here book... of course yeah it is possible to historicize "it" indefinitely, even to transhistoricize it... getting off the internet is one of the best decisions i've ever made, i mean i'm right here but going on two years w/o twitter, fb, tiktok, etc.; once you're off and out, it's like, you couldn't pay me to redownload those things any more than you could pay me to swallow a tapeworm (which is to say i would do it for 10k. just putting that out there)
I have a love hate relationship with South Park. I think a lot if the episodes are hilarious, but obviously offensive. Still people identifying with Cartmen is awful, like people thinking rorschach is cool. I may not agree with South Park all the time but a lot of the time its pretty spot on, or at least has something interesting to say. Im very much in the camp that says you can enjoy media with problematic aspects.
Also, Matt stone and Trey Parker have said they think they did well if both (what they see as) the right and the left think they are on their side. So, south park is meant to pander to the largest number of people possible without giving away to those people who else they are pandering to. South park does not promote political apathy but instead just tries to make a profit from whatever semi-mainstream opinion you are already holding.
Your video was dope and the point on narrativization was splendid. I hope you dig deeper into the idea as it has been clunking about in my noggin forever since I was confronted by a friend when I posited a similar theory. He basically said " a beggining, a middle, an end, its the way humans communicate, it's usefull, and it will never be sidestepped".
7:20 it's called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, btw (which, if you've never heard of it before, you're bound to see in at least a few places over the next week or so 😉)
Why is Critical Drinker talking in that clip like he isnt someone who has also taken part in the blanket conspiracy of a behemoth of Kathleen Kennedy ruining everything? Is this some kind of attempt to continue some façade that his criticisms aren't identical to every other one? That his mindless rants and outright lies are actual derived criticisms of film despite artistic intent or analysis? Like, he IS who this episode was making fun of, why is he now above this?
It's either the tiniest bit of shame peeking through or just straight up cognitive dissonance at work when a guy like him goes "No, that wasn't me," despite there being mountains of video and audio evidence of him also being that guy. Loathe as I am to admit it, the Film Drunk at least seems capable of passing the mirror test, unlike the obese pronouns guy and the dried up meth corpse whose hair is in the process of a southern migration across his head.
What kind of fascinates me about the online harassment campaign that shall not be named is just how much it passed me by. I remember Tropes vs. Women pretty well because the backlash it received opened my eyes a lot. At the time, I was a big time reddit atheist memelord who idolized Christopher Hitchens and watched Tfoot religiously (yes, that is the insufferable narcissism of teenage boyhood you are detecting). But I had been sort of aloof from the backlash to feminism from those circles. I was active in my local queer community, LGBTQIA+ activism was a core part of my identity. I knew a few feminists from those circles who at the time I perceived as being overly sensitive and militant for correctly calling out misogyny, but even though I didn't understand them and privately griped about or mocked them (remember, I was a teenager), I still appreciated them and respected them on some level, and so I was never hypnotized by the open derisiveness coming from the New Atheist movement towards feminist circles. When people started calling Sarkeesian a fraud and mocking her takes, I watched her videos and... They just made sense. I was also getting older and maturing. At that point, I walked away from the New Atheist / Skeptic movement that increasingly felt childish, out of touch, and reactionary rather than progressive. I was fully woke. The great harassment campaign came after all that, so I barely even payed attention to it honestly, I had moved on. To me, the big event was Tropes vs. Women. That other thing, I literally know nothing about it -- sounds like the remaining fence sitters after Tropes vs. Women started _really_ showing their true colors.
I feel like everyone left of Joe Manchin has been on a collective cigarette break since the pandemic. We...just fucking can't anymore. We have burned out burn-out.
I think we don't talk about gamergate enough in terms of the reactionary landscape we find ourselves in now, as cringey as it is to think about. Steve Bannon was right unfortunately and we're still seeing the effects of this moment
South Park's biggest advantage in the beginning, I'd say, was that it "made fun of everyone" and now that's it's biggest problem. The problem with making fun of everyone now is that there is already a massive epidemic of right leaning dumbasses out there who don't have the media literacy to understand when pieces of media are making fun of just the things they enjoy. Take American Psycho, Rick & Morty, Breaking Bad, or literally any other piece of media like them and you will find a crap ton of people who idolize Patrick Bateman, Rick Sanchez and Walter White because they are either ignorant or actively refuse/ignore that the media they're in is being critical of them, their behavior and the environments they create (or perpetuate/reflect in Bateman's case). If these dumbasses can't even understand that when that media is *only* commenting on and satirizing their views, then trying to "make fun of everyone" is a beyond dangerous game.
doesnt matter, theres an episode where kyle straight up says, "either everything is funny or nothings funny" its not south parks fault if people interpret in their own way
@Smash-gs5kd yea I’m gonna go ahead and keep it 100% with you right now, either everything is funny or nothings funny, when you start telling people what is and what isn’t ok to make fun of that’s when things stop being funny I’m not a hateful person I don’t agree with treating marginalized groups wrongly But I like to laugh And I like freedom If I’m allowed to make fun of someone then someone’s allowed to make fun of me, if you can’t understand that please for the sake of all of us who enjoy laughter please do not continue to watch any comedy content because “you can’t make fun of that!” Will destroy comedy Comedians have jesters privilege and are allowed to hold a mirror up to society without repercussion this has been an accept rule of humanity for centuries at this point The jester may say whatever he pleases for nothing he says truly matters Now if I world leader was saying or promotion hateful or mean things to be “funny” I then have an issue because he lacks jesters privileges But seriously bro please stay away from comedies and just to watch drama or something leave the funny stuff to funny people cause I don’t think you get how humor works
@@caspernoir4028 Yeah Imma keep it 100 with you chief, your entertainment (whether is be comedies, dramas, or anything else) does not matter more than the actual lives of any people in any groups that are damaged by dumbasses who take this media and see it as vindication rather than criticism for their garbage behavior. We understand how humor and jester privilege works, the problem here is the jester privilege because everything said is treated from that point forward as having as much value as a joke while still carrying the same repercussions. It’s very clear you just don’t understand how the real world works.
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here's a new video on several uncontroversial topics, looking forward to reading every one of your comments
also I want panderverse kenny to hold my hand
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As a lesbian I do like Life is Strange and Gone Home because lesbians
Was the book thing at the start a joke?
I'm done with this woke talk. I think this video sux, it just the same old crap that I been hearing too long and this is now my reason for leaving this social media crap. Why is it just people are being lame and dumb with pathetic idea of things having to have an agenda. It just a show .... If you didn't like the show then you could just read a book, go out and have fun or just talk to friends, family or love ones. This video is basically saying that a cartoon is having an agenda in politics and he isn't liking it views point, but this is South Park, it will always do something like this because that is how the show is.
I'm tried of this crap, you kids need to just stop this lame talk about some outdated term that shall be replaced soon with a better word in the near future and people will not be using this language. Anyway dude, I think I can sum up what you are saying in under one minute here goes.
There was an episode in South Park that I didn't enjoy and I not happy with the message of the show. So because of this I will take some time away from this show and move on with my life and focus on something better like how am I going to survive my next bill to pay this month.
So that is what could have been said and you would feel better than being angry about a cartoon. Life is more important than some cartoon. Beside this is coming off as being sad and making me think that you are either doing this because of the views or you was some loser who trying to be angry because you're life sucks. Anyway terrible video dude -10/10 and I know that's impossible to give a grade like that but from the length of the and the boring topic choice it gets that score. Later
LOL. The Critical Drinker. Haven’t thought of that one in a looong time.
Got into the channel for a week or so when I used to listen to endless UA-cam reviews while I was working. Then he started randomly ranting about typical anti-woke shit in the middle of one of them and I was like wait wtf? Ok unsubbed I guess.
It’s hilarious how these dudes don’t realize that being obsessively upset about any and everyone who doesn’t look or act like them and forcing it into everything is the real reason people are put off by them lol.
Jack, sorry, could you put Spanish subtitles on the video?
When people remember the good, politics-free past, they're actually remembering when they were children and didn't know politics existed
Also, sometimes the media they are watching was made before they were born, so they have no idea what was going on at the time. Though, I find it hard to believe ANYONE would think Robocop is A-political . xD
Excellently said. Not enough people realize that their own limited knowledge, is itself, a bias. And that the world changes a lot more slowly than an individual person does.
Exactly. Whenever I get mad at myself for not being able to break out of neoliberalism it’s like... okay just because other children were able to do it doesn’t detract from how i was a child and dealing with things that didn’t lead to noticing the shape of the society I was in.
And adults lie. When they told me racism was over and feminism had won, i believed them. When they said heinous shit about trans people, disabled people, I believed them.
