South Park excoriates NFTs as investments in latest vision of post-COVID future

Apparently, it only took a pandemic for the writers behind the animated TV series South Park to offer their take on nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies… and it’s not a positive outlook.

In its “Post COVID: The Return of COVID” special that aired Thursday, South Park depicted one of the show’s protagonists, Leopold "Butters" Stotch, also known as Victor Chaos, locked away in an insane asylum for years after it’s discovered he has a certain power to wreak havoc on the world.

That power? Gathering investors to put all their money into NFTs. When he manages to get out of his cell, the result is comical violence, comparisons to drug use, and the possible downfall of society:

“He escaped once before. In just a few hours he managed to get thousands of people to invest in NFTs, just like he almost did you [...] another 30 seconds in that room and you would have started considering NFTs as a viable investment.”

NFTs in south park pic.twitter.com/LnEkVvcYjA

— edgar.eth (@EdgarAronov) December 16, 2021

Though referencing aspects of the crypto space in mainstream media has become somewhat common, South Park — which often tackles topical issues with a comedic twist — seems to have avoided mentioning token projects with seemingly absurd names for the last ten years. Bitcoin (BTC) only made its first appearance in 2008, and though everyone in South Park’s fictional future of the 2060s still used the cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange, they also described it as a “fly-by-night Ponzi scheme.”

Related: Imprisoned Silk Road founder causes a stir with NFT drop

South Park’s vision of a world roughly 40 years from now implies the frenzy around NFT drops is unlikely to subside for many investors. This week, Wikipedia entered the space for the first time, selling a tokenized version of the first message posted to its website in 2001 for $750,000. However, some NFTs have been auctioned off for millions of dollars and traded for valuable real-world items, including cars.