Suzanimal
Member
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2012
- Messages
- 33,385
Ridiculous bullshit.
Sorry if it’s posted wrong - blame my phone and Mr As cheap ass.:bigpoo:
'South Park' Made It Cool Not to Care. Then The World Changed
...
Fox News has, of course, long thrived on getting people mad over the fact that you "can't say anything anymore." 4chan began as a place for people to post disturbing things that made them laugh and evolved into a breeding ground for GamerGate, the alt-right, and white nationalism. More recently, YouTuber Steven Crowder has positioned himself as a brave defendant of free speech thanks to his refusal to stop employing racist and homophobic rhetoric, while psychology professor-cum-motivational speaker Jordan Peterson has continually used the same reasoning to justify his refusal to use respectful gender pronouns. Meanwhile, Donald Trump seems to persist in the belief that bloviating about the "shadow banning" of conservatives and how people should be able to say "Merry Christmas" is an effective way to convince his base that he is the champion of their personal freedom.
At the end of the day, these so-called "free speech" initiatives are all deeply, furiously concerned with the way other people are living their lives: the gender they identify as, their sexuality, the language they speak, their skin color. It is the polar opposite of the "just leave people be" ethos that early South Park espoused, but it can be spun as part of the same fight because the feeling behind it is similar.
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Cartoonist Charlie "Spike" Trotman once quipped that "The worst thing about nerds who become bullies is that you'll never convince them that they're anything but victims." She was talking about GamerGate specifically, but it's an observation that applies just as easily to the war on so-called "PC culture" at large. And it's hard to think of a better embodiment of this than South Park's recent "#CancelSouthPark" ad campaign, a seeming attempt to energize its fans by literally pretending that someone is trying to censor the show.
The truth is that no one seems to have really made much effort to censor South Park in quite some time. They are no longer the outsiders fighting back against the establishment: They are the establishment, two of the world's richest comedians whose signature show cost Comedy Central $192 million to renew back in 2015. But so long as they position themselves as underdogs, they risk empowering those who seek to use their invented victimhood as a smokescreen for bigotry. This is Fox News' gambit when they talk about the war on Christmas, Trump's angle when he attacks the "fake news" for criticizing him—bullies acting like victims to spark that particular, put-upon sort of outrage that ignites their base. When South Park acts like it's still the rebel throwing rocks at the establishment, rather than a platform for the grievances of two insanely rich straight white men, it's playing the same game.
South Park can never be what it was back in its Bigger, Longer & Uncut days, because too much has changed. Today's most urgent cultural battles are less about top-down censorship and more about the ways the nuances of policy, language, and representation can hurt historically marginalized people, in part because social media has ensured that these people are finally having their concerns heard. If we dismiss these discussions as authoritarian censorship, we'll be betraying everything that made South Park great in the glory days of Bigger, Longer & Uncut. That movie is a story about a bunch of people who start off caring about something they think is a threat and then get so caught up fighting that they end up hurting everyone around them. A lot of people could still benefit, twenty years later, from taking note of the movie's message—including Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
Sorry if it’s posted wrong - blame my phone and Mr As cheap ass.:bigpoo:
'South Park' Made It Cool Not to Care. Then The World Changed
...
Fox News has, of course, long thrived on getting people mad over the fact that you "can't say anything anymore." 4chan began as a place for people to post disturbing things that made them laugh and evolved into a breeding ground for GamerGate, the alt-right, and white nationalism. More recently, YouTuber Steven Crowder has positioned himself as a brave defendant of free speech thanks to his refusal to stop employing racist and homophobic rhetoric, while psychology professor-cum-motivational speaker Jordan Peterson has continually used the same reasoning to justify his refusal to use respectful gender pronouns. Meanwhile, Donald Trump seems to persist in the belief that bloviating about the "shadow banning" of conservatives and how people should be able to say "Merry Christmas" is an effective way to convince his base that he is the champion of their personal freedom.
At the end of the day, these so-called "free speech" initiatives are all deeply, furiously concerned with the way other people are living their lives: the gender they identify as, their sexuality, the language they speak, their skin color. It is the polar opposite of the "just leave people be" ethos that early South Park espoused, but it can be spun as part of the same fight because the feeling behind it is similar.
ADVERTISEMENT
Cartoonist Charlie "Spike" Trotman once quipped that "The worst thing about nerds who become bullies is that you'll never convince them that they're anything but victims." She was talking about GamerGate specifically, but it's an observation that applies just as easily to the war on so-called "PC culture" at large. And it's hard to think of a better embodiment of this than South Park's recent "#CancelSouthPark" ad campaign, a seeming attempt to energize its fans by literally pretending that someone is trying to censor the show.
The truth is that no one seems to have really made much effort to censor South Park in quite some time. They are no longer the outsiders fighting back against the establishment: They are the establishment, two of the world's richest comedians whose signature show cost Comedy Central $192 million to renew back in 2015. But so long as they position themselves as underdogs, they risk empowering those who seek to use their invented victimhood as a smokescreen for bigotry. This is Fox News' gambit when they talk about the war on Christmas, Trump's angle when he attacks the "fake news" for criticizing him—bullies acting like victims to spark that particular, put-upon sort of outrage that ignites their base. When South Park acts like it's still the rebel throwing rocks at the establishment, rather than a platform for the grievances of two insanely rich straight white men, it's playing the same game.
South Park can never be what it was back in its Bigger, Longer & Uncut days, because too much has changed. Today's most urgent cultural battles are less about top-down censorship and more about the ways the nuances of policy, language, and representation can hurt historically marginalized people, in part because social media has ensured that these people are finally having their concerns heard. If we dismiss these discussions as authoritarian censorship, we'll be betraying everything that made South Park great in the glory days of Bigger, Longer & Uncut. That movie is a story about a bunch of people who start off caring about something they think is a threat and then get so caught up fighting that they end up hurting everyone around them. A lot of people could still benefit, twenty years later, from taking note of the movie's message—including Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