It’s still embarrassing that it took me noticing the violence of neoliberalism in fiction before I was able to clock it and leave it irl.
Bigotry is learned. You have to unlearn it. It is not a child’s fault if they believe the things their parents tell them when we’re literally designed to do that. But learned helplessness and active ignorance are to a degree both choices, especially the older a person is. You kind of run out of excuses not to know better.
Fr, shows like Static Shock existed back when I was 10 and they delved into politics too like racism. Hell, the Proud Family had two episode with muslims post 9/11 and Penny reliving in the 60s dealing with racism
Also, the internet didn't exist as it is today, and you couldn't watch all this controversies develop in real time like we can do today.
It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realise you were saying Pander Stone and not Panda Stone.
I thought that too until I saw your comment lol
Me too!
Wow you just made me realize he was saying pander
same 😭
Thank you for enlightening me 😂
The problem with the South Park special is that inevitably the people being satired identify too much with Cartman. They relate to his hysterical fears of Kathleen Kennedy replacing them with woke pandering mary sues.
And they all chose to just ignore the part where they said how crying about everything being woke all the time is also lazy and lame
That's because that's the audience Matt and Trey have intentionally steered themselves toward. It benefits them to have an audience of angry, white, 12-year-old boys who will listen to everything they say.
I feel like this is a feature not a bug. It always has been.
I think so too. Like they know their audience. I remember when I liked South Park and thought the messages were good at being anti-Cartman and stuff - there was always one friend who watched the show because they were Cartman and loved seeing him get away with everything. @@AspelShuyin
@@DarkZide8 Agreed... I was born and raised in Atlanta,Georgia so I didn't run into many IRL Cartmans. Unless you count the anti-woman misogyny then yeah boys will be boys no matter the culture.
Sure they might satire those people, but not so hard they realize they're being made fun of too. Like you said South Park knows their audience(s) which means ironically South Park is the one pandering all along.
Edit: I said something slightly more accurate but UA-cam sent me a warning to not be mean. So...
The one thing I wished that had been pushed further with the genre of video games and not only on film. "Woke" isnt just used on race swaps, its used on ANYTHING someone dislikes; lgbtq inclusion, poc, women and etc. Hell, its so ironic how they had a Baldurs Gate 3 reference BUT not too long ago someone called the game "woke" for having a vitiligo option, some even HATE that you can be gay in the game.
The month before the episode aired we had that thumb screaming about PRONOUNS options for Starfield.
The problem is there are, genuinely, cases of pandering and putting in token characters to tick off a diversity checklist. The problem with that problem is, good representation and bad representation are indistinguishable to the screaming manchild reactionary, and so we dismiss _everything_ they complain about (even if, rarely, they're on the money about something).
@@bugjams True, but even when they've correctly identified badly forced representation their response is conspiratorial white genocide nonsense.
@@bugjamsbut even then, that’s not like anybody being “woke”, whatever that word even means at this point, it’s just bad representation
@@bugjams - "The problem is there are, genuinely, cases of pandering and putting in token characters to tick off a diversity checklist."
That's not really a widespread "problem" though, it's a "problem" for properties that do that because those properties are often not particularly good for other entirely lazy reasons (like, you know, using a checklist to meet quotas rather than just having good writing).
The "screaming manchild reactionary" demographic is wrong about there being a real problem at play, because there simply isn't one - bad media is bad, just don't watch it. If anything, the "problem" is that their incessant whining about race/gender/sexuality drowns out any other criticism and makes it sound like it's all just bigotry. If they actually cared about the media being bad, they could instead complain about the things that were bad instead of "zomg diversity".
@@KingBobXVI I mean, I still think HBomberguys "Woke Brands" is a very good way to talk about the whole topic. The video isn't exactly about this type of pandering, mostly about corporations using "progressive" virtue signals to sell stuff by making the reactionaries mad and the progressives defensive of them and just to stir up controversity. I guess one of the big problems is simply that reactionaries think about it in the wrong order. They will take a piece of media with problems, point at any sort of representation and say "See, they spent all their money on wokeism and couldn't afford any quality anymore". Which is stupid, because writing a black character or hiring a gay person is not more expensive in the first place and would also not magically make everything worse in quality. It's more that some pieces of media are bad because it's a soulless cashgrab by big companies and actual artists often have less say than some stupid managers who don't care about quality. Or in some cases it starts with genuine passion by artists but then it gets streamlined and destroyed by the decisions of those higher-ups. And just putting in some random minority characters to fill a quota is just one of many decisions made by such people to tick off their checklist of things that have to be in any modern media. But it's not done because those corporate people are woke or whatever, many of them are probably raging sexists and homophobes, it's just soulless calculation. They would force cruel jokes about minorities into everything if we lived in another political climate. And then reactionaries think it's the existence of marginalized groups in media that makes everything bad, even pointing towards genuine art and good movies/games and calling them bad because they have such characters/themes in it.
But at the same time, we obviously progessed as a society and many things that were absolutely taboo a few decades ago are now accepted and with that there also comes a lot more representation of marginalized people just because it's not longer that much of problem to include those characters/themes. Like I really like Ursulla K. Le Guin and she actually wrote a lot about her decisions, like why she mostly wrote her fantasy and sci-fi stories with male protagonists, why she didn't use they/them pronouns for her civilization of not just gender-, but sex-neutral humans and why she had to kinda sneak in a few mentions of her protagonist in Earthsea being not white; because in her time (we talk about like the 60s and 70s) it just made it harder to even publish her stories and publishers just outright changed such things to make the books more viable, because they were of course mostly interested in making money with it; and she had to comply or she wouldn't have been able to have a career as a writer. So a lot of modern representation is of course also due to genuine decisions of artists who can just have it their way and want that representation just because it's their vision. But reactionaries will look at that too and will claim it's automatically bad art because of the representation, even though it actually make the art better because it's a much more authentic version of what the artist wants.
My main issue with the special is how many goobers just repeat lines from the show unironically as criticism of actual media
C'mon, don't slander my main man SpongeBob by associating those people with goofy goobers.
as they always have, ever since season 1
I’d be more willing to hear them out if they didn’t plug their ear and close their eyes over the part of the show that said also decrying everything as woke is equally as lazy and dumb. Now I disagree that these things are equal but most of these people seem to flat out ignore that was a point made in the special.
"Either everything is okay or nothing is."
Dumbass binary presented by South Park.
This seems to happen with literally ever single time a syndicated TV series has a recurring character whose main purpose is to just spew reactionary politics regardless of the showrunners' intentions, these folks are just so starved of validation that they'll just cling on to whatever they get. Ron Swanson from 'Parks and Rec' is another often overlooked example of this.
The wild thing is that both of my younger siblings are white. My younger brother was in middle school when it came out and my younger sister was in elementary. They both didn't see any representation in Black Panther but they loved it because they both really really like Panthers and other big cats. Both grew up with cats. My sister calls him the Cat King. It's so silly to think just because it's not made for you doesn't mean you can't like it.
Black Panther has good cat representation
Finally a cat film with good cats @@RyanMichero
but then you meet black people online crying about how they can't relate to white characters and need more black representation, wish it worked both ways@@bunny-dl2fi
@@bunny-dl2fi oh no that's my point. As in, even if it's valuable for representation, it's for everyone. Everyone has something they can get out of it. Even a love for cats.
But if a thing is made for everyone then why are we even talking about representation? I agree that I don’t need to see a white character to enjoy something (me being a white male) but it begs the question of why we see all these race and gender swaps. It either matter or it doesn’t but these things always go one way and I think it’s valid for people to criticize that.
To be fair the redesign from the other universe are slaying
The artists are talented. Is that power being used correctly? Idk
Alt Kenny looks better don't care. (I mean, to be fair. She's basically Gogo from Big Hero 6 in a orange hoodie)
@@thegreygoblin5165Gogo is peak character design
they ate
It’ll be fun to see some fandom redraws too (hopefully in good faith)
Another thing to note about colorblind casting: Casting directors can still have racial bias, and sometimes it *really* shows.
The problem is and always has been, those who refuse to admit they have prejudices. We all have some, the difference is those of us who have the courage to admit we're imperfect are the only ones who can evolve beyond said prejudices. Those who never have the strength and courage to look inward, are fear-based thinkers who naturally become emotionally imbalanced. This leads to their prejudices becoming bigotry and hate.
@@aylbdrmadison1051exactly that is true objectivity. When we can be aware of our biases yet still go the extra mile and move forward against all odds.
Velma comes to mind
@@totallynotdio1311 Wow I had forgotten about that, that show's existence feels like a fever dream
@@Bread_bread01 yeah... just like santa inc
I did laugh when the boys realized Black Female Eric Cartman was really Cartman, they were expecting her to be different. Turns out she was just trying to play Baldur's Gate 3 at the end of the day and didn't give a damn about trying to fix the panderverse.
