I've often mused over this as well. I remember when Simpsons was first aired in the UK, there was lots of complaints over it. The WI (Women's Institute) running campaigns again the show because its content was considered harmful. People even threatening to boycott the BBC and any high street stores that sold Simpsons merchandise. Slogans like "Eat my shorts" caused massive outrage. Yet most of those people who were angered by the very concept of the show ended up watching it with their own families. And in the end the show became a victim of it's own success; it's no longer able to surprise people without going totally random. A point South Park commented on in one of their shows where Butters keeps being reminded that all of this plot ideas have already happened in the Simpsons (this was before South Park became just as tired as the Simpsons)

Now it's South Park's turn(Rick mentions "South Park did it" on Rick and Morty)

-Dan Harmon

Rick is literally designed to be the person every pretentious cynical asshole thinks they are. He exists to glamorize toxic anti-social behavior. Harmon backpedaling after the sauce thing blew up in his face isn't going to change this.

Would such a joke's lineage be perceptible or readily recognizable?

Would anyone notice or remember who made the last/next iteration of the joke, to continue the tradition?

Who defines the canonical serial sequence for this chain of jokes?

How many generations is a joke like this worth?

Would the continuation of such a joke actually be funny in the first place?

Was it ever truly funny at all?

I grew up watching the Simpsons every day. I stopped watching because I didn't like the new episodes, but also because there was nothing any of the characters could credibly do that would surprise me, or that I hadn't already seen them do.

Thanks!

I feel like South Park has managed to do both.

The Outline (somewhat ironically imho) summed it up when they said "South Park is not subversive":

    For 21 seasons, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have given fake woke white
    people a sense of self-satisfaction, reassuring them that they rise
    above the myopia that grips the residents of South Park; that they
    are subverting the establishment, rather than perpetuating it. Much
    like a joke South Park made about residents of San Francisco: They
    smugly inhaled their own farts.

I think the author of the Outline article just doesn't like the political stance of the show. The point about Token is in bad faith IMO - he isn't the richest guy in town as a cheap joke, but because changing a few things around from reality makes it easier to have a fresh look at the situation and have new insights. They use this technique all the time. In this case, it separates poor people problems from black people problems.

I'd say the Outline is the one that does exactly what it accuses South Park of: BS for "fake woke white people". It's just that they want to believe that their white people are more "woke" than the ones watching South Park.

Starting with the BS idea of "high-brow" criticizing what in final analysis is just a funny cartoon show -- this reeks of (real, not imagined) pretentiousness and taking things too seriously itself.

— Victor Pelevin, "Empire V"

Seems like a claim no one ever asserted about SP. Maybe Simpsons (at one point).

"Much like a joke South Park made about residents of San Francisco: They smugly inhaled their own farts."

So the non-subversive series made a subversive episode about their own smug watchers? Or smug writer found that non-subversively applicable to non-woke whites?

Your quote nails it. It is for people who want to pretend they are the smartest person in the room, largely because they watch South Park.

Not sure about today's episodes (have lost touch), but that was certainly true 20 years ago when we were watching the seasons 1-10 or so.

In my experience people criticizing others for being "pretentious" etc. usually can't fathom anyone liking anything that's either not entirely mainstream or having any second level of reading.

Heck, those people would accuse someone reading e.g. literature (something that billions all over the world have done for millennia) as "pretentious" (as if anything above Stephen King is some kind of crime).

"I was in Nashville, Tennesee last year. After the show I went to a Waffle House. I'm not proud of it, I was hungry. And I'm alone, I'm eating and I'm reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me: 'Hey, whatcha readin' for?' Isn't that the weirdest fuckin' question you've ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading FOR? Well, godammit, ya stumped me! Why do I read? Well . . . hmmm . . . I dunno . . . I guess I read for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don't end up being a fuckin' waffle waitress."

Bill Hicks would have been described as pretentious by people who disagree with what he says. They'd have also said his humour wasn't clever, it was just insulting, rude, and low-brow. They wouldn't be entirely wrong, but they'd be mostly wrong.

Same goes for South Park or Rick & Morty or The Simpsons. Those who disagree will find ways of protecting their world view against a trickle or tide of inconvenient or uncomfortable alternatives no matter how logically, reasonably, and / or cleverly the alternative is presented.

Really, even in off seasons they often have great episodes, they simply suffer by comparison.

If they’ve run out of non-topical ways to explore the characters, then they should end the show.

I can still enjoy the show but the high point for me was the period between seasons 3 to 9, when the surrealism and sense of adventure in the kids learning about the world was at its highest point.

Now it is just entirely topic-of-the-week and while it can do it quite well, sometimes it just falls flat.