#They are extremely anti lgbt. I got an ad from them on youtube for an anti trans documentary

[testure-1988]

Doing my patriotic duty by stealing every copy of the Epoch Times newspaper from the diner and throwing them in the trash

[larstenobar]

Okay so I mentioned it in the tags but I kinda wanna talk about my experiences with So/uth Pa/rk. I say this as a cis, gay, non-Jewish man. I also say this as someone who used to actually engage with the forums on the main site. I also say this as someone who played. both the two major video game RPGs. So I am speaking not from reaction to other people’s reactions but from my own personal knowledge. This post is incredibly long so it’s under a read more. In it I provide what I believe are the actual effects of South Park on its viewership but I need to stress that I think it’s the wrong energy to blame parents for letting their children watch the show.

Don’t blame the parents, blame the show.

That show is genuinely horrible. I’ve seen a lot of people questioning how anyone could let children watch it - and to that I say you’re not adding anything to the conversation by shaming parents for letting their children watch that show. 

My own parents weren’t even out of their twenties when I watched the show, and many other parents grew up with the show as a non-issue. Young parents make mistakes.

At the time it came out and its early years only extremely vigilant parents realized how problematic the show was and the news was hard to spread without social media. At best you could inform your parent friends and hope they listened.

The show’s main characters are children, many parents found/find it hard to believe that a show with children as the main characters could be bad for those children. If the show were exactly the same but the children were college-aged then it would be another raunchy show they could easily see is not meant for their kids.

There’s a good portion of children who watched the show that weren’t actually allowed to watch it because their parents weren’t as tech savvy as them and therefore didn’t know about pirating/streaming until it was mainstream. We who grew up with YouTube knew you could put in [show] episode 1 part 1 and start watching. (this is gonna be another point later btw)

I know that it’s hard for you guys to even know all the reasons it’s problematic because you all barely scratch the surface of it’s problems. But before we even get into the meat of its problems (Science Denial, Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, etc.) we have to look at the very premise of the show.

The main characters begin in fourth grade. Fourth Grade. There’s a phenomena in our culture where we believe that children saying stupid stuff is harmless, and we forget that when children hear children speak - even animated children - they are hearing their peers. And peers learn from each other. This is why the show is so insidious, because it makes it easier for children to digest the messages.

Another thing that’s very important to note is that - while it’s labelled satire, every single joke is played straight, and the straight man character (usually either S or Ky) are ridiculed by the culture they’re surrounded in. Don’t believe me? Think I’m over-exaggerating? Think about the election episode, where they had to pick between a literal piece of shit or a douche. Our Straightmen were constantly saying how ridiculous the situation was, but everyone around them was telling them they were the ones who were stupid for not particpating in the election until they eventually break and submit to the absurdity. This is a light example, but it’s the typical formula. If they aren’t actively participating in the absurdity around them, they’re ridiculed until they break. What this tells the audience isn’t that the people who were particpating were stupid, but that they were right.

Now that we’ve looked at the show premise, let’s get into the details. A note: This is just what I remember from approximately age 5-18, the latter years I’d been turned off from it slowly so I wasn’t as engaged but it was not any better then. Since this is just what I can remember without looking through episodes or looking up articles, this is going to be a small sampling of things that stuck with me. Be assured, there was much, much, much more.

Science Denial and its effects on the viewers.

This is the lightest thing I can recall, and probably going to be the smallest section as it’s mostly centered around their stand-in for global warming, a cryptid figure called M/an/Be/ar/P/ig. Al G/ore was painted as a desperate, raving lunatic for believing in the phenomena, and was even implied to be making it up by having him dress up as the cryptid. I don’t have to explain why this is wrong, but we need to look at the effect this had.

On the one hand it made fans think that Global Warming (as it’s something A.G. believed in) was a hoax. Furthermore, it made them believe that anyone who believed in it was telling lies, which was overwhelmingly the most progressive people. A direct effect of these jokes (which they apologized for but never stopped propagating btw, MBP was still a joke when I stopped watching) was that progressives were seen as over-dramatic and stupid.