Good for her
A true girlboss
And that’s how you know she truly is Cartman like they said
Pretty based for girl-Cartman.
She just wants to play her Vidya for gods sake!
god i just love that the starfield guy immediately became a poster child for being big grumpy about the no-no words that they absolutely 100% understand just fine and simply pretend otherwise.
He's still to this day ranting about Pro-nouns in Sci-fi media. And will till the end of time
@@Luciry123 Its especially funny because sci fi has always been left leaning/progressive, from Iain M. Banks or Terry Pratchet to Douglas Adams and Isaac Asimov
@@LuluTheCorgiUrsula K. Le Guin
@@LuluTheCorgi I wouldn't say "always", there's Robert Heinlein!
@@cyrollan Well, Robert Heinlein had some very leftist views too. He was very pro-sex, pro-women and anti-racist. But yeah, there were always very Right-wing scifi authors. I mean, Good God, have you ever read the original Buck Rogers novel?
The adult baby yelling "FUCKING PRONOUNS!" may be our greatest gift since "Up yours woke moralists".
The trinity fulfilled with Shapiro's "yeah you effin..."
Adult babies are way more chill than that guy lol
Wait until they discover that "I", "We", and "You" are pronouns.
@@kittykittybangbang9367 they can also be a sentence denoting someone wants to give you the golden shower.
He was right and people are sick of body types replacing binary male/female choice. You lost the culture war.
This brings back recent memories of people calling the Gorillaz "too political and woke now" even though 'Dirty Harry' from 2005 was literally a criticism of the Iraq war.
You mean the recent album? Cuz i cant really think of anything thay would cause that
like they literally made a whole album about climate change lmfao
Gorillaz making albums with anti war, anti violence and warnings on climate change while having a diverse cast from the beginning of the band allowing them to explore as many music genres as possible
The band was born as a critique to fake bands lmao
To play devil's advocate though: 'Dirty Harry' from 2005 was literally a criticism of the Iraq war that *ABSOLUTELY SLAPPED!*
@@mangoman7346 Only thing I can think of is that they have a song called "tranz" no clue if it's actually about being trans but i can see people calling them woke for the title alone.
I've been getting back into Gears of War lately, and honestly, the way people act like somehow the anti-fascist message is new when the second game had a concentration camp mission is just shocking.
The people who think the message is new were literal children the last time they played the games. No surprise children can't understand political messaging.
The COG being bad guys is so blatant from the very beginning where Marcus has been left to die in a prison overrun by locust. Marcus and Dom clearly distrust their leadership and are cynical about the war in general. Carmine highlights this as his naive optimism is clearly presented as coming from ignorance compared to the cynicism of the two veterans. The whole war was ultimately caused by the exploitation of immulsion (oil) and lead to the destruction of both sides as well as the planet.
Woke AF
No russian
I mean people did freak out about Gears of War back in the day, its just that instead of the fascism it was about...men crying. Which I guess people being mad over men having emotions is an improvement over fascism denial.
@@EnigmaticGentleman That really has been the pattern, reactionaries have gone from dumb toxic status quo to actively trying to make the world worse.
This is always such a tangled subject to talk about because half the people who are upset about diversity and inclusion in mainstream media are just angry about having to see women and minorities in anything, and the other half are upset because we see ourselves being tokenized for other people's bottom lines (see the critical reactions to Activision-Blizzard's diversity calculator).
It gets even thornier when you run into cases where things like colorblind casting undermine conversations that a work of art was originally trying to have about complex sociopolitical issues - whitewashing through diversity rather than facing down hard conversations about oppression.
If you try to speak up about these problems from the perspective of caring about the way the plights of women and minorities are treated or erased by media corporations, you get a lot of people immediately assuming you're from the camp of bigots and refusing to listen.
I agree so much with this!
Trying to write a comment but I don’t think I can state it better. The amount of lacklustre bad characters I’ve seen that are kinda - as you stated - Tolkenized; I have a huge issue with that. Yet when there is awesome 3D characters, theres so many push backs internally (like owl house comes to mind). And I’m mad about the lazy writing and then it being used an excuse for pandering when it’s like no- don’t be lazy…and also maybe try and platform shows that idk, have good writing but are diverse?
@@sentimentaltrash 100% agreed. I write for a living and at this point if I'm not attempting to get something off the ground now in the wake of A.I. exploitation my entire plan for character modeling is:
a) myself with a different coat of paint slapped on it
b) a fuzzy Muppet alien whatchamacallit with large chunks of me still present.
c) acquaintances of myself
because writing anything else would end up with both sides of the political whirlpool breathing down my neck and I am so goddamn tired of it.
yes, exactly. and the cure for corporate white supremacist media was never to just start telling stories about every race and minority all at once with the same suits in charge and thereby diversify differences into meaninglessness in a post-racial, post-feminist, post-fuck universe; but instead to empower races and marginalized groups to tell their ownmost (actually truly their own) fucking stories with the freedom to be different, and most importantly to take the noose of data analytics and twitter trends off the creative process--that same noose being tied around every fucking enterprise being the clearest sign to anyone with a forebrain (and even to the goobers who lack one) that they're being cynically pandered to in the drabbest of timelines.
You know, there is a third group of people who _aren't_ minorities but are still angry at tokenization of characters. Just saying. The only people who are upset "for the right reasons" aren't always minorities themselves. I say this because I see people who aren't minorities get slammed for complaining because, "you're just mad cuz you're white" (etc), when that's not helpful at all, and turns away allies who might genuinely want to help.
you mean tolkien-ized?
People think Robocop was A-political 🤦♂️
It's pretty clearly homopolitical.
I started reading the X-MEN at 12 years old and I didn't understand the political context or messages within the comics but by 16 I had started to get it. Queer coded characters, not explicitly gay because the comics were from the 80's and I was reading them in the 90's. The allegory for racism was baked in at the beginning but writer Chris Claremont took it to the obvious next level, creating a multi-ethnic team, hinting at LGBTQ identies.
The X-Men were always woke.
Not many youtubers would be able to get me to click on a video about this show, but I guess my fondness for Jack Saint outweighs my dislike of South Park.
I honestly think the "Diverse" designs are genuinely good and they slay and they're sort of girlbosses. And the fact that they even say "Wow you really are Cartman" when they realize she acts exactly like Cartman just shows how carrying abt "forced diversity" just doesnt matter and the character can still act like themselves even when played by a "Diverse" woman as they call the characters from that universe
The fact that people exist who unironically think this way both baffles and disappoints me
@@normalgrahamdont you have some furry sonic crap to be playing
My God your dumb. The problem with diversity is obvious. On its own it's fine. However when it is the onky requirement to create a show, movie or other form of entertainment you get the garbage we see today. Diversity is fine but writing, plot, character motivations etc are far more important.
Right? Why they made Kenny so hot?
Stan: "Oh my god, they f-ked Kenny!"
Kyle: "It shouyld have been me, you b@st@rd!"
Yasss girlboss slay got that rizz gyatt on god!!! God this kind of talk is so annoying.
I stopped watching South Park two years ago, and it was nothing to do with the actual show.
I watched Bloom's ranking of every South Park episode. Bloom is a great example of someone who eats up South Park's enlightened centrist ideology. He was fully convinced that even the cigarette industry and the Iraq War had two sides to them.
It was then that I was like "Shit. This is the world view that South Park pushes to people".
Ngl I'd say that has something to do with the actual show
The climate change denying episodes are known to be badly aged, but it's even weirder to look back at the episodes about how people who are against the Iraq war are stupid, because I think both sides by now admit that the war was a huge mistake
I think the show is still hilarious. The show makes fun everything and I'm not gonna get mad because they make fun of the things I like
@@gaebril131
I mean it wasn't because of a specific moment in the show. The last episodes I watched were from the COVID specials which I mostly enjoyed.
I was already aware of South Park's tendency to be enlightened centrist but listening to someone parrot it unironically for two hours straight left a sour taste in my mouth.
@@lukaszzylik4437 No, you do get mad. Whenever people critcize South Park; South Park fans foam at the mouth angry that people don't get the satire or that there's too many woke people. Ya'll have an ideology, just don't wanna admit it.
South park is reeeaally hit or miss. It can be very funny sometimes. It can also be mind numbingly stupid.
So, sometimes it critiques what you like and sometimes critiques what you hate 🙃.
Nah I'm joking they have some ass episodes ngl, some that don't say much politically but rather aren't funny, or some that are too on the nose xd.
