Everyone in South Park is hopping on the Facebook train and becoming completely consumed by it. The episode mainly focuses on Stan Marsh's resistance to being "sucked into Facebook" but after his friends create him a page, he has not a chance to avoid it. Everyone in his family, school, and town is pressuring him to respond via Facebook.
Unable to live his life, he has had enough of this annoyance and his solution to end it all is by deleting his profile. While the deleting process takes place, the computer screen deletes him from existence to where he is only alive in a virtual world, literally "sucked into Facebook."
The libertarian creators of South Park never cease to amaze me on how well they grasp and exaggerate any political or social issue. The symbolism of being deleted from the world by deleting your Facebook raised a few questions and thoughts.
In class we have discussed the concept of "real-time" updates from everything to Twitter to Facebook and how this can benefit PR practitioners for getting facts straight. But what if you did delete your Facebook and Twitter and you were non-existent virtually? It is difficult to imagine what it was like before Facebook, Myspace and even Instant Messaging.
I once deactivated my profile for a brief period and simply could not handle it. I felt so out of the loop and disconnected from my friends whom I do not see every day. But people become so obsessed and watch others' every move on Facebook it gets quite annoying honestly. I almost wonder if this causes some unnecessary anxiety for some. Everyone says, "if it's not on Facebook, it's not official." This idea can be true or not true from relationships to events being held.
In the episode Stan is challenged by his Facebook profile to a virtual game of Yhatzee. The point was to see who was more powerful, the user or the profile. So who is more powerful? It is like the chicken and the egg, without Facebook you are no one, and Facebook is nothing without users.
Below is the link to the full episode of South Park "You Have 0 Friends"
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