Now, I am not saying people watched these shows and immediately thought “oh wow, how fucking stupid of A.G. I don’t believe in climate change anymore.” It’s more like this: “Oh haha, S thinks A.G. is annoying, I like S so I agree, A.G. is annoying. You know, A.G. is kinda annoying with all that global warming, maybe there’s something to him being over-dramatic? Gosh why can’t these progressives see that it’s not that big of a deal. If they trust A.G. then they MUST be blowing other things out of proportion.” That’s the thought processes it trains its viewers to have.

LGBT+ Characters

Okay so there’s actually a lot of things that go into the Homophobia of S/P. And it goes back to the very beginning of the show, and is both explicit and implicit. There is a huge problem with these, but the main problem isn’t so much that they exist, but the show’s attitude towards their own ‘jokes’ and the ways in which fans suck up that thought process.

Before I get into this, there were some things that I need to say in favor of the show - not because I think the show deserve praise, but because there were some things that I latched onto and showed a surprising nuance. There’s like one thing, really but it is, of course, attached to something that’s a much larger issue within the show, so while it is a small glimmer, it’s in no way outshining any of the problems in the show.

For a while, the teacher underwent gender reassignment when he (the teacher currently identifies as male from my last interaction with the show) got breast implants and presumably bottom surgery (I vaguely remember a surgery but honestly that could be an invention) he was in a gay relationship. His then boyfriend had a very heartfelt and difficult conversation about how he still cared about him and how he’ll never hate him for being the woman that he wanted to be, but there was no way that he could pursue a relationship with him. I thought that this was a very mature depiction of a very difficult situation that is never really talked about. However, as I implied earlier, this is attached to a larger issue. Before any of you start having second thoughts about your ideas about S/P’s portrayal of gay and trans people, immediately after getting broken up with the teacher became violently homophobic as a backlash, I vaguely recall a group being formed.

Our main examples of LGBT individuals in the show are these big four (five?):

The afforementioned teacher

The teacher’s boyfriend, who wears leather gear at school and can’t stop talking kink even in front of the child characters

A character called B/ig G/ay A/l who is just as stereotypical as his name implies.

T/weak and C/raig, who are classmates of the focal characters. There’s a lot of reasons this is problematic, none of them being the age of those involved in the relationship - but the portrayal of them is hugely problematic.

Since I’ve already touched on the teacher, we’ll get into them first. When he was introduced, he was a sort of ambiguously gay character who was very bitchy and spoke with a slight lisp that eventually became a canon gay character with his relationship with the Kink Character. He was violently hateful towards his class, verbally abusing them all the time and often particpating in bullying children. Furthermore he’s seen as incompetent. This is problematic not because he’s a gay man doing this (though it’s not great either) but because this taught children that teachers don’t care about them and that they shouldn’t listen to them because they don’t know what they’re talking about anyways. This goes into their anti-intellectual stance mentioned earlier. It enforces the idea that education systems are useless, not because of the institutional problems they have with racism, but because of the incompetence of the system.

Going back to the point of this, still with the same character, let’s further explore the problems they had when the teacher had an arc as a trans woman. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but the show made a point to let you know that the other characters were uncomfortable when Mr. G became Ms. G. The most damning thing about this, however, is the fact that Mr. G detransitioned bc he realized he wasn’t a straight woman, just a gay man. I think this is problematic because it frames transitioning as a sexual strategy. I don’t think I have to go into detail on why that’s problematic. And while this isn’t actually a tie into how horrible their handling of this character is, it should be noted that he’s the character that went on to be their T/rump stand-in.

The next character is the Kink Man.

God, the character’s personality isn’t actually all that bad. He’s loving and caring and empathetic and actually usually on the right side of topics, but. He doesn’t separate his kink from his personal life. He’s always strutting around in leather-daddy gear and has a lisp. His name is literally Mr. S/lave. There was an episode where he shoved a hamster in his ass. To viewers, he represents the dirty gays that keep shoving their sex-life down their throats - and this view is never, ever, ever subverted, so since the show never makes fun of people for having that view it reinforces that idea in their minds.

Honestly the least problematic character of the LGBT characters that I mentioned was BGA. He’s still a stereotype, yeah, he has a gay dog and is super flamboyant and constantly talks about how proud he is but honestly that’s not really all that bad. I can’t directly recall anything bad about him except that he’s incredibly flamboyant, speaks with a lisp, and loves to call things he owns “BGA’s Big Gay [noun].” Relatable. That doesn’t mean there was nothing problematic, it just doesn’t immediately come to me.

