‘South Park’ Has a Long History of Making Episodes About Memes
This week’s episode of South Park, which confusingly kicked off its 28th season, found billionaire Peter Thiel exorcising Eric Cartman, Donald Trump exposing his butthole in a Planned Parenthood examining room and Jesus giving up on his core values in order to embrace a new life as a toxic MAGA bro.
But the whole thing began with the students of South Park Elementary embracing the “6-7” meme.
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Some fans were quick to criticize the show for making a whole episode predicated on the “6-7” phenomenon, and suddenly embracing brainrot social media trends.
But others defended Trey Parker and Matt Stone, pointing out that this is hardly the first time that South Park has mined online memes for story ideas. One fan on Reddit reminded everyone that Season 16’s “Faith Hilling” was all about the “cat breading” trend.
Not unlike the demonic backlash to the “6-7” meme in “Twisted Christian," that episode included alleged experts not understanding the meme and starting to freak out. It also introduced the potentially deadly “Oh Long Johnsoning” meme, which involves “putting oneself in a risky situation and then seeing how many times you can say ‘Oh Long Johnson’ on video before getting out of the way.”
Back in Season 12’s “Canada on Strike,” there was an entire fight scene between viral internet “meme stars,” including Tron Guy, the Sneezing Panda, the Dramatic Chipmunk and Star Wars Kid. Of course, this episode, which was produced during the 2008 WGA strike, was all about how there’s no money to be made in streaming video. Oops!
Not to mention how “Canada on Strike” also found Butters performing the viral track “(What What) in the Butt,” which inspired an unsuccessful lawsuit from “Brownmark Films.”
While older South Park fans may have been forced to Google “6-7” in order to fully understand this week’s episode, the joke was still in keeping with the history of the series. And it’s arguably impressive that the nearly 30-year-old show is able to reflect today’s fourth-grade zeitgeist.
