South Park has AI data centers, sentient penises and a billionaire problem – in more ways than one | South Park

A little over a year ago, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone renewed their deal with Paramount after a contentious negotiation that delayed production of the 2025 season.

That $1.5 billion deal raised questions about whether Paramount, newly owned by David Ellison, would actually offer creators creative freedom — or whether the billionaire class was consolidating its grip on one comedy series as a cover to interfere in other divisions, like CBS News?

The deal also made Parker and Stone likely billionaires themselves. Between this renewal and their co-ownership of the South Park intellectual property, they each have an estimated net worth of over $1 billion.

The second episode of the series’ 29th season examines life on both sides of the billionaire/ordinary person divide. On the one hand, Parker and Stone pull no punches with their benefactors, portraying billionaires as tiny sentient penises with high-pitched voices, addicted to sharing their stupid opinions on podcasts and social media in their miniature town called Billionaire Weenietown.

On the other hand, Parker and Stone don’t really take pictures from outside Weenietown. Although they were certainly famous before becoming billionaires, they were still outside of that world. Being a billionaire is a very different outsider status, even if Elon Musk is dumber than you. Keep this in mind when Parker and Stone ignore the existence of billionaires like it’s no big deal.

However, you can’t accuse them of not expressing anti-billionaire sentiment. This episode begins with Butters using a school presentation on “My Happy Place” as an opportunity to denounce the data center that has popped up in his backyard, sapping the electricity and interrupting his true happy place: calmly watching Dr. Pimple Popper videos online. Butters doesn’t just use “my backyard” rhetoric to refer to the events of South Park, er, South America. The Weenietown billionaire literally popped up in his backyard, and his parents aren’t worried at all. Instead, they blindly use billionaire-backed AI to redesign their home and worry that Butters has been made “libtarian” by the measles vaccination he received as a child. “No one is upset except me!” Butters roared; relevant, honestly.

The other South Park kids are largely absent from this tour, and even Butters pops in and out of his own episode. Many scenes are devoted to the billionaires themselves – rendered with gruesome puppetry and live-action animation, a nice (well, kind of repellent) callback to Parker and Stone’s penchant for crude mixed media (in both senses of the word).

The problem, the Weenies frontman insists, is not the preponderance of billionaires, who have supposedly been around for ages. (Technically true, although misleading; the billionaire class is growing, and for much of the last century there were only a dozen, compared to thousands today.) The real problem is that billionaires have ignored the tried-and-true strategy of lying low and keeping quiet while amassing wealth. Parker and Stone focus on the uniquely 21st-century compulsion on the rich and powerful, aided by the Internet, to see themselves as deep and impossibly cool thinkers.

As such, the leader needs to review the guidelines: flying private jets everywhere, buying huge yachts for drug use, and spending big money on sex workers are all allowed. Going on Joe Rogan’s podcast to talk about peptides is prohibited, however, as is using social media to fuel Covid conspiracies or pick fights with Mark Ruffalo and Macklemore. But some billionaires simply refuse to listen, even though they are reminded over and over again how they are not constitutionally equipped to be cool.

The episode’s philosophy ultimately comes back to a cherished South Park principle, tellingly repeated by a billionaire in this episode: “All you have to do is learn to shut up.” » Isn’t that more or less Parker and Stone’s advice to everyone on everything?

Indeed, that’s more or less what Butters learns to do at the end of the episode. Yes, he makes a deal to attract the billionaire infestation by turning off a podcast mic and asking for opinions (great gag), sucking up a number of them and transporting them to Nashville, hoping they upset another city instead. But his newfound sense of calm at the end of the episode, bolstered by the newfound ability to watch his show on YouTube, feels a bit like another Parker/Stone lesson about how ultimately getting upset about anything is stupid and pointless. Why does Butters repent of getting angry about this stuff when it helped him get results, even if half-assed?

Still, it’s hard to fault Parker and Stone for their cynicism when delivering solid gags. Once again, adults want to wait until November because “that’s when Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out,” but are pushed into action because data center power consumption threatens their ability to play it. They continually attack podcasters, who obviously annoy them more than data centers or AI. Butters’ father, for example, spends the entire episode on a tangent about how his wife refused to heed absurd vaccine warnings: “You never listen to a single podcast, I say!” he shouts.

As for AI, well, apparently the South Park guys feel like it has its uses, resources be damned. The episode ends with an AI-generated image of Donald Trump trudging into a bathroom, pulling down his half-dirty pants, then watching his own billionaire penis detach from his body and fly away. It’s a wonderfully crude and malicious postscript – as long as you remember that these are two funnier, smarter billionaires taking shots at a guy who is, in a sense, one of them.