South Park Hits Another Homer

The latest episode of South Park which aired on December 11th, 2013 was one that really hit home. Here is an image that might give you an idea of what it was about:

As funny as the Kanye West parts were, the underlying message of the episode was what struck me. 

It was all about the fact that many people (especially children) are impressionable enough to believe that an image of someone actually represents that person. It ties into the philosophical idea that people form constructs of reality in their mind from images that they see. These images do not accurately represent reality, but many people still choose to live in the world that they have constructed for themselves. 

In this episode of South Park, Wendy, the captain of the cheerleading team, creates Photoshopped images of her female classmates to prove how easy it is to make someone appear much better looking than they really are. Unfortunately for her, the schoolchildren choose to believe that the girls are extremely good looking because of how they appear in their pictures. When Wendy does not make one for herself and criticizes everyone else for being so ignorant and gullible, she is accused of just being jealous.

Stone and Parker really hit on something here. They took the aforementioned old philosophy and applied it to modern life. People believe what they see on the internet and other media without much skepticism. If your profile picture is hot on Facebook, you must be hot in real life, too. It's personal branding taken to an extreme level. At the end of the episode, Wendy succumbs to peer pressure and low-self esteem and edits her own profile picture. 

This episode is so telling of how our younger generations manipulate their online persona to present the idealized version of themselves. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of self esteem issues, superficiality, and unhealthy body image.

Hopefully South Park still has enough younger viewers that these kids are able to see the ridiculousness in social media protocol and ease up on the physical criticism of themselves and their peers. No one is perfect, whether online or off, and you can't believe anything the internet tells you. It is a pseudo-reality, constructed 100% by people's imaginations. The only real thing about the internet is the glass on your screen. Beyond that, you are entering into a world of false or idealized avatars.