@@Gaming_Legend2 I didn't find the panderverse special that funny tbh. It wasnt awful but it was mostly just them saying Kathleen Kennedy and Baldurs Gate over and over again. Though most episodes were made in a week (not sure the schedule now) so they can't all be winners. Also usually I don't like potty humor so episodes that focus on that I don't like usually either. The best/funniest episodes are the ones that explore character dynamics I think.
Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with this show.
Exactly. Comedy wise, I think it's one of the best cartoons out there. But I think the main issue other then it's "enlightened centrist" type episodes it's the way the message it's delivered. Sometimes it feels like the show treats itself like they're the smartest people alive delivering this obvious message to a bunch of idiots. Which while I can completely agree with the message, the way it's done feels incredibly full of themselves.
@@bruh......2005 exactly! And even the messages I agree with are delivered so on the nose that it's just like eh... The best episodes are the ones that go into character dynamics I feel. (my personal favorites tend to be the older ones when there was a rivalry between "Craig and those guys" and the main four. I think they should bring those back honestly)
You nailed the critical drinker imitation, especially his delivery/cadence. Could tell who you were doing way before the titles lol.
It's spot on! 😅
Unrealistic, Jack made him sound smarter than he is
The drinker's content is actually pretty okay when he doenst go balls deep in "the message" its different from his bros who just talk like "the woke" killed their grandma
I like how its Jager too.
Who is he imitating?
South Park is legit one of my favorite shows of all time, but I would be lying if I said that it has not had a negative impact on political discourse or that the show is absolved of any and all criticism because they ‘make fun of everyone’. South Park’s main issue is that the show really popularized this ‘both sides bad’ mentality you see a LOT of centrists and libertarians sticking by. This idea that you’re stupid for caring about issues just takes away any ability to have genuine political discourse with a person, since they’ll just insist that the issue doesn’t matter since it doesn’t affect them personally and it’s a waste of time to even care about or discuss those topics. Issues regarding race, sexuality, and gender especially seem to get the brunt of this mentality, and it’s really getting old seeing people act like marginalized groups caring about the shit going on in their community is somehow on par with the people doing bad things to their community because ‘they are caring about it wrong’. Just far too many people get this idea that they are the rational realist in politics because they simply choose not to pick a side, even when it is VERY clear that they have picked a side and just are too scared to admit it.
Trey and Matt definitely showcase a willingness to grow and learn with the show, which I think helps it. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is still quite a bit of fence sitting in the show that I think is just tiring to see.
👏
And we know anything about libertarians and centrists; they'll throw a massive shit-fit whenever you criticize them.
I don't think it's had a negative impact. I think most people who buy into the "oops all centrism" interpretation of the show are usually pretty young and will ultimately grow out of it and forge their own identities as they grow up.
I think the show is useful to a lot of people who are essentially raised to share their parents' political beliefs, and who might not really question them because they're not really taught to see anything from other viewpoints, ever.
I think it's quite healthy to have a bit of centrism injected into you, to teach you not to revere any viewpoint automatically. It's a better starting point.
🎉
I think this is a really well written critique of some of the negative impacts of the show and I agree with all of it. I'm curious though, why do you consider it one of your favorite shows despite all the harm it's done? Genuinely asking because my brothers love this show and we have a lot of the same political beliefs but I personally could never really get past the ickiness of presenting punching down at minorities on the same level as making fun of genuinely stupid and ridiculous people.
Can you imagine a world without south park?
*plays the clip from the simpsons where Lionel hutz imagines the world without lawyers.
World without Simpsons? Hard to imagine. World without South Park? Absolutely can.
It still amazes me how some people don't realize that the Cartman character is a mirror and joke about America (or the capitalist West in general). When he insults another culture the joke isn't what he's saying. It's instead "haha, a spoiled American would say that." It's in the same vein as Borat, a character created to bring out the very worst of the people he interacts with. It's not about what he's saying, but how what he's saying plays into your expectations of him.
That's true about borat, but is it about cartman? genuinly curious, because that would you require knowing the creators intentions or thoughts. have they give an interview or something pointing it out?
@@magical571yeah I’m also not sure, he’s definitely the less rational of the four main characters, and is the catalyst for most of the crazy situations in that show, but he also often serves as the “brutal voice of reason.” But I could be wrong.
@@magical571 Beside Matt Stone being from a Jewish family, I think it's pretty clear to me because Cartman is not aspirational at all. Cool lines are usually said by cool characters, characters that the audience may want to be like. Cartman is the opposite of that - a self-centered, obnoxious, spoiled brat that basically everybody in the show hates. Cartman is the joke. Not what he's saying (what he's saying can still be funny regardless though). Another character written in a similar vein is Michael Scott. What he says isn't necessarily funny, but the feeling that it creates is. The fact that he's saying that thing in that company at that time is funny. His character is the joke, and again, not aspirational.
I honestly think Cartman is an incredibly nuanced and brilliant piece of character development. Him being a mirror is also not always bad. I think often he can be and is the voice of reason, because there's a time and place for his line of thinking. He's unmovable in his line of thinking, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. A comparable character to this would be George Costanza.
@@magical571 Yes it's true about Cartman. But being a white American myself, I would add a qualifier of "white _reactionary_ American" or something to that effect. "People like Cartman" are a relatively small, yet extremely vocal minority of white people in America.
The way OP phrased it as if Cartman represents white Americans, or Americans in general is just as ignorant as the "white American idiots" they are laughing at. If Cartman represents white Americans in general, who are the other characters supposed to be?
But yes, Cartman has always been the show's conduit for all the worst aspects of American culture. Different people might use different words, but they're all saying basically the same thing. Doesn't require reading the minds of the creators. Just requires.... watching the show?
It's not like they're subtle about it... Basic media literacy means you don't need explicit confirmation directly from the creator's mouth in order to get the gist of what they're saying.
I used to be a huge South Park fan and honestly they were a bit inconsistent. A majority of the time he’s supposed to be the example of what not to do, but there are multiple episodes where he is the audience stand in or straight man. It can make it a bit confusing as to which things he’s saying that are supposed to be seen as good or bad
The creators positing “what if the cast of SP were replaced by a quartet of hot, diverse, thiccfit femmes?” as a bad thing seems like absolute madness.
how dare they threaten us with a good time
Woke universe Kenny was so based
The creators positing “what if the cast of SP were replaced by a quartet of hot, diverse, thiccfit femmes?” as a bad thing 𝒊𝒏 𝑬𝒓𝒊𝒄 𝑪𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒎𝒂𝒏'𝒔 𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒔, especially within the context of the episode--seems pretty obvious.
@@TAEYYOseems pretty classic
To Cartman it would be.
Edit* Rot in piss Henry Kissinger
I’ve been talking with my friend about this for a few years now, and I think the reason why for years I personally just don’t feel any spark from South Park is Parker and Stone don’t really punch upward anymore. They’re almost billionaires now, I don’t think they have any idea on what the pulse is for whatever any issue they cover is really about. Their Dickenbaus episode really illustrates their split from normal people, Parker and Stone completely embrace stupid stereotypes of a lazy workforce and completely miss out on an opportunity to illustrate real, comedically ridiculous things we all experience. Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s there totally was a serious hypocrisy in mainstream PC culture and how it would whitewash or savage topics it didn’t feel comfortable with. And they made fun of that for years. But we don’t live in those times, and it’s like Parker and Stone still have beef with being politically correct even though now, the idea of PC is completely different, and being anti-PC puts you in the same bed as assholes and racists.
This special honestly had like 3 moments that were funny, and it had a point about media using a formula to shit out things they think people will eat up with zero thought, but the special itself is just not that good and misses the mark badly. And honestly, Matt and Trey would probably make fun of me for having this opinion but the show is dying in popularity and it’s not edgy or cool to be known as a fan anymore. So yeah, they made out with a lot of money but the reputation of the show is dying and that’s their enduring legacy that they’re fucking up.
Yes. The hotdog stand episode really puts into perspective how out of touch the writers are nowadays. Its message is something you would see in a 90’s sitcom. Want money? You better work hard for it. Ignoring that most Americans now already work their assess off just to afford the bare essentials
"using a formula to shit out things they think people will eat up with zero thought" is actually a great description of what South Park is now. The formula is: Identify edgy wedgy issue ---> ride the fence like it's your favorite dick ---> use all the stereotypes ---> profit! Been that way for at least a decade.
convinced they forgot this special under a desk or something in like 2018 and they forgot to write an episode one week so they had to scramble for something
Fo sure
Simple. When Disney does what wonder bread internet wants, it's good business. When Disney does what I, a black queer, want, it's pandering. Easy!
panderverse!
I think the debate is what conclusion to draw from that narrative. Obviously the narrative is false, so they must either: A) Not be pandering to anyone, or B) Pandering to everyone.