Now, for the next most problematic “representation” in the show. First, T&C showed no signs of actually being gay before. I do recall them both being my favorite characters before they became a couple, however. T is a coffee addict which has some suspect aspects we’ll get into later, and C used to flip everyone off. This was why they were my favorites. They became gay literally when fangirls started shipping them in the show. I’m sure there was an actual fandom movement, but their getting together was incredibly forced - that was part of the joke btw, that gay shipping is always forced. What’s horrible about this is that this was in an episode about ya/oi.

Now, let’s try to dissect this issue. First off, what this tells viewers is that being gay was not a natural part of who they were, but was an active choice (if you’re being kind) or something society forced on them (if you’re not.) The two were actively fighting with the narrative that they were gay and in a relationship. I think their actual agreement for being boyfriends was more of a mutual public display than an actual relationship, but it’s a fuzzy memory because that whole episode felt like a fever dream.

What’s worse about this, is that the show actually displayed ya/oi depictions of these children within the show. Nothing NSFW, but clearly sexually charged situations were definitely shown. At the time, they were 5th graders. 9/10 year olds for those not in the states. This emboldened actual CT shippers “If the show could do it, then so can I” was the general mentality on the forums I was on. So we can talk on pedophilia to reasons why this show is awful.

And those are just the named recurring characters. Another commonly recurring character is a prostitute with a deep voice who is very sloppy looking that, from my recollection, is implied to be a transwoman. This might have just been a conclusion I drew when I was young however - but even that is reason to be critical of the character, that such a conclusion could even be drawn means it might have played a factor in the character’s inception.

They also “Solved Overpopulation” with a gay orgy. I don’t have the language to define why this sat so wrong with me, but I remember being very deeply hurt by it. I think it has something to do with the idea that homosexuality is a choice and that it should only be accepted because of the potential benefits it has for population control.

Islamophobia and Racism

Okay so I’m just gonna come out the gate by saying that they fought hard to depict the prophet Mohammad. Like, hard. And they did it twice - one time went almost unnoticed but the second had a huge backlash from the Islamic people. For those who aren’t aware, it’s sacrilege to depict Mohammad. It’s like desecrating a church, maybe worse - I really have no frame of reference for how bad it’s viewed, but however bad it is, it still boils down to being a strict taboo that S/P broke not once, but twice.

Now, as I keep reminding, my memory gets hazy for many things, especially things I wasn’t aware of being insensitive early on. I have vague memories of terrorists being depicted in traditional Sikh garb, and similar instances of directly relating Islam with terrorism. I don’t recall the show ever making fun of anyone for relating Muslims with terrorism, for all those fans out there saying they make fun of everyone.

There was an episode where the characters wore blackface. There’s a black character literally named t/oken b/lack. Sure, that could be satire and maybe even be defended if they subverted the trope, however it should be noted he’s not the only black character in the show! There was an episode where there was a child adopted from Africa whose name escapes me - he was emaciated and devoured food at an alarming rate and generally was a nuisance if I remember correctly.

There was an instance where one of the main character’s father was on Wheel of Fortune. The category was people who annoy you. the letters on the board were ‘N_ggers.’ You know where this is going, the father said the N-word. The word was really naggers, but the rest of the episode was a sympathetic journey with him dealing with being ostracized. He became known as an ‘n-word guy’ which was treated as a worse term within the universe. I say this because a law was passed where the phrase was outlawed and they said you had to have a space of at least 5 words between ‘n-word’ and ‘guy’. Also, the n-word was said multiple times by a number of white characters. Now, I know the argument people make about this episode. They say that we were supposed to find the scanario ridiculous, but the issue I take with it is more that we’re led to feel sympathetic to racists who’ve had their lives ruined for being racist. That’s the issue with South Park’s brand of ‘satire’. It satirizes one issue, but doesn’t touch on the problematic things used to support that satire.

