[Shoreleave]

They do not poke fun at everyone who tries to do anything. They poke fun at self-important people who have latched onto progressive ideologies once they can gain something from it. They poke fun at crowd madness. They poke fun at hypocrites. The comment was a response to the perfect case in point: Caitlyn Jenner. The public face of trans women and 'Woman of the year', who didn't even believe in gay marriage.

The average South Park episode has Cartman representing the extreme of some issue, and the issue is mocked. But there will also be a foil, possibly Butters or Stan, who represents the core of the issue, ignoring the hyperbole surrounding it. This character is the one who succeeds.

[ryandrake]

They poke fun at people who wrap their entire identity up in those activities or causes. Plenty of SP characters do things and have opinions and don't get ridiculed. It's the ones who take that activity and those causes so seriously and extremely that they become personal embodiments of them: Those characters get roasted.

[namdnay]

> It's the ones who take that activity and those causes so seriously and extremely that they become personal embodiments of them

Is that really an issue? Looking at our democracies, is the real issue that people take their causes seriously and extremely? Or is the issue the cynical apathy that opposes that?

History is full of pompous self-important people who took their causes very seriously indeed, and advanced humanity through that dedication.

[pas]

The problem seems to be that people are very bad at what the stoics prescribed: do what you can and accept the rest.

I mean there's a very steep diminishing returns curve for most kinds of activism. You can't protest 0-24, because eventually you will run out of food, water, money, etc. Of course social networks and the constant breaking news media pours napalm on everything continuously, just because. (And yes, Trump is going to be Trump every day, just as China will be run by a paranoid oppressive power-hungry regime for the foreseeable future.)

And this kind of overdoing things, not backing down, not compromising, not accepting incremental change even if it costs people a lot what seems to be the problem. (Eg. see how some people unironically think that a big collapse is an acceptable way to get to whatever next glorious stage the world will get to. See also how most far-anything ideologies all operate as very simple recipes and try to derive "solutions" - or maybe they are better called proposals - for every problem they see. And this ideological purism is what SP seems to ridicule with contrived situations, that are allegorical - usually to an almost direct correspondence - to the complexities of reality. )

[newyankee]

Exactly, because the world seems to have become a competition for virtue signalling. Many folks without nuanced understanding of topics becoming experts of everything under the sun, judging others etc. I understand that ultimately we have many different problems that only get resolved when highlighted a lot, however relying on attention economy and pumping out new issues to be outraged about day in and day out is also not the right approach. All it does is make people feel happy about themselves.