this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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South Park
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The premise that the internet wasn't as vast or that information wasn't as available in 2005 is just completely wrong in its concept.
The stuff in the episode was pretty readily available information at that time.
Correct. Google was founded in 1998-ish and I remember using it by 2001.
There were also several famous ex-Scientologists by then who’d written books
Someone I know ran a FTP server full of MP3s in 99. Information on the internet was not an issue as early as 94.
Sure, search engines like Yahoo and Google were not born until a little after that, but BBS/URL/IIRC were easily accessible and HTML was already growing sophisticated by 95.
Hell I knew about South Park because of the internet in 1997 and “The Spirit of Christmas”
My family was a modest low-middle class and we had a computer with internet access in 97, 98. By 2005 Matt and Trey had probably been using the internet for research for a while.
2005 was when the scientology documents were posted on WikiLeaks, so this information was just available on the internet.
I remember telling my friend about Scientology in 2008/09 and it blew her mind how a cult like that existed with celebrities
I was quoting from websites so it was readily available online via google, so that was like 3/4 years after the South Park episode, it was already a known cult because of the celebrities involved in it.
Remember in the '00s people OBSESSED over celebrities, where TMZ hounded and stalked anyone famous doing anything. Different time, but having celebrities believing a weird cult, where they pay loads of money to, yeah that was in the gossip mags. John Travolta, the 'kids' in That 70 Show (Matherson) were spoken of in gossip magazines as Scientologists and on gossip websites. I knew of it as a kid in Ireland, and That 70 show aired from 1998-2006 so it was already publicly spoken of before 2005 if I knew of it when watching the show as a kid.
100%. I actually feel like the internet was more useable back then - before every search engine and website would give you actual information you wanted and not just trying to sell you shit.
I wonder how old OP is considering that take of theirs. I almost posted the same thing you did. The internet was in its golden era then, IMO.
Exactly. Forums and blogs especially were a big thing at that time.