Almost every single Mexican character is a stereotype of some sort. Either a laborer who can barely speak English, a gangbanger, or some other stereotype. There was an episode where they had C’s hand become a famous Latina popstar by singing about Mexican Food themed songs, like the actual songs ‘T/aco F/lavored K/isses’ and ‘T/aco B/urrito’. The hand’s name was Jennifer Lopez, I don’t know of these songs are direct parodies bc I’ve only heard Jenny From the Block.

And while S/P tends to stay away from very direct anti-black jokes, they don’t shy away from other races. There’s an asian character whose business is called ‘c/ity wok’, but he always pronounces it ‘shitty’ because the joke here is ‘oh haha asians have funny accents’ and literally nothing else. I honestly believe that asians receive the WORST treatment on S/P when it comes to facing racism, but I’m not qualified to make that claim. Other examples of anti-asian racism: There was an pokemon episode where they said that Japan was using anime to indoctrinate youth, they literally had the kids operate fighter jets to make an attack on the U.S. What’s worse about this, is that whenever the Japanese execs were questioned about this, every time, they dropped their pants to show how small their penises were and how they should be pitied for it. Another instance, I very strongly remember a depiction of asian characters as being lemon yellow with eyes like this: \ /. There was an episode where they had Asians violently murder whales with glee. They lean into anti-asian racism so much harder than any other form of racism - the only thing they’re worse about is their antisemitism, which will get its own section later.

Antisemitism

God there’s so much. Jew Gold, nazi imagery, the entirety of c/a/r/t/m/a/n as a character and there are so many posts on this website by people much more qualified than me to delve into what exactly is wrong with this and the depictions of it, so I’m mostly just going to catalog what comes to mind and then speak about the actual factual instances of S/P inspired antisemitism I’ve witnessed and been party to.

There was an episode devoted to Jewish people having a secret bit of gold around their necks. This was proven true in the universe when Ky gave up his ‘J*w Gold’ to C.

Ky’s mom is such an overbearing harpy who bulldozes over everyone, this was later explained as her having Jersey-Blood (yes this was a Jersey Shore joke) but before that it was completely because she was a proud Jewish woman.

Ky’s father is depicted as weak-willed and piddling. He always wears a yarmulke no matter the situation.

Ky is often depicted as being whiny and non-commital

OF ALL THE CHARACTERS, KY IS THE ONE WHO IS DEPICTED AS A HYPOCRITE THE MOST

Ky’s cousin with the same name is depicted as in poor health, complains about everything, whines about things not being fair bc they don’t go his way, and has caricatured Jewish features

As mentioned above, there are hosts of Nazi imagery associated with C

C has said every Jewish slur I have ever heard. In fact he introduced me to the concept of antisemitism

Ky, in a Christmas episode, is depicted as wishing he could celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah is depicted as a sort of consolation prize that’s Not As Good.

Ky’s father was an internet troll, and the trolls were. literal trolls. with certain features that are not great.

The following image is the Prophet Moses:

And there’s more and more and more. I will not accept anyone saying that this is just jokes because I know firsthand how insidious their treatment of Jewish people is because this show literally made me think it was okay to engage in Antisemitism. I made greedy jokes, like saying a got J**ed when i was screwed over, or that someone who was being greedy was being a J*w. I am not proud of this, and I think I grew out of it relatively quickly as I dropped that language in middle school.

But not everyone did. Even some of my closest friends were still saying they got J**ed when we were graduating high school. There were no Jewish people at my school, so there was no humanizing face for the Jewish people for us. Thank god for the Nanny or who knows what kind of person I’d be now. There were people even worse than me, I should mention. There was one person in my school who literally used J*w as a stand-in for loser because of this show. This show was the only interaction with the Jewish faith that most of my classmates ever had, and the same is true of many rural towns in America who have only Protestant populations.

Fatphobia

All the most unlikeable characters are fat. C. Ky’s mom. The gun-toting republican. And there are other specific episodes where they equate fatness to not being healthy. In their episode partnered with WoW (don’t forget that happened, y’all) the main antagonist was depicted as a no-life having loser and he was, surprise, fat. This show draws a very direct line between being fat and being unlikeable.

Sexism

God, the portrayal of women is so horrible, literally my only entry here is going to be one single link:

Note all the other isms depicted in this btw.