I'm just inclined to believe it's option B, because this is fucking Disney we're talking about. Pandering to everyone = more cash flow, it's that simple.
@@bugjams exactly. The way i see it, pandering is a part of that sweet free market capitalism
Funny how it's bad business to make money
@@bugjams south pale being so fucked off about seeing a woman of color they think Disney is legitimately trying to do anything progressive for any human reason instead of “those outsiders? They have to use money also. Money delicious” is the most libertarian shit I can think of besides being a ukulelephile/walshphile
I think we need to talk about the real media pandering going on here, which is how Jack keeps bringing his mum and dog onto these videos to please the audience
(Please never stop pandering to us, Jack)
Yes
I saw the ads for the special and instantly wrote it off (haven't watched for years anyway), really appreciate you making it part of the focus of a great video topic
So Critical Drinker acts as if he doesn’t contribute to those “toxic fandoms that complain about everything”?
Right !? Isn’t he the one that’s always complaining about the message and people mimic him?
@@Infinite_Repeat well, to be fair (and balanced, and nuanced, and other bs), he has as much right as we do to say "those idiots make us, the reasonable ones look bad". Not saying he's right in drawing the line between him and "the idiots", but it always makes sense, at least emotional sense to try. Especially if he feels he has to vindicate South park in some way because he's already invested in approving their political leaning.
@@ElvalleyAnd to be even more fair, he is far and away the “anti-woke” channel with the most substance. Like, buried beneath all that bitterness there is at least something there, whereas with almost all the rest (Quartering, Nerdrotic, Yellowflash, I could go on) it’s just repeating the word “woke” over and over to sucker in people who don’t have enough brains to power a lightbulb.
The discussion of 'media has always had political commentary' really reminds me of how disappointed I was when I saw the latest Texas Chainsaw, because it was so muddied with a confused centrist instinct to say everything and nothing at the same time, that it absolutely failed to be a spiritual successor to the original Texas Chainsaw. The original had several very clear political statements to make, and made them. I watched the newest one and was BAFFLED at how badly it tried to "Both Sides" several issues it brought up. I had to ask my girlfriend if the movie was TRYING to say 'young adults with ptsd from school shootings are stuck up and need to get over themselves' or just sort of implied that on accident.
G*merg*te was a weird time to be a queer woman who liked video games, because the internet was deeply obsessed with the idea that I was some sort of imaginary demographic that didn't actually exist, and if I did it would destroy the entire industry if some studios ever represented my existence when creating art. I remember a lot of guys in college telling me I was 'never bullied for liking video games as a kid', and let me tell you: nerdy tomboy videogame playing girls were definitely also bullied in the 90's, they were just choosing to not extend empathy to the fact that it happened to us too.
edit: dont know where the question went but the answer to why ppl censor 'gamergate' is that its way funnier to censor it like its an unspeakable curse word
Gamergate singlehandedly made me quit going to meme websites specifically because I kept getting random posts about ''ethics in games journalism'' and I didn't even fucking play video games.
But more seriously I clocked it as a very bad time for memes. It's when memes got political
It doesn't help that the 4 chan mascot for gamer gate is a rape joke.
There's a lot more you could say that "doesn't help" than stretching how the colors of the mascot's hoodie got chosen into saying the entire mascot is a rape joke.@@Byakurenfan
@@williampounds5191 so why were such ugly colors chosen by 4 chan trolls that loved that gif?
@@williampounds5191 my man William missed the entire Daily Dose saga, that's worse than not getting a joke
The Saint video doesn't go far enough into how GamerGate was deliberately crafted by alt-right hate groups to give a neutral political face to their deliberate harassment campaign, CONSCIOUSLY crafted to pull in disaffected gamers as a recruitment tool, and that we've seen literal receipts and screenshots from *chan boards of all said planning. You can look up some good videos by others like Innuendo Studios for more on that though. Key figures associated with the movement went on to literally work on Donald Trump's presidential campaign and help build the alt-right to provide him memetic support ahead of his first election.
I really like that you brought up August Wilson.
Its hard to criticize the diverse casting because for this reason because people assume your approaching your criticism from the right
this is part of why i really don't like the polarized two party system: you try to criticize one thing in a vacuum, and then you get accused of holding every single idea of the opposite side of the spectrum. it kills critical thinking because analyzing issues one by one isn't presented as an option, you're told to pick basket of opinions A or basket B in its entirety.
@@MediecreGoddess simplifying a large and nucanced sociopolitical landscape into 2 factions is like taking a jpeg of a mural and compressing it into 2 pixels
I know this is a potentially weird parasocial thing to say, but I genuinely love seeing you and your mum in your videos. I don't have a relationship with mine so I just find it really sweet.
dont worry, its not parasocial at all!! its just nice seeing ppl who have good relationships with their parents. its a normal human empathy thing :D
it's healing to see examples of parents you didn't get to experience, wishing you well.
As Renegade Cut said which I'm paraphrasing
"South Park is not profound. It's politics are so mainstream,anyone can project onto it."
A misconception about comedy is that the world hasn’t gotten sensitive, it’s just easier nowadays for people to tell you you’re not funny.
we also have improved access to philosophy and political theory, giving us language to articulate how we feel about certain subject, the words are new but the opinions have always been there, there was no "woke uprising", people have always had opinions on these subjects.
Also being able to tell that the joke is nothing more than a schrodingers douchebag, aka "if the response to my comment was negative, my comment was a joke If the response was positive, my comment was not a joke but truth".
The only way this episode has a cohesive message (especially the way the critical drinker summed it up with his "moderation" argument) is if you believe that diversity and representation in media has gone too far or gotten out of control, which it absolutely hasn't. That conclusion is still basing itself off the idea that diversity in media is inherently a bad thing that there's too much of, which is still firmly placed in a false narrative being pushed by bigoted anti-woke goons.
exactly 💯
Something I notice more and more is that people whose personal brand is to rage about how nostalgic IPs that they loved when they were kids are now being made "woke"...
...all seem to have deep nostalgia for, like, EVERY IP. They were fanatically absorbed in the lore around every superhero; they had every console and played every game on it and loved every game on it; they watched every movie, ate every comic, etc. ...
...but somehow avoided *all* the nerd culture bickering about the subtext because, y'know, they didn't actually care as much then as they seem to now.
The nostalgic IP is being used as a hook to promote bigotry, is what I'm saying. The passion is fake. The fandom is fake. Yes, individual fans could sincerely hold these views, but I find it statistically unlikely that so many individuals would have the same passionately held bigoted views about EVERY nostalgic IP.
The "bigotry" you're talking about is really just people complaining about things they like getting worse through the filter of the internet.
@@applejhon8308 - No, it isn't.
@@FTZPLTCYes, it very often is.
@@applejhon8308
"actually you're wrong and I'm not gonna explain why"
It took me embarrassingly long to realize how cringe the Nostalgia Critic was. I watched so many of his videos uncritically...
Bold of a show like southpark to call itself counterculture while being a major informer of mainstream culture and ideologies.
It _kinda_was at one point (at least as much as one can be while on network television lol), but certainly not now.
I mean ffs if your show has more than *_twenty seasons,_* then you are, by definition, not even slightly counterculture.
Southpark hasn't been counterculture since the 90s lol
@@idontwantahandlethoughWell some things to make it more nuanced.
Simpsons was also called ‘counter culture’ in the 80s. It was actually also anti-republican that many republicans talked about it decrying american values. “Bush SR even said himself he wanted to make more families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons.”
Then, it just became culture. That is what happens. ‘counter culture’ is really a misnomer. It is still just culture, just uhm, ‘non-normative’ culture.
South Park was the same in the 90s, probably 2000s. I don’t think it is now. And I don’t think the team and creators really…get it.
When Groening Left Simpsons in like, Season 7 or whatever can’t remember, doesn’t matter, he left on a high note. The show was still ‘good’ and people started to integrate it in their culture. But he didn’t overstay his welcome, and he bounced backing making another series.
Matt and Trey, and I love them and their souls, really need to touch grass and not judge the craziest for the norm. As a huge south park fan, I know they have done plenty of episodes where something seemingly reasonable and somewhat accepted become scatched as shitty snowflake propaganda, or something.
there is absolutely nothing countercultural about south park. it’s an unfunny pair of libertarian’s circle jerk that may occasionally say something of value.
Can you name examples of counterculture that became popular while continuing to remain counterculture?
i love this special because it portrays kathleen kennedy as the person who controls every movie ever
She controls everything and is absolutely influenced by a little boys opinion.
Their villains always have the plankton paradox, extremely capable yet absolutely incompetent.
