User Reviews

You have 0 friends is the best episode of South Park season 14 so far in my opinion,its about Kyle,Cartman and Kenny getting obsessed with facebook except Stan has no interest in it but the three boys set up a facebook page for him but Stan doesn't try to get sucked into it but then a lot of people start making him confirm them as a facebook friend and Stan ends up with almost a million friends on facebook so then Stan tries to delete his page but it ends up with disastrous results,meanwhile Kyle finds out that their is a kid in his school without a facebook friend and Kyle feels sorry for him so he makes him his friend but then everyone starts deleting Kyle as a friend because they think that hes really his friend but Kyle feels too sorry for the guy to delete him as a friend.

"You Have 0 Friends" is as you may have guessed, a Facebook-themed episode from South Park. It is the 4th episode from season 14 and definitely among my very favorite episodes. Not just from that season, but from the entire series, which means something with the gigantic quantity of episodes out there. I am neither overstating nor exaggerating. I honestly cannot say for sure how big Facebook was over a decade ago already when this episode came out. I think really big already, so not sure if the episode came a bit late maybe. But then again, I think, if I remember correctly, that The Social Network came out approximately the same time, so it feels pretty accurate. I must admit that sometimes I struggle with keeping apart Kyle and Stan, but in these 22 minutes here, they really could not be any more different. One is totally into Facebook, the other just wants to be left alone with this social media nonsense. I am definitely sympathizing with the latter. The latter's struggles are also fun to watch. No matter if we are talking about his father trying to be a friend, if we are talking about said father being angry at him because he disrespected his grandmother online, if we are talking about his girlfriend being jealous because of his relationship status or if we are talking about random strangers being mad at him because he did not accept their friend request, comment their photo etc. Very funny stuff. A bit on the emotional side we have the story of the lonesome friendless boy. A guest in this episode you can say. Look at his poster, his apartment, his cinema visit etc. I guess he must have paid for and invited his new friend there. The music was also very fitting with this character. But hey, he gets a gigantic amount of friends in the end and a happy ending this way. Or is it really a happy ending? Up to you to decide. Of course, friends in the actual world are what he should be going for instead.

With the first ten minutes and all the spoofing of Facebook, I probably would have given a 10/10 rating even, but it got minimally worse afterwards. The kid's journey into the cyber world induced by his laptop firing a laser from the webcam (that looked cool admittedly! )did not do too much for me basically, except maybe that it was entertaining how weird people were talking there, but this is exactly how people talk on Facebook. Not a Kenny episode. Oh and Cartman was also a non-factor this episode. In terms of his emm.. stock exchange report thingey at least. As a huge Cartman fan, I only saw one good moment, namely when he makes a statement on what you have to go through first before making awesome friends. That was funny and even if I watched the German dub I understood the parallel immediately. Let's just not go into further detail there, but just say that Chatroulette did not exactly get the most harmless praise here. This joke also did not get old too quickly like maybe the inclusion of the online farm. Also maybe somebody losing friends because he is friends with someone else was a bit exaggerated here, even if I am definitely not a Facebook expert. Or supporter. But you cannnot really blame the kid for giving in to the pressure and eventually unfriending the miserable boy. That's what they do at this age. By the way, we see that one of the boys was born briefly after the September 11 attack and actually at that point South Park had been on TV already for several years. All in all, this was an incredibly enjoyable episode that also had solid depth though one can say and may have you think about a few things if you are really into social networking, no matter if it is on Facebook or other places. I give this episode a dedicated thumbs-up and I kinda doubt there is another 2010 animated episode I like more than this one here. Even if I take live action episodes into account as well, it has to be among my very favorites. Highly, highly recommended and this one being so deep into the series makes it obvious how much talent Parker and Stone have as they still come/came up with high-quality stuff like this after all these years. Do not miss out! It's also actually a good choice for a watch if you know nothing about South Park and have never seen an episode before.

Even though the episode was amusing, and exaggerated, it still shows some facts about social media and society. At the beginning of the episode, Cartman was showing of to Kyle that he has more friends than him. I believe that some people, especially younger, pay a lot of attention to the amount of friends they have on social media, and they compare themselves to others. Thereafter, the kid named Kip Drordy is introduced as a guy that has zero friends on Facebook. He is viewed as an outsider and an outcast. Once again, it relates to the pressure of having more friends in social media. The more friends they have online, the more popular they are, the better reputation they have among their colleagues. A pressure of being liked and popular is very high, especially for school age kids, as they are often lacking confidence, and are still learning about interpersonal relationships. Another conflict that appears in this episode is that Stan was being pressured by his dad to accept his friend's invitation. Randy made him feel guilty, as if he was a terrible son that hates his father. Similar situations happened few more times in the episode. Even some random people on the street wanted to be Stan's Facebook friends, and expected him to reply to their posts. This put a lot of pressure on Stan. I think many people can relate to it in a way. There was even a situation when Stan was having arguments with his girlfriend, Wendy, about social media, which put their relationship on the line. These kind of things happen in real life too. According to Divorce-Online UK, 1/3 of divorces happen because of social media. It's interesting that Kyle lost all of his Facebook friends, after adding Kip Drordy to his friends list. This made him feel devastated, because he was worried about his farm shrinking. Although, it's funny, it also shows a real problem of social media addiction. It also shows that people prefer to be friends with someone cool and popular. I like that they included the fact that you can't fully delete your Facebook account. You can only deactivate it, but if you accidentally log in to your account (during 3 or 6 months, I think), your Facebook page will be activated again.