I am genuinely bummed out there's been such a dip in Matt and Trey's perceptions of reality, and they've refused to move out of dated early 2000s gay/transgender tropes because they don't like certain aspects of it. I admittedly got sucked into a lot of the trans in sports debates without realising hormones actually do a lot to level the playing field, and trans women aren't outperforming anyone. On top of that, all people seem to focus on is men breaking into a woman's sport or any space, it's rarely ever men getting pissed off about women entering their spaces, unless they're men or non binary people presenting as femme for whatever reason and they've been forced into the men's room due to stupid laws. Matt and Trey could make more jokes about the hypocrisy of conservative's complaining about the very shit that blows up in their face, but they just go for the low blow ideals that libertarians and conservatives refuse to stop believing.
Maybe have a drag positive episode. Big Gay Al was very much a product of that period, and it was 20 odd years ago, closer to 25.
I was old enough almost to be watching South Park when it was bigger in my country, which was my last years of high school. My brother living in the city meant he could tape episodes on the networks that didn't broadcast down south. Or some kids were able to rent the VHS releases. I was quoting the episode with Barbra Streisand and Robert Smith, it did have a kind of innocence about it back then, like early Simpson's episodes. The movie was out not very long after, we all ran around singing "Shut your fucking face, uncle fucker", apparently the musical aspect was something Steven Soderbergh adored. And I used to find the gay relationship between Satan and Saddam Hussein hilarious. Matt and Trey even did a movie with puppets from their apparent dislike of working with celebrities. But they were pissing people off the entire time, so if you were relatively liberal, it was only a matter of time before you flipped and hated them. Even when the Muhammad controversy came out, I still felt they had a point. Now I don't.
I flipped on them for the stupidest reason. They were right about Trump and the fact he'd get in, and while we were all laughing at the notion of him being president, there was enough of an undercurrent that facilitated the rise of Trump, the silent majority that ruined Hillary's chances because they refused to admit they were going to vote republican in the polling, so it skewed to her instead. And I blamed her entirely when she called them a basket of deplorables. She alienated a bigger voter base than she realised. I hated it so much I just stopped watching the show since I was embarrassed I fell for it, even when I had my doubts about Hillary winning. It wasn't fun to watch the show and I ignored Harmontown and any other spaces where people were just going to be mad and bitter.
When Trump lost to Biden, I considered going back over the four years of episodes, but since then it seemed like Matt and Trey felt more comfortable leaning into right-leaning bullshit because of Trump. They enjoyed pandering to their BS with the trans debate, were offensive to autistic kids despite being kinder to other disabled kids. Jimmy and Timmy were a fantastic duo who got to fuck with the PC Principal and I was so here for it, but I'm pretty sure the show just wanted to rip on "assburgers" and leave it there. Seeing them now, it wouldn't shock me they were both neurodivergent to be honest. I hope they are.
I was charmed by them doing a musical that received such earnest praise while making musicals seem more accessible to everyone. But them defending Mormonism while ignoring the fact there are more horrible Mormons than there are awful trans people is depressing. You can't give one group a pass then shit on another that has infinitely less power or ability to even slightly corrupt another person. Picking on trans people isn't fun or funny anymore, it's not just laughing at the cross-dressing guy in the dress, even if you do want to wear dresses to the Oscars while ripped on acid. The show would seem horribly tasteless now, but it always was. The only thing I did in favor of them is getting annoyed at a YouTuber mixing up Family Guy with South Park in two separate videos about Honey Boo Boo.
I'm only bringing them up for having seen them in feeds giving advice on how to write, and I was interested in their interview on the Book of Mormon. But then I see a trans person complain about them, even while stating they used to love the show and it had salient points to make that were hilarious, and I hate the creators all the more. They claimed one of their producers was a Catholic who never got offended by their shit, and they're right it was the loudest minority that was bitching. Until they just had a problem with being PC or "woke". I was onboard with the anti-PC police initially but social justice is a thing that isn't deserving of mockery. Maybe they should've been retiring the Chinese guy a lot sooner. They're equal opportunity assholes - nobody's precious enough to avoid ridicule, that was the point. But if the mockery is based on misconceptions, not the truth, which it so often was, you're not being funny, you're undermining people. Yeah, they were right about Scientology, and religion in general. They're not right about trans people. It's not funny because it's not true. And I wrote a post about that decades ago after the Margaritaville episode.
Having said that I'm still watching YouTubers who were gay and trying to justify yelling the F-slur under the excuse of the game using it, and them being gay, even if they've stopped now. And I love Trixie and Katya, they're still using it. I know I'm being hypocritical too, but straight boys have less of an argument.
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