@@JordyMOOcowThe enemy is both strong and weak, now where have I heard that before…
To be "woke" is yet another thing stolen from black american culture; originally meaning aware of and opposing social injustice. It was then re-appropriated to the cultural (white-supremacist) imperialist's definition, which forces an assumption that these injustices somehow don't exist, or do not matter, ghoulishly, substituting only a bigot's favorite scare-word, "cancelling". In this way, bigots can lazily deflect any reasonable appeal to a the humanity of a person of any marginalized group. (edit: spelling of deflect)
this
This is an incredible youtube comment.. wow it really encapsulates the true colonialism of the language re: the word 'woke', and I'm pretty sure this comment by itself is _WAYY_ better than this video I didn't even watch. No seriously, I came here first to figure out the video's tone and luckily stumbled on your comment). Thanks!💖✨
@@lafemmedevastation 🫶
Thank you. I am only passing on what I was taught by wiser minds...in my own journey reckoning with overcoming repression as a queer person (5 years out now). Through all these monetized platforms...we should all remember there still are human beings reading, watching and searching for connection...and that these platforms would be nothing were it not for that humanity and our activity here. I'm grateful what I could pass on reached you, and anyone else who may be reading. Stay strong, we will persevere over these many injustices.
I spent A LOT of my time on the web and processing how it's changed over the last decade has made my stomach drop a bit. I've used the platform as a crutch for so long - it's really helped me understand myself in ways that might've never happened otherwise - but I no longer enjoy it here. People don't really want to engage with the internet to its strengths, they want to commodify it with a cynical approach similar to TMZ or Fox News. There's so much free knowledge and stuff to learn here and instead we've sunk back into celebrity worship and culture wars.
I've worked on community projects where people have wildly different beliefs and while there's a mild bit of discomfort to that, it has its limits and you can't always talk it out, you're at least making something. The stuff you make, lasts, and everyone can enjoy it. That viscious reddit argument you had on a gaming subreddit will be gone one day and only you will remember it, and the anxiety, and wished you didn't. We should be directing our focus to just making art and learning things, and have the rest be a "sometimes food".
Honestly i feel like the platforms are the ones to blame the most for this. The media has admited time and time again that outrage and "stupid politics" get engagement a ton more than anything else. Video Games journalist, Reddit, meme sites, YT and virtually everything becomes this mess of negative feelings, that get people to wanna engage in it for whatever reason they find justifiable, be it to agree or disagree. One exemple to mind rn is ifunny, used to be a generic meme site, now is filled to the brim with reactionnary racism as content, and mods don't do anything about it, because these posts constantly did good and now the whole site is a fest of altright vs everyone just tryna enjoy memes and leftists coming in to try and counter act the flocking of right wingers.
But Number go UP, so the show must go on...
One thing that really bothers me when people complain about ""inserting wokeness"" into their games is how they always complain about their escapism being ruined. Im a black trans guy so every single day I am reminded of politics 24/7. My own existence is inherently political, I am seen as a subject of debate. I do not get to stop thinking about politics for even a second because eveything I do or say is taken as political. Hell even me trying to use the bathroom is an arduous task because I have to assess if Im safe enough to piss.
The fact that people complain about having to see people like me in their escapism annoys me so deeply not only because they see my me and people like me as political, but also because I dont have the luxury of escaping politics ever. The little bit of representation that gives me a small sense of being seen is immediately trashed on by people as "forced" and "pandering".
God this
In my case I'm transmasc, genderqueer, autistic, pansexual, whole bunch of things that I'm reminded everyday that people obsessively hate. My goddamned EXISTENCE is considered "Woke" and that gives me a sense of dread like little other.
I'll say it, we're at a point where even escapism is seen as a privilege not for people like us, and that makes me that little bit more ready for the apocalypse to happen already.
thank you. that was insightful.
@@malachitep4276 If the apocalypse is going to happen, it'll be the anti-woke crowd's fault.
I recently rewatched Kim Possible and I wonder how those episodes would be seen today... . I mean, 90% of male characters in that show are cowards and idiots while a lot of the female characters are absolute girlbosses. I mean, the protagonist is literally named Kim Possible and her sidekick Ron Stoppable. And one of the more serious antagonists is Shego. She-go! They didn't even try to hide it. And then I think about the fact that people today instantly go mad when any woman in any media slightly disrespects any man and it's instantly seen as "man-hating content" by those dorks. Like I remember, people wrote essays on why Galadriel in the LOTR series is not just a girlboss character (she definitely is; but that was not something that bothered me personally) but some sort of man-hating witch because she disagreed with men I guess (and I use this point irrespective of how anyone may view the quality of the show itself)
I remember some anti sjw channel actually attempted an anti sjw reading of Kim Possible at it never took off lmao
Saying Gamergate was about "ethics in journalism" is like saying the Civil War was about "states' rights".
Journalists usually lie. If not constantly. Gameragate has no corporate backing compared to journalists who play games to moralize and not ot have fun.
@@someblackguy7371 That's a pretty sad generalization, in my opinion.
@@gabby3036 It's pretty fair since they were doing most of the Generalization. Against everyone else.
@@someblackguy7371 a lot of them don't/didn't even play video games, they just think "WOKE = GOOD, GOOD = GOOD... PUT GOOD IN GAME... GOOD"
@@gabby3036 Yeah, it is, and it sucks that journalists have tarnished the reputation of their career so much by acting so dishonestly. Do not blame someone for acknowledging reality.
I'm so happy to see people outside my normal gaming circle mention Giantbomb. I've loved their content over the years. It's not the same since the last set of departures, but still love everyone who was and is at that studio.
26:32 Y'know, as a combination of Minority Groups myself, I often find myself wondering this when I see conservatives raging about the existence of "woke" characters and giving their parody mock-up version of one. Like... where's all this suddenly great, wonderful representation for people with physical disabilities or chronic health conditions? Severe mental disorders that aren't demonized and are treated like characters worth respecting? People of diverse (like, actually fat) body types that are allowed to just exist without being the butt of a joke? Any Indigenous characters and their specific tribal practices being respected and treated with dignity instead of an entire stereotype or generalization? Seriously, WHAT popular character even has vitiligo?! As a trans nonbinary person I'd love to know of all these games that allow me to exist without shoving myself into one slot of the binary. I'd love to engage in all this media that seems to not only acknowledge that I exist, but treats it as the norm...! Unfortunately I've gotten tired, and have resulted in writing my own stories.
...
But then it hit me. I think they just get pissed off at seeing Twitter/Tumblr/DeviantArt artists either 1) redesigning established characters with their own headcanons or 2) making their own OCs, often times based on their own experiences, and therefore being more diverse than anything you'd ever see portrayed in a blockbuster movie or AAA game. Like, that HAS to be a factor, right? Some artist with 10k followers redraws an established character with their black/disabled/trans headcanon and gets made fun of to hell and back by these guys, or a small artist has some "diverse" OCs for a story they might not have even published anywhere that gets similarly picked apart. The only time I can actually count on seeing "diverse" content that might come close to mirroring my life experience or the experience of people I know comes from is, shockingly, fandom content (and by larger extent, the communities surrounding fandom artists/writers). People making different AUs to share their stories through established media that would be impossible to reach an audience for otherwise, at least with the lowest possible barrier of entry.
From the same people who often employ the "well if you don't like OUR media, GO MAKE YOUR OWN", I have a sinking feeling they still have a very huge problem even when people do make their own...! Otherwise why would the mere CONCEPT of someone EXISTING with this condition make you so upset?
Very provoking rest of the video too, by the way. Been a long time fan and the recent stuff you've been uploading has been some of my favorite you've made!
I'm pretty sure that 99.9% of all people who have TALKED about Anita Sarkeesian have never actually seen any of her content. Not complained, talked about. To most people she's just some ghoul that exists for the sake of whispering about in hushed tones, or outright mockery.
You're right. However if you HAVE actually seen her content you then know she does only really deserve mockery because of how vapid her critiques are on actually tackling the issue with sexism in media and because of how much low hanging fruit she provides to dunk on for the chuds. "Batman's cape flaps back down quickly to hide his male presenting butt" is indefensibly weak. It's a vicious catch 22.
Oh 100% of them haven't, her hottest take is that damsels in distress are too cliche
You'd think she was talking about having women take over and punish all men as subservient humans... not "hey maybe women can be more than plot devices more often please?"
Her opinions are so **mild**. It's crazy that people used her as a scapegoat, when what she was saying is the mildest of mild feminism these days.
i remember when i was 16 and doing media studies and all of gamergate started to kick off and me and my friend decided to actually sit down and watch this series that everyone was talking about, and we were genuinely shocked by how mild it was, even then in 2014. like, literally sub-101 level media analysis. tv tropes has hotter takes.