Substance Abuse

The prostitute mentioned in the LGBT section would wander into scenes screaming about how she wanted crack. There was an episode where they created a league of basketball players who were comprised entirely of ‘crack babies.’ I’m being generous by not putting that in the racism section because most of the babies were BIPOC which says something about the kind of people that M/att and T/rey think are addicts.

The character T/owelie is supposed to show an addict, but his addiction is literally just weed which means they’re claiming weed is addictive.

I can’t even begin to describe the show’s relationship to alcohol. As a child of an alcoholic, I can say that it’s not fucking cute that they made S’s dad a violent drunk. It’s genuinely scary to see your parent fly into a rage because of their alcoholism and them reducing it to a joke was, I think, one of the points where the ‘it’s just a joke’ mentality started to break for me personally. 

While we’re on the subject of parents, C’s mom was literally a crack addict who was also a full service sex worker. The correlation is not sympathetic in the slightest. And even worse was Ke’s parents. They were depicted as abusive, neglectful, drug-addicted rednecks. This was sometimes played to make you sympathize with Ke, and it worked because even now I can hardly think of how Ke himself was problematic rather than the situations he was in. (He’s the one who gets gruesomely murdered every episode) I don’t know if this is because of selective memory, if he was genuinely just the least problematic in the show, or if I’m waxing nostalgic for the show. Regardless, as I said, his situation was mostly played for sympathy. However, it was also played for jokes almost as often.

Pedophilia

The children are put in sexual situations a nonzero amount of times, they make priest molestation jokes, and they made jokes about MJ.

Slurs

Yeah they said them a lot. There was the aforementioned N-Word Guy episode, but there was also an episode that thinly mirrored immigrants coming to America for work and the people (time-travelers) were called ‘Goobacks’. I think the word ch*nk was used a nonzero amount of times, C used every slur for Jewish people in the book. None of these were censored by the show, any censoring was done by networks.

Why make this post?

Because I know people know this show is garbage, but I think it’s important that people know why it’s garbage with specific and nonspecific instances of why the show was problematic.

[mobianflame]

Folks Are Actually Blacklisting Characteristic For Drawing Advertisement Featuring Gay Wedding Event

Zola/YouTube Annoyed social networking sites consumers are actually blacklisting the Trademark Channel because it ceased airing an advert presenting a gay wedding ceremony. The network tends to become a preferred one in the festive time as a result of its big slate of Christmas programming however the Zola.com advert has actually induced it to end up being surrounded in conflict.

The ad was actually one of six brand-new commercials for the wedding celebration organizing and also computer system registry provider, and revealed two women trading pledges as well as later smooching to celebrate their weddings.

Look at the advert right here:

It started airing on December 2 but very soon acquired retaliation coming from conservative group One Million Moms, which claimed the add was not 'family-friendly'. The team released an application to have the advert got rid of as well as Hallmark gave in, mentioning the setting broke the cable television network's policies.

In a statement provided to the, a spokesperson for Characteristic professed the business's plan was 'not to sky overt shows and tell of devotion', though another Zola ad featuring a heterosexual pair showing love was actually certainly not declined.

Zola/YouTube After the advert was pulled coming from the channel, a blog post on One Thousand Moms stated the team had actually received confirmation the Characteristic Stations would certainly 'remain to be actually a safe

as well as loved ones helpful

network '. It checked out: 1MM has individually talked along with Dental crown Media Family Members Networks CEO Costs Abbott who validated Trademark Channel has pulled the Zola.com commercial, including a same-sex couple, coming from their network. He mentioned the advertising campaign broadcast at fault, but he was actually notified concerning it after talking to worried 1MM fans. Means to go!

The ring to our workplace gave our company the chance to additionally affirm the Characteristic Stations are going to remain to be a secure and also loved ones friendly system. Compliment the Lord!

Zola/YouTube While the choice to remove the

advertisement pleased the conventional team, it performed not decrease properly along with others. Sarah Kate Ellis, Head Of State and CEO of non-governmental media monitoring organization GLAAD, which was started through LGBT folks in the media, slammed the action as 'inequitable' and 'sanctimonious'.

