South Park characters hip with the internet

I don’t know if you all caught last night’s episode of the brutally satirical Comedy Central cartoon, South Park but i sure did. As often is the case when a new episode is aired, my mind was blown.

In this weeks episode Cartmen, the shows anit-hero, begins to uncover a terrorist attack on South Park when a Muslim student is introduced at school. Cartmen immediately calls fellow character, Kyle who is home sick, and has him check the new student’s myspace account. When the facts don’t check out Cartmen smells something funny and the full on spoof of Fox's drama, 24 ensues.

Through out the episode Cartmen is in contact with Kyle using Google, youtube, mapquest and myspace to dig deeper into the conspiracy. "Cross reference his youtube posts with his myspace page blogs," Cartmen says at one point.

I don’t even know what that means or if its even possible but it was hilarious to see these characters who are supposed to be in fourth grade solving a terrorist attack using the internet while the FBI and CIA have trouble keeping up.

In one particular scene the FBI is working along with the boys and one of the agents tells someone to use ask jeevs to search for one of the suspects. The boys all laugh and inform him that nobody is still using ask.com.

It kind of makes fun of how the older generation is so out of touch with the advances in the internet world and how some children have a better idea of how to get information on the net than adults.
Anyway it turns out that they end up preventing the attack but the Muslim student had nothing to do with it. And the moral is that Cartmens racism, though misguided, is responsible for saving America. Another good moral would have been: If you’re a terrorist don’t post on youtube.

Here is an example of some the effect that South Park has had in the media: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbGGt_HI304