South Park Triggered a Whole Bunch of Alexas on Last Night's Episode

Ready to feel old? South Park has been offending everyone on the left, right and center for over 20 years at this point. From their little outpost in that snowy mountain town in Colorado, the characters of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's critically-acclaimed cartoon series have let few social trends go un-shat upon--literally, they love poop on that show. However, last season, the writers were caught off guard by the election of President Donald Trump, a move that found them needing to re-write their season finale day of. Not the best way to make a television show. It was, in actuality, one of the first big failures in the show's 20-year run.

The show's creators spent the coming months reflecting on the previous season and changes that they would make going forward, including saying that they were staying out of the Trump game this season. So you could excuse them for looking for a new audience, human or otherwise.

On last night's season premiere of South Park, while the main story centered on the rise of white nationalism, everybody's favorite 5th grader, Cartman, got his hands a slew of new digitial assistants, particularly the Alex-enabled Amazon Echo. However, while Alexa is great for ordering a new pair of underwear or telling you the weather, it's not great at discerning the voices on television from those at home.

During the episode, viewers complained that Cartman's repeated interaction with Alexa triggered their Alexas. Thus, throughout the night, people on Twitter were treated to a series of videos, pictures and testimonials of home assistants responding the Eric Cartman and even adding things like "Titty Chips" to their Amazon shopping list. At certain point, Cartman's commands to Alexa included other activation triggers for Siri-enabled devices and Google Homes. Sounds like a nightmare.

My Alexa put titty chips on my shopping list and said some pretty colorful things. Haven't laughed that hard on a while. #tittychips pic.twitter.com/IumPMXZK0I

— Tom Corson (@DynastyInfidel) September 14, 2017

Who else’s Alexa’s keep going off every time Cartman says something on the Alexa during this South Park episode 😂 #SouthPark21 pic.twitter.com/strwnTST23

— Kenny Eaton (@Kenny_623) September 14, 2017

Watching the new @SouthPark episode & my Alexa went off 😂😂😂 #SouthPark21 pic.twitter.com/0ehBuAxVpp

— Jessica Plunkett (@Jesserican) September 14, 2017

This isn't first time people speaking talking to Alexa on television affected those at home. Way back in December 2015, Vice reported that Echoes at home were responding to commercials for the product, specifically ones that say, "Alexa play my holiday playlist."

Commercial for @AmazonEcho just activated our own Echo. pic.twitter.com/F2w4U1lUJi

— David Masad (@badnetworker) December 4, 2015

Apparently Amazon's customer service is also annoyed that their Echos play Christmas music at request of commercial pic.twitter.com/dyGIUmIM7G

— Danielle Alberti (@DanielleAlberti) December 4, 2015

Does this mark a new era in the show, in which the writers will attempt to engage the digital assistants that so many have ignored. Are Alexas aged 18-34 the prime South Park demographic? What are Titty Chips? We'll just have to watch this season and find out.