In a statement, she mentioned:

The Trademark Stations's choice to remove LGBTQ family members in such an outright method is discriminatory and especially hypocritical stemming from a system that claims to existing household computer programming and additionally just recently said they are actually 'available' to LGBTQ vacation flicks.

As therefore a lot of other TELEVISION and also cable television systems display, LGBTQ loved ones become part of family members computer programming. Marketers on The Hallmark Channel ought to observe this information and concern whether they desire to be linked with a system that chooses to stoop to fringe anti-LGBTQ lobbyist teams, which solely exist to damage LGBTQ family members.

Zola/YouTube The Characteristic Channel has actually been largely criticised on social networks since it pulled the ad, with a lot of upset social networks individuals using the hashtag 'boycott Hallmark' to share their disapproval.

If you reside in the United States, satisfy consider viewing all your Xmas movies someplace else. Acquire your cards coming from tiny musicians on Etsy or charitable organization shops. Deliver one of all of them to characteristic telling them that they brought in a trash choice. #boycotthallmark https://t.co/0ZS2a01Ae8

--

Getti

I love you(@Assagetti)December 15, 2019 Just how can enjoy in between two saying yes grownups piss numerous people off? Are they that bitter? Do they definitely believe affection misbehaves on theological reasons? It's organic. It's gorgeous. Love is actually love is actually love, and also I am going to #BoycottHallmark https://t.co/bnu17WUazV

-- Killer Soundy #RDC 6 #GoodOmensTrash (@killrcompassion) December 15, 2019

Gosh darn @hallmarkchannel, why would certainly you need to go in advance and also destroy Christmas! It is actually certainly not X-mas without your extremely corney movies as well as right now I'm visiting need to go as well as #BoycottHallmark because evidently you do not recognize what "family-friendly" suggests! #allformsoffamily

-- Katie Brown (@CommunityKeb) December 15, 2019

Conversation show host Ellen DeGeneres was amongst those putting down the selection, as she tweeted:

Isn't it nearly 2020? @hallmarkchannel, @billabbottHC ... what are you assuming? Feel free to describe. Our experts are actually all ears.

Isn't it practically 2020? @hallmarkchannel, @billabbottHC ... what are you thinking? Satisfy clarify. Our team're all ears.

-- Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) December 15, 2019

Zola has stood by its add and also claimed it was wanted to become inclusive.

In a claim, the provider stated:

Our company stand up responsible for this business 150%. Our experts prefer all pairs to feel welcomed as well as commemorated and also our team will definitely consistently feature all type of affection in our marketing.

The advert is actually still on call to enjoy online and several people have actually been actually discussing it to ensure it does not go unnoticed.

If you possess a story you intend to say to, send it to UNILAD by means of story@unilad.com!.?.!

This content was originally published here.

[levyfiles]

People be saying “Yay! Finally the boys have their own channel! They are rescued from the evil buzzfeed corporation UwU!” as if (1) “”corporations”” aren’t like, a totally normal and common thing in society, (2) this “evil corporation” didn’t provide them with the platform, audience and funding the boys needed in the first place, and (3) Ryan and Shane didn’t voluntarily put in job applications to work at buzzfeed, and instead were kidnapped by masked assassins............

Ahh, nonnybabe, you raise some really great points here about the near malicious vibe that intermingles with the celebration of the success of fellas like the Try Guys and our favourite Ghoul Boys aimed at this faceless company called Buzzfeed. 

Now, while I do understand the masses’ innate distrust for corporations in general, especially when they’re run by people who are reprehensible, outrageously wealthy and uncaring about social inequality, I think it’s time for me to address something about this particular perspective because Buzzfeed  If we can just solve this issue together by allowing me to lay down some facts I know about Buzzfeed so we can all stop playing like we don’t have to do our own research.

Brace yourselves, this is gonna get long.

The very founder of Buzzfeed Jonah Peretti (brother of our beloved Chelsea Peretti from B99) is an ICON. Jewish and raised by a black woman, he grew up to work to establish the famous Huffington Post and at the same damn time sought to make a website that would track viral content. What made Buzzfeed actually blow up was the start of the website covering news that no other news source wanted to gather or cover because it was entirely too politically left.

