I’ve been active on the internet for almost a decade now, and what primarily got me active on the internet was fanfiction. I started out with fanfiction of Digimon, and from there I became involved in the fandoms of Shaman King, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Invader Zim and Jhonen Vasquez’s other works. There was a lot of overlap of fans in these shows/comics, and another common franchise my internet acquaintances shared was the South Park fandom – which, naturally, I eventually fell into as well. This is all circa 2005-2006.
In 2007, I got married to my first husband, who severely controlled my access to the outside world (along with the fact that I had also suddenly become responsible for the welfare of children, which would have kept me off the internet for long periods of time anyway). This hiatus lasted until our divorce in 2010, and by then, it was like Rip van Winkle waking up after centuries to find that the world he knew no longer existed. Most of the acquaintances I had once considered my internet “friends” either didn’t remember me or vanished off the face of the interwebs themselves. I was able to reconnect with a very small percentage (as well as make some new net buddies), but what really bothered me was how much everyone’s ideologies had changed…for the worse: girls who were once hand-holding lipstick bisexuals with online girlfriends were now claiming to be genderqueer (even though there was no prior hint at gender dysphoria), they preached feminism and follow-the-herd leftism even though they (unlike me) had little to no experience with any of the injustices they complained about, and what’s more, they started to shit on every perceived controversy in the very shows and comics they had loved for years (while still claiming “fan” status). This is when I realized something: these people have no fundamental understanding of of the media they claim to enjoy.
This is most notable with certain fans of South Park, particularly after the Season 19 episode “Safe Space” debuted. Instead of taking an introspective look at their immature college campus mentality or even just deciding not to watch the show anymore, several fans took it upon themselves to create a community called “Safe Park” (which ironically, is full of bitching about the “problematic” elements of the show that supposedly trigger them in the first place). This shows that they don’t give a Lemmiwinks’ ass about taking the responsibility and protecting themselves from things that might not sit well with their convictions, they just want to be part of the zeitgeist. A retrospective look shows that this has always been the case.
There was a particular fanfiction writer back in the day who basically made up her own canon for her fandoms, and then it became Word of Dante among everyone in the fandom, whether they read her works or not. She was the one responsible for the popular idea that Craig’s last name was “Donahue” (even though it was later revealed to be “Tucker”) and that Kenny’s dad is physically or sexually abusive (which may be hinted at, but Stuart McCormick is never shown to be hitting anyone in his family other than his wife in a mutual fistfight). While fan theories and artistic license are not necessarily a bad thing, the fact that the majority of South Parkers have chosen to rely on deuterocanon rather than drawing inspiration from the source raises a lot of red flags – perhaps they have been unaware of the show’s nature from the very beginning.
Then again, I think the opposite might be just as true. Much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, South Park often falls victim to having the satirical elements go over people’s heads and having the audience instead focus on the bizarre. I’ve been noticing that a lot of older episodes more or less predicted the current social justice warrior trend, and may have inadvertently fueled it. For instance, in “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina,” a man who is notorious for exploiting his sexual orientation for controversy once he comes out of the closet decides to up and get a sex change without any of the prior counseling or hormone treatment that is involved in proper sex reassignment, and later this inspires Kyle to become a tall black man and Gerald to become a dolphin. Years later, we have Brianna Wu, Rachel Dolezal, and a fuckload of “otherkin” and other genderspecials. Were these assholes inspired by South Park? Did they completely miss the point of the episode (that you can’t just randomly make yourself what you want to be physically without understanding what it is you’re getting into) and think “Oh hey, this is what I am, I’m gonna do this”?
The truth is, I don’t know what’s wrong with these people, or why they all changed in the exact same way while I went off in the other direction. I can only speculate that it had to do with me missing a crucial period of an internet hivemind or being a part of a certain fandom. But it’s certainly something to think about, isn’t it?
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