Hacker News Reader

> /r/circlebroke/ link

r/circlebroke is ego defense dressed up as analysis.

"apathetic-libertarian" is an interpretation for people that identify so strongly with their own political positions, that they can no longer laugh at themselves. A lazy categorization that allows them to dismiss thoughts the show might otherwise spark.

South Park's political criticism is often more about the unreasonable ways people act than their political goals. You can behave like a shithead and take yourself too seriously even in the service of an incredibly laudable goal. But that idea doesn't always play in a "with us or against us" mindset.

South Park has middle fingers up in all directions. That's just skeptical and contrarian, not apathetic. Unless you're already primed to choose apathy over having a think. Or will still choose apathy over something you can't believe in 110%. And the "libertarianism" of the show is largely just an anti-authoritarian "fuck off." But because you can tie it to that name, people with nothing smarter to say can just use guilt by association and tie it to everything crazy that also happens under that name.

>> Uncritical, detached acceptance of the status quo is the only morally upright posture, and those who draw a distinction between is and ought are all smug bullies, outlandish freaks, and/or closed-minded zealots.

To play devils advocate to this point, I think perhaps this season in particular is trying to say that changing the status quo is fine, but changing the status quo for the sake of changing the status quo isn't. Changing the status quo requires collective scrutiny, and accepting the supposition that the status quo is always bad is not quite correct.

Randy complains to his wife that, because South Park has ostensibly embraced this new anti-status quo agenda, it is therefore paradise. His wife retorts "is it?"

>> It's a show that teaches its audience to become lazy and self-satisfied, that praises them for being uncritically accepting of their own biases, and that provides them with an endless buffet of thought-terminating cliches suitable for shutting down all manner of challenges to their comfort zones.

On this point, the same critique of laziness can be applied to the "status quo == bad" crowd. Perhaps applying a little more intellectual depth and thought to why, from a moral philosophy perspective, we should go about changing it and then processing that into a how with the goal of that change being a productive, value-added process.

I believe South Park prefers to be a "middle voice" seeing both sides as completely polarized "you are with me or against me" and trying to entertain all ideas.

One perfect example for me was the episode where Kenny was left brain-dead in the hospital. Cartman wants the plug off to inherit his toys and the other kids want him to stay plugged because they think that's what their friend wanted. Cue a whole episode of "my side vs. your side" until we learn that Kenny DID want to be plugged off should something like this happen. Cartman was right for the wrong reasons and Stan & Kyle were wrong for the right reasons. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Friends_Forever_(South_Pa...

Or the 2008 episode about the american elections where both sides are obsessing about how the other will turn America into hell by the next morning only to discover the world is still there. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About_Last_Night..._(South_Par...

When people talk about "prescribing more conversation, even if it’s uncomfortable, not less", that's what they mean these days - preserving the status quo. The only conversation they want more of is about how awful anyone is who challenges it, and the only people they want to make uncomfortable are the ones that do. Witness for example the Erika Christakis debacle, where a university professor accused the university of attacking free speech for saying that some Halloween costumes mocked other races because it might make white students uncomfortable wearing them, and yet was portrayed as a hero standing up for the grand university tradition of saying things that make students uncomfortable while her opponents were accused of demanding to be coddled and protected from views they disagreed with.