regardless of the fact that i used to enjoy and laugh at edgy tv shows like tosh.o and “adult animation” type shows like family guy and south park, i now absolutely loathe them because i associate them so strongly with my abusive father who adored shows like that, and would play them around us all the time -even when the youngest of us was still in elementary school. he would make fun of me the way family guy characters made fun of Meg (one time that comes to mind is when he told me i should consider throwing up more so i would be prettier. he was “joking” of course.) and once me and my sister began to argue with him about trans stuff and/or come out and experiment with gender expression, he would play that goddamn episode of south park where they compare being trans to wanting be a dolphin over and over. he would laugh hysterically loud at trans/homophobic jokes and make fun of us if we told him it bothered us, or if we left the room because of it. when i started wearing lipstick he would quote jokes from tosh.o and say i looked like a whore. he would make fun of us for stimming and call us “autistic” as an insult and call us weak and “brainwashed” for taking the medications prescribed to us by doctors to treat bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety, treating those shows’ episodes that portrayed psych meds as a scam for weak willed people the same way.
he’s the type who considers himself a particularly smart guy, thinks he’s immune to advertising and propaganda. so naturally, he regurgitates south park’s dumbass radical centrist talking points, and all of these shows’ “everyone who gets upset is just a triggered loser” attitudes, at us when we tried to stand up for ourselves.
none of these shows “made” my father act like that, but they gave him cultural permission to be a bombastic, narcissistic tool. they made him feel like the world was on his side. they made us feel like the world was on his side. these shows foster a fanbase that believe they have the right to cause any kind of hurt, even real psychological damage, to those around them that they want, provided they can claim it’s all a big joke. they give their fans an eternal justification to dismiss any and all criticism: people are just too damn sensitive. assuming this post gets any attention at all, there’s gonna be people in the notes telling me i’m “triggered by cartoons” and adding fuckin’ south park gifs in childish, inept attempts to upset and mock me for having the audacity to be honest about how something that should be harmless, was not. (and incidentally, not a single one of these ‘jokes’ will actually be funny to anyone with a sense of humor that goes beyond “”ironic”” sadism.)
i dont care if you personally like these shows; sometimes, i can still enjoy watching them myself. just don’t tell me it’s more important that adult, affluent creators of content like that getting to never be criticized for what they put into the world, is more important than the tangible, negative effect it has on people.
there’s no way this only happened in our family.