@ltbq yeah same, I got into anita without knowing about any of the gamer gate stuff in 2014 and it was mostly judt a nice intro to some feminist talking points that i didnt really know before. The only way you could really see it as extremeist and not mild and introductory is if youve literally never had your misogyny challenged at all, or if youre being told by someone else that its extremist and believing them without checking for yourself
But Jack, you don’t understand! It is impossible to have good writing and a diverse cast at the same time. Scientists have proven that Disney remakes with all white casts would have 1.31% better dialogue and 5.006% better special effects, approximately.
Live action remakes of beloved animated classics being bad has nothing to do with them being very boring conceptually as most of what they do is throwing away the charm unique to the medium of animation without adding to it utilizing their own strengths… Except for 101 Dalmatians, that one‘s a classic in its own right.
u should get a smug cartoon drawing of yourself with your arms crossed to represent that you mean business
the best part of your ad is how the warm light from the fallen pine needles complements your skin tone and makes u glow
I thought a creator was specifically signaling to me, but it was just a psychotic episode
Ah the ol’ Manson defence!
23:57 - holy shit. IMC being listed in a GG post of SJW reporters. Shit was wild back then.
I've never identified with a statement more than "I don't really like being online anymore"
As the days go by, water flowing underground. Into the blue again, after the money's gone
So there’s a rule in South Park: when you sympathize with Cartman, you’re in the wrong. He’s the strawman.
There can never be enough reminders to "follow the money" and to focus on the profit motive. Thanks, Jack.
The yaoi side of South Park fandom interpreted the "woke" South Park solely as slaying queens, so I thought the whole special is just genderbent South Park and doesn't have the whole Panderstone bullshit 😭😭😭
The yaoi side of the south park fandom?
The cartoon about the cuss word children has a yaoi side of the fandom?
@@cashnelson2306 every fandom has yaoi. this is a law of the universe
@@tape-6 they are children
@@cashnelson2306there's an entire South Park episode poking fun at it
@@tape-6those are kids
I'll never forget as an atheist for decades how excited I was to find so many like minded people on UA-cam in the early partn of the century. Then after Gamergate, suddenly half the channels I followed put out almost nothing but misogynist claptrap week after week. It really made me reevaluate how I judged character. I simply walked away disgusted, but I wonder what sort of choices I may have made if I had been someone with less real world context to fall back on.
lol remember when libertarians in the 00s were called "south park republicans"? what an awful time
9/11 made us stupid
This "South Park" joke doesn't even make sense: It's not like "The Force Awakens" cast John Boyega as Han Solo and Daisy Ridley as Wedge. There ARE some pieces of media that race-flipped longstanding characters...but none produced by Kennedy that I can recall. Her name is just a lazy reference.
They wanted a woman to blame
You cant deny the new star wars movies and shows are absolute trash tho, i dont blame kennedy as a woman for that but i blame her for allowing star wars to fall, as a story and as a media campaign.
Yeah the main character of the sequels is a straight white woman the black character gets pushed to the sides and the only “pandering” thing I remember was the gay kiss in Rise that you can blink and miss and can be easily be edited out. I don’t like new Star Wars but diversity isn’t the problem
@@Infinite_Repeat exactly this. Also i think this is a rumor but in the chinese version isnt that kiss edited out. Like pandering didnt kill star wars, bad story telling did and their execution of it.
@@phht0568: I can and do deny that, but be that as it may, look at what you're doing: I'm sitting here like, "Huh, the thing this cartoon is attempting to satirize is totally non sequitur, this shouldn't be about Star Wars at all," and here's some stranger shoving your whole head into my window saying, "BUT YOU AGREE STAR WARS IS BAD RIGHT? TELL ME YOU HATE STAR WARS THAT'S OBVIOUSLY WHAT WE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT INSTEAD!"
No, weirdo; go away, go outside, get a hobby, talk about anything else for a day, you fucking freak.
Very funny for Saint to release it then the very next day have Bob Iger do an interview at Disney where he throws the entire company under the bus for having "too many messages" in their media (messages is code for having too many diverse voices).
For a 30-minute media criticism video, this was sooooooooo good. Haha, subbed!!!
I actually just had a pretty good discussion with my dad about this…he tends to come across a little too much propaganda and ends up a bit more influenced by toxic black and white thinking. He’s very “back in my day, people didn’t get offended so much like these woke snowflakes”, and I’m very pro more liberal ideas like trans rights, gender identity affirmation, my body my choice type of stuff. But as an artist studying to go into the animation industry, I am so sick and tired of this toxic cycle of corporate cookie cutter films that prioritize business over entertainment. And I know my dad’s not evil or anything, he’s just a guy that grew up in a different generation, doesn’t like change very much, and likes to argue lol. We like to simplify our views in opposite ways from each other, but basically believe in the same stuff. This whole debate forgets how truly complex human beings are
This is the perspective all privileged people chose, bet you would change your mind if you realized you are trans and your totally not evil dad disowns or beats you, or you needed an abortion because you got r***ed after your dad voted to make them illegal
liberalism is not progressive, go read actual marxist theory + look up "obama drone strike"
I guarantee you that back in his day, people were getting offended. He just wasn’t aware of it. Probably because mainstream media only showed a narrow range of opinions. Now, for better and for worse, everyone has a voice in an international public square.
@@catsmom129well, yeah, I know that. I think that falls under the umbrella of “grew up in a different generation”, or at least I meant it to. That wasn’t a literal quote, it was just like a boiled down version of his beliefs
As if there wasn't corporate sludge back in the day. I want everyone saying this to just check some basic film history. You're getting old and falling into the same beliefs of your parents, and that's an issue
I feel like there’s a strange paradox with ‘edgy’ humor (blue and black comedy) where they tend to attract 2 types of ppl. Left-leaning ppl who enjoy offending conservative pearl-clutchers & right-leaning ppl who enjoy offending ‘snowflake SJWs.’
And for better or for worse (as time goes on I’d say more for the worse) South Park’s longevity has come from them accruing an audience of both types, even if the right-leaning fans think they’re the main demographic. I think the left-leaning side of the fandom will continue to dwindle as Stone & Parker continue to both-sides everything rather than take a definitive stand and risk selling fewer Cartman t-shirts to chuds who identify with him.
I'm not mad at inclusivity and diversity in media. What I am mad about is how lazy brands do it and when you look behind the curtain you realize that they keep doing the things they say they are against
poor quality games and the rise of diversity are not correlated because diversity = bad games; its because greedy companies make bad games, and sometimes greedy companies will include controversial diversity as a desperate marketing attempts to get at least a little press coverage and interest in their game, even if the player is just buying the game to criticize it or to signal their political alliances.
God damn this was a really good video. You've been a roll man, love the reflective tone
Unironically I do think every show would be better if every character was replaced with a diverse set of lesbians
South Park tries to police what types of characters work and what don't while simplifying how complex roles/characters are. Peter Parker and Miles Morales are two different characters. So is 1985 Ariel and 2023 Ariel.
Ya Peter Parker and miles are vastly different that’s why people like them it’s when there’s not a difference in the character just race or gender where people don’t like it and feel insulted
Are they? Now, I don't think Ariel's skin color matters at all, but I firmly disagree. The 1985 and 2023 characters are basically the same. They have the same motives, same like and dislikes, same friends, same love interest, even the same dialogue and songs. The only difference really is her skin color and maybe a little change in the way the actress' performance. Imo that doesn't constitute her being a different character
@asorlokirunarsson9864 Well, maybe not different characters, but certainly different iterations/performances. Ariel is no different than the roles of Sweeney Todd, Regina George, or the cast of The Phantom of The Opera. Anyone can play these roles.
@@Urmumlel7025 but I think that's South Park's point, whether you agree with it or not. Make new characters instead of changing the ones we have without a narrative explanation
@asorlokirunarsson9864 Nothing is being changed, though. The original iteration will always be there. It's like song covers. By your definition, getting rid of universal characters is the same as getting rid of covering songs.
The Irony of them calling Ian Miles Cheong an SJW on that list lol.
The issue isn’t “wokeness” it’s capitalism, who would’ve thunk
But saying that would require actually criticizing capitalism itself not individuals!
It’s sad just how many different people “Critical Jack” could be a direct parody of
The whole Kathleen Kennedy thing feels very out of date for South Park to do just recently
One commenter here said. They couldn’t make a script in time and picked up an unused one. Seems likely
because it is... We wont get new scripts for a while..... covid and the writers strike has set us back so fucking hard
Weirdest thing about this episode is conservatives think the left were up in arms about it, but my only exposure to it on the internet was ads
SouthPark isn't saying anything, it's shouting at everything. It's like cinemasins with clever writing. Clever, but still fucking bleating and bad for the community of critique that it occupies.