Putting that aside for now (brace yourself because i’m coming back to that especially), what put Jonah on the map as a guy not to mess with was the very controversial and Brilliant move on his part to throw shade at Nike. All the way back in 2001, Nike held this campaign amid their open storm of using young children in impoverished countries to build their shoes for people to be able to order shoes with their own custom insignia stitched into the shoe. Jonah ordered a pair and asked that his say “SWEATSHOP’ on the side. Here’s the full easy to read story. Please read it and that’ll give an idea of where the founder of Buzzfeed was coming from when he began to craft the face and image of Buzzfeed as it was growing.

So already Jonah Peretti is known worldwide as that one leftist, socialist guy stirring up trouble. The number of times, websites like 4chan and disgusting subreddits have been after his ass to assassinate his character which, I’ll be honest, is really easy to do when you start telling angry straight cis white boys on the internet that some dude running a viral news website wants to support socialism, charities, and worse still, non white creators.

Here is a full memo that Jonah sent across the company back in 2015.

Here is an update he sent in 2017 about their mission statement to support and help a diverse crowd of young creators start and grow.

Here is an editorial published about Jonah’s frustration with the state of media last year (Note: He aims an attack at actual corporations like Google and Facebook)

Now here’s the deal that bothers me most about the trend of hating Buzzfeed, the sentiment comes from two different sources. The first source is Buzzfeed’s videos about LGBT perspectives, feminist perspectives and surprise!surprise non-white perspectives in general. The result can be seen in many of the youtube comments of these videos. Anti-sjws, alt-right, neutral white boys all have their two cents to put in as to why hearing about anything rather than the white North american perspective hurts their feelings.

I remember once seeing a video of Pewdiepie where he happened to glance, just glance at a cast shot of an As/Is video in one of his meme reviews. He took one look at Real Actual Living Human Beings in this video and he said the words, and I quote “I get diversity, but Buzzfeed is taking it too far.” This was a group of women and a trans man standing together just laughing and posing, all of different nationalities and sexualities and the first thought out of that guy’s mouth was how what he was looking at was ‘too diverse’. If that doesn’t send a message about the way a lot of the straight white male population of the internet looks at Buzzfeed and talks about it, I don’t know how best to explain this otherwise.

The Second source of ire from anti-buzzfeed posts comes from the long list of Why I Left Buzzfeed videos. This one is really complicated because it requires a person to understand how media companies work, external ad revenue, and creative copyright. As someone who has followed many media agencies due to enjoying talents, variety shows, international pop/music, and internet creators, I know that it’s absurd that Buzzfeed’s main detractor has been individuals who are extremely creative making the mistake of signing on with a massive media agency to get a jumpstart expecting to own all of their content they come up with and post under Buzzfeed’s name. Note that I use the word jumpstart. If people go in to Buzzfeed as a job looking to live the life of a youtuber, they’re in for a nasty surprise. The amount of content you’re expected to generate is on par with working at any production company especially one whose M.O. is current viral content and it is entirely anyone’s perogative to leave the company they work for and much like nonny said in their missive, Buzzfeed’s money goes toward funding, providing a platform, advertising, and merchandising all of which any creative on the street needs to work years and years to get. Buzzfeed as a company encourages their employees to work hard and consistently create and if their ideas hit the big time, they blow up. In order to preserve their branding and avoid incidents with fans, the employees are kept at a distance from their fans. This is the same sort of policy that goes with nearly any other agency out there (in fact most agencies are even stricter). Having such a huge company churning out viral video after viral video enough that they attract the minds of people like Ryan Bergara or Shane Madej (or name your favourite buzzfeeder) who manage to make the one thing that puts them in the position they’re in now, is immensely beautiful.

Basically, I feel you, nonnyb. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people unsubscribing to Buzzfeed Blue after the BFU Network went live, I feel really icky about the weird unfounded hatred people have for the company where these guys as adults looking to make stuff they care about, chose to work and still work with. They’ve got a platform and it’s still with Buzzfeed, they have a lot of fun making the stuff they do and they’re given free reign to go all out.

So maybe next time you wanna go out for blood because you wanna stick it to the man, stick it to when Buzzfeed leaves Youtube lol

[crystal-grumps]

Not a lot went up during Angst Week.

