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lupin5thvia https://ift.tt/2PJq0jO
“
About a week ago, I tweeted about a TV show. I was fed up with the way that conversations about politics on the Internet often descend into manipulation and mockery. If you stand for anything online, someone will find a way to tear it — and you — down.
The trolls, the game-theorizers, the “both sides are equally bad” cynicism that had spread from the 2016 election into today — all of it had a flavor too familiar to me, a TV and comic-book writer who spent her middle-school years watching Comedy Central too late at night: It was the ethos of “South Park.”
“In retrospect,” I typed, “It seems impossible to overstate the cultural damage done by South Park, the show that portrayed earnestness as the only sin and taught that mockery is the ultimate inoculation against all criticism.”
[…]
South Park soothes away any self-reflection to protect a worldview that is safely unchanged. Shhhhh, it whispers, rubbing your back. No one is better than you. Deep down, everyone is as bad as your own laziest, most selfish impulses.
”
-
I criticized ‘South Park’ for spawning a generation of trolls. And so the trolls came for me.
I loved its first season, which was about ridiculous jokes and supremely juvenile humor. But it quickly became this nihilist garbage that reaffirmed the worst impulses in the worst people.
By reducing every big choice – especially choices about presidents, and actually taking climate change seriously – to a childish “both sides are crap and I’m the only one smart enough to get it” worldview, South Park has done more than any media I can ever recall to encourage and groom an entire generation to believe that caring about anything is weakness and worthy of vicious, unforgiving mockery.
I’ve heard over and over again that Matt and Trey are really good guys who are kind and great to work with. I hope that’s true. I also I hope they someday reflect on how many people they have harmed with their nihilism and cynicism.
(via wilwheaton)
I don’t think “good guys” would attack trans women as viciously as they have at a time when so many trans women were/are being murdered so I don’t hold out much hope there, alas.
(via vaspider)
“
About a week ago, I tweeted about a TV show. I was fed up with the way that conversations about politics on the Internet often descend into manipulation and mockery. If you stand for anything online, someone will find a way to tear it — and you — down.
The trolls, the game-theorizers, the “both sides are equally bad” cynicism that had spread from the 2016 election into today — all of it had a flavor too familiar to me, a TV and comic-book writer who spent her middle-school years watching Comedy Central too late at night: It was the ethos of “South Park.”
“In retrospect,” I typed, “It seems impossible to overstate the cultural damage done by South Park, the show that portrayed earnestness as the only sin and taught that mockery is the ultimate inoculation against all criticism.”
[…]
South Park soothes away any self-reflection to protect a worldview that is safely unchanged. Shhhhh, it whispers, rubbing your back. No one is better than you. Deep down, everyone is as bad as your own laziest, most selfish impulses.
”
-
I criticized ‘South Park’ for spawning a generation of trolls. And so the trolls came for me.
I loved its first season, which was about ridiculous jokes and supremely juvenile humor. But it quickly became this nihilist garbage that reaffirmed the worst impulses in the worst people.
By reducing every big choice – especially choices about presidents, and actually taking climate change seriously – to a childish “both sides are crap and I’m the only one smart enough to get it” worldview, South Park has done more than any media I can ever recall to encourage and groom an entire generation to believe that caring about anything is weakness and worthy of vicious, unforgiving mockery.
I’ve heard over and over again that Matt and Trey are really good guys who are kind and great to work with. I hope that’s true. I also I hope they someday reflect on how many people they have harmed with their nihilism and cynicism.
(via wilwheaton)
I don’t think “good guys” would attack trans women as viciously as they have at a time when so many trans women were/are being murdered so I don’t hold out much hope there, alas.
(via vaspider)