I don’t understand, you’re saying you simultaneously think it’s “clever” and… unintelligent?
@@alexbennet4195 you did misunderstand, my critique is not that they're dumb.
@@alexbennet4195 you can be clever at writting and making quips, while also not being clever in your way of thinking.
@@alexbennet4195 Ricky Gervais is good at comedy and bad at human
Funny You brought up Blizzard. Remember when Soldier XX turned out to be gay? Not long after another controversy regarding the company's shitty behaviour towards its workers hit the fan? I feel like this is one of facets of the situation that is not brought up often enough: the idea of pandering to people in order to cover up some bad news (which is still happening to this very day).
Its become a running gag in some of my social spaces to go "oh hey, ActiBlizz announced a new/cool thing, what the fuck did they do this time?".
Like its so *blatantly* transparent at this point.
This is an awesome video. I was gatorpilled as a dumb kid. I've never seen anyone able to speak with such clarity on this.
great work jack :)
this is the first time i've seen anyone (online) clearly explain how none of this "woke stuff" is new. i am not sure if i were to do so it would be able to hide my bewilderment and exasperation; i mean if you are like 18-23 it is more understandable but i find it particularly funny coming from men ten, twenty, thirty years older than me [a 30-y/o]. i for my part happened to read certain texts from the early '90s when i started uni all the way back in 2011 now, and so even a decade ago (i mark 2014 as the year things "exploded", which is to say leaked from internet cloisters into irl and mainstream media) when social justice, intersectionality, trigger warnings, pronouns etc. were all of a sudden "new" and topical, and political correctness emerged from the abyss of cultural amnesia and became new again too (after being such a focal point of the '90s' "culture wars"), i was like hey guys, you know this isn't really all that new, actually people were kind of obsessed with it around the time i was born, see look at this here book... of course yeah it is possible to historicize "it" indefinitely, even to transhistoricize it... getting off the internet is one of the best decisions i've ever made, i mean i'm right here but going on two years w/o twitter, fb, tiktok, etc.; once you're off and out, it's like, you couldn't pay me to redownload those things any more than you could pay me to swallow a tapeworm (which is to say i would do it for 10k. just putting that out there)
I have a love hate relationship with South Park. I think a lot if the episodes are hilarious, but obviously offensive. Still people identifying with Cartmen is awful, like people thinking rorschach is cool. I may not agree with South Park all the time but a lot of the time its pretty spot on, or at least has something interesting to say. Im very much in the camp that says you can enjoy media with problematic aspects.
man, this channel was a good find. woot.
Also, Matt stone and Trey Parker have said they think they did well if both (what they see as) the right and the left think they are on their side. So, south park is meant to pander to the largest number of people possible without giving away to those people who else they are pandering to.
South park does not promote political apathy but instead just tries to make a profit from whatever semi-mainstream opinion you are already holding.
Your video was dope and the point on narrativization was splendid. I hope you dig deeper into the idea as it has been clunking about in my noggin forever since I was confronted by a friend when I posited a similar theory. He basically said " a beggining, a middle, an end, its the way humans communicate, it's usefull, and it will never be sidestepped".
Realising why I ended up not liking so many poc and women charecters in media was because the author didn’t like women or poc people very much…..
7:20 it's called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, btw (which, if you've never heard of it before, you're bound to see in at least a few places over the next week or so 😉)
@@Kmkz-1989 cool, literally nobody asked 😘
Why is Critical Drinker talking in that clip like he isnt someone who has also taken part in the blanket conspiracy of a behemoth of Kathleen Kennedy ruining everything? Is this some kind of attempt to continue some façade that his criticisms aren't identical to every other one? That his mindless rants and outright lies are actual derived criticisms of film despite artistic intent or analysis? Like, he IS who this episode was making fun of, why is he now above this?
It's either the tiniest bit of shame peeking through or just straight up cognitive dissonance at work when a guy like him goes "No, that wasn't me," despite there being mountains of video and audio evidence of him also being that guy. Loathe as I am to admit it, the Film Drunk at least seems capable of passing the mirror test, unlike the obese pronouns guy and the dried up meth corpse whose hair is in the process of a southern migration across his head.
Gotta hide behind plausible deniability as hard as you can 😂
u got the critical drinker cadence down perfectly lmao
What kind of fascinates me about the online harassment campaign that shall not be named is just how much it passed me by. I remember Tropes vs. Women pretty well because the backlash it received opened my eyes a lot. At the time, I was a big time reddit atheist memelord who idolized Christopher Hitchens and watched Tfoot religiously (yes, that is the insufferable narcissism of teenage boyhood you are detecting).
But I had been sort of aloof from the backlash to feminism from those circles. I was active in my local queer community, LGBTQIA+ activism was a core part of my identity. I knew a few feminists from those circles who at the time I perceived as being overly sensitive and militant for correctly calling out misogyny, but even though I didn't understand them and privately griped about or mocked them (remember, I was a teenager), I still appreciated them and respected them on some level, and so I was never hypnotized by the open derisiveness coming from the New Atheist movement towards feminist circles. When people started calling Sarkeesian a fraud and mocking her takes, I watched her videos and... They just made sense. I was also getting older and maturing. At that point, I walked away from the New Atheist / Skeptic movement that increasingly felt childish, out of touch, and reactionary rather than progressive. I was fully woke.
The great harassment campaign came after all that, so I barely even payed attention to it honestly, I had moved on. To me, the big event was Tropes vs. Women. That other thing, I literally know nothing about it -- sounds like the remaining fence sitters after Tropes vs. Women started _really_ showing their true colors.
@ThaUltimateHunter Lmao
I feel like everyone left of Joe Manchin has been on a collective cigarette break since the pandemic. We...just fucking can't anymore. We have burned out burn-out.
If only marginalized people’s lives weren’t politicized.
I think we don't talk about gamergate enough in terms of the reactionary landscape we find ourselves in now, as cringey as it is to think about. Steve Bannon was right unfortunately and we're still seeing the effects of this moment
South Park's biggest advantage in the beginning, I'd say, was that it "made fun of everyone" and now that's it's biggest problem. The problem with making fun of everyone now is that there is already a massive epidemic of right leaning dumbasses out there who don't have the media literacy to understand when pieces of media are making fun of just the things they enjoy. Take American Psycho, Rick & Morty, Breaking Bad, or literally any other piece of media like them and you will find a crap ton of people who idolize Patrick Bateman, Rick Sanchez and Walter White because they are either ignorant or actively refuse/ignore that the media they're in is being critical of them, their behavior and the environments they create (or perpetuate/reflect in Bateman's case). If these dumbasses can't even understand that when that media is *only* commenting on and satirizing their views, then trying to "make fun of everyone" is a beyond dangerous game.
doesnt matter, theres an episode where kyle straight up says, "either everything is funny or nothings funny" its not south parks fault if people interpret in their own way
add "All in The Family" to the list.
@Smash-gs5kd yea I’m gonna go ahead and keep it 100% with you right now, either everything is funny or nothings funny, when you start telling people what is and what isn’t ok to make fun of that’s when things stop being funny
I’m not a hateful person
I don’t agree with treating marginalized groups wrongly
But I like to laugh
And I like freedom
If I’m allowed to make fun of someone then someone’s allowed to make fun of me, if you can’t understand that please for the sake of all of us who enjoy laughter please do not continue to watch any comedy content because “you can’t make fun of that!” Will destroy comedy
Comedians have jesters privilege and are allowed to hold a mirror up to society without repercussion this has been an accept rule of humanity for centuries at this point
The jester may say whatever he pleases for nothing he says truly matters
Now if I world leader was saying or promotion hateful or mean things to be “funny” I then have an issue because he lacks jesters privileges
But seriously bro please stay away from comedies and just to watch drama or something leave the funny stuff to funny people cause I don’t think you get how humor works
@@caspernoir4028 Yeah Imma keep it 100 with you chief, your entertainment (whether is be comedies, dramas, or anything else) does not matter more than the actual lives of any people in any groups that are damaged by dumbasses who take this media and see it as vindication rather than criticism for their garbage behavior. We understand how humor and jester privilege works, the problem here is the jester privilege because everything said is treated from that point forward as having as much value as a joke while still carrying the same repercussions. It’s very clear you just don’t understand how the real world works.
@@caspernoir4028 you are a clown
*RoboCop mentioned*
Ah yes, the great quote from Ian Miles Cheong, "I bet you think RoboCop is political".
I stopped smoking weed 17 yrs ago. Coincidentally, that's also the last time I watched South Park.
Congrats on the book!
I was only listening to this, and was wondering “is he doing critical drinker?” Yep, fantastic
Letting the days go by
Water flowing underground
South Park is basically Critikal if he were a TV show.