Yeah… not many people submitted things for us to post. I (Mod Penguin) was writing something to post but I ended up getting stuck on it and that week got kinda rough for me so I scrapped it… I kinda blame some poor planning as well. I thought it might be cool to line up an angst week with my Birthday (since Angst is my specialty) but I failed to realize that most people would be starting school that week an likely unable to participate… Again, I take full blame for that.

Almost 90% of our content is user submitted… so if we hit a lull there isn’t too much we can do. We try to dig up old submissions on the occasion but a lot of them are from before we were mods and it’s kinda hard to remember the context. We might do a full Inbox clean-out to make room for newer submissions and salvage what we can.

We’ve had a bit of a content lull in general… Personally, I blame the extreme hiatuses and general lack of news for regarding new SU episodes on CN’s part. Granted, the Hiatus will always be a part of the entertainment industry, and CN is always 3rd behind Nick and Disney. But in terms of keeping the SU flame alive: most we’ve had are a few podcasts with the cast/crew on ITunes and the occasional teaser or Meme from their social media plugs. 

Another part is in due to Controversies with certain youtubers… Pe//wDie//Pi/e and J/on//Tro//n in the last year were under heavy fire because of outright racist and anti-Semitic statements. We didn’t make any real statements on them because the truth was we didn’t know exactly what to do. We weren’t sure if we could remove them because these two in particular took the rolls of two characters who’s equivalents are very important in SU. And if we did remove them we’d have to shift things around and find other youtubers to replace them as well. And if THOSE guys did something bad it’d be phase-1 all over again. (Which is the main issue we get with these sorts of things and the problem we have to face with having an AU based around real-life people).

We also had the issue of past content created for these characters, which personally I don’t think we’ll remove them (AND WE HAVE NO PLANS TO) because it’d be censoring the blog’s history and hey, history has it’s faults… It’d be worse to erase the bad parts and pretend they never happened than to acknowledge that they were a part of the story and learn from them.

Though, I think I speak for us when I say that we should have definitely been better at addressing the things that happened than to wait for them to blow over, and on behalf of all the mods: We apologize. We do not stand with anything these two have done or said. We’re just in a bit of a bind trying to figure out what exactly to do. This is also why we’ve more hesitant about asks regarding adding certain youtubers/groups (A big one being the O//n/ey-Plays group, who… aren’t really the best in regards to LGBT or Racial problems and we aren’t too keen on adding them in when they have that already under their belt… We didn’t really have much of a choice with Matt/Ryan but they’ve seemed to have mellowed out since joining Grumps so maybe those two have seen the error of their ways… but we can’t say the same for On//e/y and his friends)

TL,DR: We have some management things we need to address/adjust/fix… We plan to do so once we figure something out.

(I also want to say, if you have any issue with the things said, take it up with me personally... I’d be happy to hear your input, and also would request that no backlash to come to any other mods but myself. The majority of this post is my actions, my opinions, and If i anger or upset someone: It’s my responsibility to address/listen to it. My main blog is @penguinpatrolerarmy. Message me there.)

-Mod Penguin

The text under the cut contains things regarding Hiatus and the state of television… If you are interested in reading about it. I figured i’d include these things as they do somewhat affect the blog:

To continue: The news of Adventure Time’s final season going to be dumped on Hulu makes me think the same is going to happen with Steven Universe. The main reason the network doesn’t air their episodes as often as TTG is because their longer overarching plot lines makes it harder for new fans to jump into it. Same thing happened with the Attack On Titan fandom, A large majority who only watched the anime and couldn’t access or didn’t want to read the manga moved on in what ended up being a 4 ½ YEAR hiatus… TV animation, especially story driven and action based shows that cost more to produce, isn’t as financially successful on cable today.

DVDs/Blu-rays are dying out to the digital market, so putting out every episode online where viewers can pay to watch them at anytime and at their own pace is the better for the company’s finances. That’s why Voltron: LD does so well and is booming in popularity… more people have Netflix today than they do Cable. Plus, fans who just outright purchase a show only have to worry about regular 6-month to 1 Year hiatuses before getting an entire season dumped out in a day… Sometimes even Less than that.

I apologize for rambling, but I wanted to get things stated while it was fresh in my mind.