What do the South Park heroes think about advertising in the news media?



    The other day, a new episode of the popular animated series "South Park" was released, in which its creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone raise, or more simply, ridicule, the issue of advertising on the Internet. The new series is called Sponsored Content.

    Last week on Wednesday, the world saw a new episode of the satirical American television series South Park, dedicated to online advertising, the battle of users who want to get rid of it, and online publications. The creators of the cartoon, through familiar characters, share their opinions on how much advertising has infected the Internet, becoming smarter and disguised as news material. According to Contently research, most of the users are having difficulty trying to distinguish between regular news content and sponsored content.

    The episode begins with the fact that the disabled boy Jimmy, who writes for the school newspaper, refuses to give it to the school principal for editing and takes it to the homes of residents, whom the newspaper begins to impress primarily because of the lack of advertising in it. Thus, Jimmy and his newspaper are rapidly gaining popularity. Noticing this, advertisers line up for him in order to place their custom content on the pages of the Jimmy newspaper. The creators of the series decided to leave the open finale without talking about whether the boy would agree to attractive offers from advertisers.

    The characters in this episode also say that they often cannot distinguish advertising from ordinary content, and that based on information about their habits and addictions, they’re slipping exactly the kind of advertisement that might interest them. As a result, reading the news can be compared with the road through the impassable jungle of a wide variety of information and banal garbage, and the user experience very soon comes down to stupid viewing of advertising banners.

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