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- Hacker News
- What difference does it make? They stopped being funny and original 10+ years agoby aristofun
- So instead of Blame Canada they will sing Blame Brazil?
When names collide everything start to lose meaning.
by gmuslera - which benefits fascists, generally speaking. degrading global social communication enables the basal ganglia into the local us vs them.
As much as I find satire amusing, a lot of it does not do what people think it does as effectively in this context.
Sacha baron cohen, sining throw the jews down the well had a bunch of racists singing it with zero care what it's satiring. Dave chapelle did similar to black culture. South park gets pretty close to the same.
theres a bit overeliance on satirization. Paul ryan wasn't satirically listening to "Rage against the machine"; he was actively trying to redefine it for his own delusion.
by cyanydeez - I find the replies on this Hacker America thread to be mostly perpiheral and reminiscent of the old SlashAmerica flame wars.
It's as bad as the old Emarica versus Vimerica wars.
And no mention of the root cause of the lake fiasco, DistractEpsteinica.
by k310 - Really brave of them to do something so courageous and stunningby guywithahat
- To be fair, they don't have many levers to pullby bena
- "Stunning and Brave" is the episode in which PC Principal makes his debut, at the start of season 19.by Fricken
- > Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Googleby mdp2021
- Pretty clear there’s a lot of people here without a sense humour.by grebc
- I have been informed that a common HN practice, is to have your sense of humor extracted, when getting your first colonoscopy.
- In order to rename the east coast to New America we first need to rename England to America - sorry Brits!
- Calling England America would be ambiguous. Maybe West America?by tim333
- Are you trying to make a joke about New England/New York/New Jersey?
I’m trying to understand and I just don’t get it.
by irishcoffee - I thought New Mexico was being renamed to New America.by shawn_w
- Waiting for the Nitter link...by dzogchen
- you don't have to wait all the time
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/588794-x-twitter-to-nitter...
by Markoff - Do you not know how it works?by nom
- by doublerabbit
- I suggest we support the, already in use, name of America for the whole continent, so, almost for free, USA means all north and south America countries together and we are done with land. Now the oceans are tricky: Atlantic can become East American sea and Pacific, West American sea. Or just Little Boy and Fat Man.by tsoukase
- > We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount -- a Skydance Capitulation.
Sick burn.
- They show a similar level of respect to their parent company as John Oliver does his.by ctippett
- I watched South Park for almost 20 years, but stopped about a decade ago. Have the creators ever reconned with their role in normalizing and popularizing.. the current situation?
What I mean is, SP is one of most prominent cultural examples of " both sides are equally bad, everyone and everything sucks", they've had great success with this schtick, ManBearPig, Turd Sandwich, etc. They did a lot of prep work for the current regime, after all, once you but into their mindset, MAGA is the only thing that makes sense.
- I thought Turd Sandwich fairly accurately captured what was and still is often a common sentiment that hasn't gone away just because the U.S federal government is conducting itself in such an uncommonly (although not that uncommonly) abhorrent way. A similar sort of election plays out every year and many levels of government in many countries. It's usually between some douche and some turd, and things rarely change for the better as a consequence, so people who feel apathetic and forgotten about don't bother, while people who fear what the other side will do try to convince everyone else theirs is correct. Tale as old as any two-party system.
I never felt as though it was a "both sides are equally stupid" sort of perspective, but rather more like "both sides are at least worth making fun of" along with the people who religiously feel that only their side isn't worth mocking. As in, whichever group seems to be trying to be the most pious, most sanctimonious, the most evidently rediculous, is effectively the one most worth mocking.
I think they have a lot of good material to work with going into this next season, and some of it will hit, and some will miss, for varying reasons, as is the way of all previous seasons. I personally worry that it'll be too politically oriented, because as a subject it just gets boring, but as a Canadian I've always got a kick of out the stupidity that is whatever comes out of the U.S. We're facing the side-effects of our own internal misgivings and trusting the U.S too much, but the U.S seems to be burning itself to the ground.
by brailsafe - Yeah! And for that matter, has Jon Stewart atoned for his sin of leaving The Daily Show in 2015? If he had stayed, no way Trump could have won! And why didn't Oprah run in 2024--she could have saved us! It's all their fault!
Get real.
I don't think South Park ever implied both parties are equally bad. Just that they are both bad. And I don't think irreverent satire is prep work or psy-op propaganda for an authoritarian government. If anything, it's the inoculation.
It's quite clear that you haven't watched the series in the past decade. I'm sure you wouldn't be crowing the same tune if you'd watched the Mr. Garrison storyline.
by kyboren - I think they're largely making fun of extremes, whether left, right or Kanye West, Disney/China, Scientology etc. (And once in a while apologize when they get it wrong, like Man Bear Pig) Lately the extremes are more extreme and powerful on the right and so more episodes target that
The last season made fun of ICE, Peter Thiel, Trump-gift-based-economy, shitcoins and so on (Labubus, 67, ...)
They also poked fun at themselves that South Park sucks now as it's all about politics, which I don't think they ever really wanted
I'm a big fan though
by dktp - They backtracked on "ManBearPig" (climate change) a long time ago.by jsiepkes
- I don’t see how maga is the logical conclusion of the mindset. Both sides do suck, and the answer isn’t blind tribalism, it’s common sense and reason. There is a lot of basic stuff that most of America would be on board with if they stopped trying to make everyone fight over a few issues that they’ve been fighting over for decades.
Get some wins on the easy stuff, build some momentum and cooperation, and then maybe it will be easier to tackle some of those harder problems.
by al_borland - They have not changed. They still maintain this "enlightened centrist" persona, while claiming "both sides are the same". And their social commentary, if you could call it that, is very tame. They did briefly lean into making politicians out to be evil, but they kind of walked that back and now their story lines read more goofy than anything.
The whole premise of the new season is telling. It's not about the suffering people have gone through due to wars (trade or military) or the food situation (the diarrhea parasite / cancer beef ep writes itself). Nope, it's about how the silly goose in office is renaming stuff.
It's possible to be serious and funny, but the new stuff I've seen has been unserious and unfunny.
by mywittyname - Well, in fairness, both sides were bad, and still are -- although, now, one side is spectacularly worse. Dems can't ever agree on a candidate or position or message, and intentionally run candidates the otherside would abhore, and Republicans would happily vote in unison for an old shoe as long as it was sufficiently dog-whistley.by skygazer
- I think it’s worth watching more recent seasons, at least from the first trump presidency. I agree that they had originally a “both sides bad” approach, but over the last 10 years or so, they have much more clearly come down on the side of “maga is wrong and evil”.
There are still a variety of subjects where I’m sure people on the other side of the aisle would take objection (i think of the ultra PC “pc principal” who demands that everyone honor everyone’s pronouns at the threat of violence). Last couple of years though, the tone has shifted, for example the depiction of trump as the literal duplicate of saddam Hussein and satans new boyfriend, who literally impregnates satan with the Antichrist, and then spends the season trying to abort it.
by mattzito