[sevagh]

Tangential: I remember reading a criticism about the South Park ginger episode leading to redheads getting bullied. I was curious (and still haven't wrapped my head around) what blame can be placed, if any.

1. Shitty people had latent bullying and cruelty instincts and South Park gave them the idea of diverting that to redheads

2. People were just chilling until South Park taught them to be cruel and bully gingers

[ljf]

It is hard to know. My old work colleague took great efforts to keep his son from watching any TV, films or cartoons - they did loads of art, listened to music and went to the theatre a little. He was a pretty chill kid when I met him.

One day his son played at a friend's house when he was 3, nearly 4, and ended up watching a hulk cartoon. He spent the next 3 weeks running around the house screaming 'hulk smash' and hitting things with pillows.

Did the cartoon make him that way, or just tell him it was OK to act that way?

[saint_fiasco]

The cartoon makes children act a certain way, then the parents teach them that it's not OK to imitate what they see on TV.

If that kid was kept from watching TV for nearly 4 years, he never had a chance to learn that copying things from TV is wrong, so really it was both the TV at their friend's house and the previous lack of TV at his house that made him act that way.

For adults this shouldn't matter, because they are responsible for their own morality. If you showed a Hulk cartoon to an adult member of a previously uncontacted tribe, they probably won't hulk smash obnoxiously for three weeks.

[llm_nerd]

The world has loads of shitty, stupid people who will embrace something without understanding nuance or "good humor". South Park deserved blame for that because they operated as if everyone was in on the joke, when there are loads of people who took it literally as a message that it was "fair game" and targeting people was socially acceptable. Another reply notes that kids are cruel, and this simply isn't generally true: Kids are cruel in an environment where cruelty is their "in", or where they think cruelty will save themselves from cruelty. Having an easy, socially prevalent way to target some subgroup is a lazy option to be cruel, and South Park helpfully served one up.

There are loads of situations like this where people have an over the top rhetoric that is based upon the notion that everyone is in on the joke, when some subsection of the population simply isn't.

[no_wizard]

Tagging on to this, behavior wise.

We have been a household without TV ads for a little over a decade. My wife and I have not seen an ad really at all - certainly not within our home - during this time. Maybe one or two at a dentist visit or something when they play the TV, but nothing on a regular basis. Not even YouTube ads (yay adblockers and pihole!)

To save some money, we decided to go to an ad supported tier of Peacock, and within 2 weeks my wife noticed she was spending more money than usual on shopping (I don't watch Peacock shows, so I had little to no exposure).

Despite both of us trying to inoculate ourselves to marketing, some subliminal thing worked, at least in her case. We both decided that it was worth going to the ad free tier again. We haven't bought anything on Amazon for 3 months since.

Neither of us are 100% certain what to make of this experience.

[CM30]

Sadly, it's probably the first one. Awful people were bullying others for all sorts of reasons before that episode, and have done so for all sorts of other reasons afterwards too. If someone wants to be a bully, they'll find something to bully others about regardless of how their victim looks or acts.

On a related note, it's interesting that folks in the US tie the anti redhead thing to South Park, given it's been an unfortunate prejudice here in the UK (and presumably other commonwealth countries) for decades. I guess that episode ended up importing a prejudice from one country to another?

[danjoredd]

I wouldn't place the blame on South Park. Kids are cruel. If they didn't pick up on the ginger joke, they would latch on to somebody else for some other innocuous reason.

[senectus1]

lol gingers/redheads/carrot tops etc etc have been picked on for at least as long as I remember... well over 40 years.

kids are brutal

[euroderf]

in bullying mode, kids are animals

[justsomehnguy]

Redheads were bullied long before the South Park even existed.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Humans are monkey-see monkey-do. We all believe we're rational independent actors but we really aren't.

That's the whole point of the ad industry.

Media are experienced as authoritative and high status. If they normalise behaviours and beliefs at least some humans will copy them unthinkingly.

There aren't any moral limits to this. If media normalise mass murder, you get mass murder.

Some people are more resistant than others, but everyone has weak spots.