South Park changes name for one season, trolls Google and Apple
The makers of the bitterly evil animated series South Park are renaming their show for the new season in South America. In doing so, they react satirically to current geographical renaming by the US government and criticize the behavior of large tech companies.
New name for animated series
The creators of the US animated series South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have announced an official name change for the 29th season, which starts on September 16th. The adventures of Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny will be broadcast under the title South America in the future. This is a direct satirical response to geopolitical actions by the US government and the behavior of large technology companies that have implemented these changes with virtually no hesitation.
The move was triggered by new decrees from US President Donald Trump. He recently ordered traditional geographical designations such as the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the Gulf of America and Lake Ontario to be renamed Lake America. Technology companies such as Apple and Google immediately implemented these requirements in their digital map services Apple Maps and Google Maps. Parker and Stone derisively describe the companies’ actions as “courageous and patriotic.”
Inspired by the courage and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name from South Park to SOUTH AMERICA. Our special thanks go to our parent company Paramount – a Skydance surrender. Trey Parker and Matt Stone
Criticism of the company and Paramount
Like the industry magazine Variety reports, the series makers’ mockery is not exclusively directed at politics and Silicon Valley. The company’s own parent company Paramount is also coming into focus. In their statement, the creators ironically thanked their broadcaster and spoke of a capitulation of the Skydance company to the political rulers: The whole thing is a play on words in which they take the official Paramount subtitle “A Skydance Corporation” and change it to “A Skydance Capitulation”.
The background here is the recent merger of the companies Paramount and Skydance. This deal had a huge size of eight billion dollars (about seven billion euros). Ahead of the takeover, Paramount also paid $16 million (around 14 million euros) to officially settle an existing lawsuit filed by Trump. The makers are now using the new season to satirically address exactly such connections between politics and media companies.
Broadcasting and social networks
The far-reaching renaming also affects the brand’s presence on various social networks. On platforms such as X and Instagram, the profile names have already been consistently adapted to South America. For technical reasons, the original user names remain the same for the time being. The entire visual appearance of the accounts has been overhauled to bring the new title in the series into focus.
The new episodes will initially be shown in the USA on Comedy Central. One day after the linear broadcast, the episodes will be available on demand on the Paramount+ streaming service. The international publication will take place promptly in many other countries via similar digital channels.
Amit Gohar is Technical writer at ResearchSnipers.com, he is well versed Technology News writer, he has completed is MS computer Science in 2020. He can be reached at amit.g@researchsnipers.com
