For me it’s Dragon Ball Z, that was a pretty fucked up show tbh.
Like holy shit, all the characters are terrible people except maybe Gohan and Trunks.
For me it’s Dragon Ball Z, that was a pretty fucked up show tbh.
Like holy shit, all the characters are terrible people except maybe Gohan and Trunks.
The Harley f-slur episode did it for me. A couple years prior, my closest friends all got together and agreed to stop using the f-slur. We had no out queer friends (god it took me so long to admit dicks are good actually), and we were just “this is dumb to just use constantly”. The word was so ingrained in our lexicon and a bunch of idiot 13 year olds decide amongst themselves that enough was enough. Then like 2 years later that episode came out. Was a quick “well this is dog shit” realization.
They embrace it. There was an ep where Stan starts drinking to accept things. It’s literally “caring will make you unfunny, lonely, and lame”.
Every time I hear someone claim that entertainment has no effect on people’s attitudes, beliefs, or behavior, I can glance back in time at the cultural ripples that occured each time South Park programmed its consumers to do something like, say, dismiss climate change entirely as a concept by getting credulous smug “nonpoliticals” to say “MANBEARPIG LOL” to terminate further thought.
Or that time they popularized redhead hate in the US
I didn’t even know redhead hate was a thing or have to hear about it until that episode aired and then it was everywhere around me “as a joke” for a while.