Leave it to South Park to teach me another great life lesson amid an existential crisis. I’ve been missing my father and feeling a sense of ennui during the Pandemic. I’ve used the authorship of my book as a therapy to work out a lot of the lessons I learned in life. The first draft of Herd Immunity was centered around “100 Life Lessons I Learned in 35 Years.” When I was younger I was a downer. I chalked this up to my intelligence and a sense of cynicism and derision I experienced from being the “smartest person in the room.” I discuss the problems with this mindset in Chapter 20 of Herd Immunity: Mental Firmware. It’s no surprise to me that I lost a lot of friends, girlfriends, and acquaintances in my 20s and early 30s. It’s hard to be around someone who sees everything that you enjoy as crap; even more so when they won’t shut up about it. I gained this perspective on a recent re-watch of South Park, thanks to the season fifteen episodes You’re Getting Old and Ass Burgers.
The main plot thread of these episodes is that Stan has his 10th birthday party, and he becomes cynical when he starts to see everything in the world as shit. All the food he used to like looks and tastes like shit; all the movies, television, music, and video games his friends still enjoy he sees and hears shit; and the cherry on his shit sundae is that his parents realize they grew apart and get divorced. Stan has a breakdown in class one day telling everyone to shut up. In the counselor’s office, Mr. Mackey gives a great speech regarding being cynical and jaded about everything in the world:
Mmkay, Stan, you gotta try to pull yourself outta this, mkay? I know that your parents recently got divorced, mkay. That’s gonna be hard. I know that – that’s bad. But when you walk around all mopey, mkay, and sayin’ everything is just shitty, well, that’s called being a Debbie Downer, Stan. And nobody likes a Debbie Downer, mkay? I mean, you gotta – you gotta snap out of it, Debbie. C’mon, Deb, you’re even bumming me out now, mkay? Your attitude just–just sucks.1
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Because Stan was given the flu vaccine the previous year, he’s diagnosed as having Asperger’s and is forced to attend an Asperger’s Group Therapy Center. When the group is alone, they reveal to Stan that they’re freedom fighters that resemble characters from The Matrix, here to save the world because it has turned to feces. The group relies on Stan because he can, like Neo, can see through the illusion. The Morpheus-analog leader says he has a serum to infiltrate the illusion world and hands Stan a glass of Jameson Irish Whiskey.
Unlike the Matrix group in the episode, there’s a better way to enjoy life other than being a drunk, cynical, “Debbie Downer.” You gotta learn how to laugh at the world. Don’t just hide behind a veil of drugs and alcohol like Kerouac, Kesey, Thompson, and Bukowski. Yes, they might have been great writers, but there’s a better way. Learn to laugh and find joy in the world. First, accept that as you get older, the things you used to love may not have the same impact. Second, find activities, hobbies, and people that bring you joy.
Just as Stan comes to terms with the massive changes instead of being a Debbie Downer, his parents pull up in a moving van and announce they’re getting back together and moving back to their old house. This scene pokes fun at the classic sitcom trope that everything works itself out by the end of the episode. What made the first episode of this arc so jarring was that it did not resolve itself. It ended with Stan living in an apartment with his mom, uneasy to face change. When Stan finally embraces change, the opportunity was taken away from him. The audience learns a lesson, but Stan doesn’t get an opportunity. It feels empty and unsettling.
What I love about this two-episode arc is that Stan realizes the only way that life works is by moving forward, not backward. When we get older, we can’t go back to that golden age when we were happy with an ice cream sundae, or a silly Adam Sandler movie with our friends. Those days are gone, and perhaps it’s a good thing. As Trooper says, we may as well “have a good time,” [because] “the sun can’t (and won’t) shine every day.”2
If you’re like me and you think that entertainment, music, movies, television, and food have gone to shit, stop consuming content and find enjoyment in day-to-day life. Sometimes that means schadenfreude and laughing at others’ misfortune. If your favorite television show or movie has been infected with social politics, learn to laugh at how tired and clichéd their message is. Learn to laugh when people “review-bomb” terrible entertainment and Netflix, Rotten Tomatoes, or Amazon Prime changes their review system. When a movie full of woke social politics bombs at the box office, enjoy the fact that people lost millions of dollars and you didn’t waste any of your time and money seeing it.
If your favorite band puts out an album and it’s garbage, separate the old music from the new. Just because you love a band doesn’t mean you have to celebrate their entire discography. Or find great new artists and musicians in the same genre. One of the best things about listening to the old progressive rock and metal bands is that type of music is still alive and well today. Some of the best musicians in the world today are playing this style of music. There’s a reason directors like James Gunn, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson all use music from the 1960s and 70s in their films: some music is timeless.
If all stand-up comedians in the modern era are just Joe-Rogan, Los Angeles carbon copies, replete with garbage podcasts, go back and watch old George Carlin and Richard Pryor specials, listen to the old comedy albums and appreciate the old times. Better yet, listen to Red Bar Radio and enjoy Mike and Jules laughing at modern comedians’ follies. For more information on why comedy is shit, read my article The Tao of Mikey Gouffet, or check out Redbar Radio on YouTube. Give him a year.
If the food you used to enjoy is garbage, full of artificial colors, sweeteners, and fillers, and is bad for your health, it’s time to expand your palate. This one was difficult for me because the combination of nostalgia cravings and being a picky eater is terrible. I countered this by eating the same foods and meals every day. When I get sick of one food, I move on to the next. Cutting sugar was one of the hardest decisions to make as an addict, but one of the easiest decisions for my waistline. It’s annoying that I can’t enjoy a pizza anymore, but with the way people make pizza nowadays, am I missing out?
This is the biggest one that will separate you from the herd: Learn to laugh at the people who are paralyzed by fear and enslaved by dogma. Laugh at the people who get butt-hurt at a social media post and waste their entire day arguing with people that they don’t know online. Laugh at the people who refuse to take responsibility for their life, constantly playing the victim, and then wonder why their life never gets better. Laugh at the people who embrace a foolish consistency, doing the same nonsense things every day, and still don’t achieve their goals and dreams. Laugh because you’re not them; laugh because your life will be better than it is now and they’ll still be in the same place, or worse off than they are now.
What can feel like an existential crisis to someone is just signaling the death of one phase of your life. At some point, we have to grow up, learn life lessons, and accept that we aren’t the same person we were a decade ago. Traumatic experiences, such as a divorce or the death of a loved one change us forever. The ability to handle those changes, and the ability to be able to find joy, solace, or humor in an ever-changing landscape, will put you worlds ahead of people who are mired in the past or their inability to cope with change.
If the world is made of shit, why be miserable about it? Why not try to have fun? Let everyone else argue about politics on social media. You can be the wise guy pitting people against each other (which ties into trolling; another great lesson I learned from South Park). We’re here for a good time, not a long time. Rather than being a cynical Debbie Downer, go have a good time and raise a little hell, because one day it’ll all be over.
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1 South Park. 2011. Episode 1508. “Ass Burgers.” Directed by Trey Parker. Written by Trey Parker. Aired October 5, 2011, on Comedy Central. Comedy Central. Blu-Ray, disc 2.
2 Trooper. 1977. “We’re Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time).” Track 5 on Knock ‘Em Dead, Kid. MCA. Spotify streaming audio, 320 kbps.