The boys can’t get enough of Facebook. However, Stan is the only one who doesn’t want to get sucked into it. Cartman, Kyle and Kenny beg him to join, but he simply refuses. However, they make a Facebook page for Stan and the downward spiral begins.
Stan’s Dad sees Stan’s profile and begs him to add him as a friend. Then Wendy sees Stan has a page and interrogates him as to why his relationship status is single. Stan updates his profile to please everybody, but deep down it’s more of a hassle than anything.
Stan Has 845,000 Friends
Stan pleases everyone by adding them as a friend or commenting on their photo. He eventually ends up with 845,000 friends and is mad at himself for getting sucked into Facebook. Stan tries to delete his profile, but the computer will not allow him to do it.
Stan gets transported inside the computer where all of the Facebook profiles live in a Tron-like universe. This is where the episode takes a huge twist. South Park is suggesting there is a difference between the actual user of Facebook, and the profile itself, almost as if the user is one persona and the profile is a completely different persona.
Stan goes on a search to find his profile so he can delete it once and for all. Stan and his profile do battle in a riveting game of Yahtzee. Stan beats his profile and the profile is deleted.
Cartman Helps Kyle Find Friends
Meanwhile, Kyle is losing friends ever since he added Kip Drordy as a friend. He asks Cartman for help, who has a pod cast parody of Jim Cramer’s Mad Money. Cartman tells Kyle about Chat Roulette. Of course, Chat Roulette doesn’t work quite the way they were hoping it would.
Eventually, Cartman and Kyle find a friend for Kyle, but once he finds out Kyle is friends with Kip, he immediately ignores him. Kyle has no choice but to remove Kip from his friends list and Kip is heartbroken. However, Kip inherits all of Stan’s friends and he is elated yet again.
This was a genius episode of South Park. The writers make it clear that friends should not be a commodity as they are on Facebook. People have hundreds and sometimes thousands of Facebook friends. However, only a handful of those people are actual friends.
The other point that is made is people tend to over dramatize people’s actions on Facebook. If someone’s relationship status is not “in a relationship” or a poke wasn’t returned, they freak out.
Facebook is meant to keep in touch with people you may not get to see on a daily basis, but people put too much emphasis on what their profile says. As much as it makes life easier, sometimes Facebook causes more problems than it solves.
- Original air date: Wednesday, April 7, 2010
- Season #14 Episode #4
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Tom Mitsos - Tom Mitsos currently works at The Grand Rapids Press as a copy editor for the sports department. Contact Tom at tommitsos@gmail.com.
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