Sadly, because of a technical glitch, the audio of Stone has been lost. Sorry, folks. -- David Sarno
On last week's episode of "South
Park," residents of our favorite made-up mountain hamlet woke up to a new kind
of horror: a townwide Internet outage. No e-mail, no WebMD.com to check rogue
symptoms and, most harrowing of all, no Internet porn. Panic-stricken and
Net-starved, Stan Marsh and his family lash their belongings to the roof of
their SUV and head west -- "out Californee way" -- in hopes of finding enough
bandwidth to survive.
Matt Stone on ways the Internet has changed storytelling
As the best episodes of "South Park" do, "Over
Logging" manages to be equal parts insightful, hysterical and disturbing. If the
Internet did go down, it actually would be a federal disaster -- probably
causing not only a depression and security crisis but also serious disruption to
the psyche of a nation that can barely imagine unwired life -- even though we
can remember it. Which leads to the other side of the scenario: How absurd it is
that the way we live has been fundamentally altered in, like, the life span of
"South Park."
When I asked co-creator Matt Stone about having a
show that bridged the gap from the pre-Internet era to now, he knew what to
say.
"We kind of did that on purpose."
Which is a good joke, but the thing is, there's some
truth to it. From the beginning, Stone and co-creator Trey Parker have been
medium-agnostic -- always saying they didn't give a fuss if the show played on a
TV, a computer or a plastic Happy Meal wristwatch as long as fans were watching
it. Back in 1997, that may have sounded anathema to Comedy Central and parent
Viacom Inc., but now it looks like master augury, as the line between TV and the
Internet becomes ever less distinct.
"South Park" has the Internet in its very DNA. Grainy
videotapes of the show's 1995 prototype, "The Spirit of Christmas," which
featured a vicious (and, back then, blasphemous) duel between Santa and Jesus,
circulated with legendary speed around Hollywood, eventually winning Stone and
Parker a deal with Comedy Central in 1997. "The Spirit" even made its way online
-- though no journalists at the time even mentioned it. This was back when
downloading a five-minute movie clip could take hours, even with a good
connection. "I don't know if it was the first, but it was one of the first viral
videos for sure," Stone said. "Yeah, the Internet's been really good to
us."
And they've been good right back. First it was
offering their de facto blessing to unlicensed "South Park" sites that offered
viewers instant access to the shows. And now, after Comedy Central has finally
emerged from the Internet Dark Ages, they're offering free, high-quality copies
of the show's entire library at southparkstudios.com
-- an online TV oeuvre rivaled in scope only by "The Daily
Show With Jon Stewart." (One demerit, though: The newest episodes, are not posted
for a few weeks after they air*, because of, the site says, "contractual
obligations.")
Among "South Park's" oft-cited strengths -- and no
doubt a reason for its popularity online -- is the show's perpetual relevance.
"The Internet and YouTube change the way you think about your characters
interacting with the world," Stone explained. "If our characters don't live in
that world, all of a sudden it's like, 'What are they, in the 90s? What is this
show? Is this "Happy Days"?' "
Earlier this season, Stone and Parker took on another
headlining topic with their episode about the writers strike, in which a
misguided Canada fights an ultimately losing battle against the rest of the
world, its main demand being "more money." The Internet made another cameo here,
as the most ridiculous YouTube stars (Star Wars Kid, the Chocolate Rain Guy, the
Sneezing Panda, etc.) were waiting in line at the Colorado Department of
Internet Money, which pays in large denominations of "theoretical dollars."
Stone on TV vs. Internet, the show's new site, and money
But at least a few parties believe online dollars are
worth something. Viacom, the plaintiff in a $1-billion copyright lawsuit against
Google's YouTube, routinely issues takedown requests whenever "South Park" (or
any of its other shows) appears on the site. A Viacom representative said the
company could not comment, given the legal dispute, which means the irony was
lost on this multinational media conglomerate.
In the above-mentioned strike episode, the boys make
an outlandishly obscene "YouToob" video, hoping to cash in on some of those
Internet ducats. Their video is a hit on "YouToob" -- and it got posted all over
the real YouTube too. With so many would-be auteurs constantly battling just to
get their work noticed online, there was something surreal and incongruous about
watching Viacom methodically remove dozens of copies of a hit viral video its
own show had generated as a joke.
When I asked about those takedowns, Stone admitted to
being "a little schizophrenic" about it. "Trey and I have never had a problem.
It's never hurt us," he said, but he added that "from Comedy Central and
Viacom's point of view, I understand how they want to try to make some
money."
Well, is there online money or isn't there? I asked
the guy who runs AllSP.com, a Malaysia-based "South Park" fan site on which
copyright-indifferent viewers can watch any episode they want. The site's owner,
a 25-year-old Web developer who would only offer his first name, Max, said over
instant message that his site did get "a lot of traffic and there is a lot of
potential for advertising revenue." And did he make a living off that revenue?
"It's enough to get by," he said.
Stone on how the real world influences the South Park world
*The new episodes are posted online for one week after the episodes air, but then removed until 30 days after the air date.
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According to Los Angeles Police Department Public Information director Mary Grady, the 
