You Have 0 Friends

"You Have 0 Friends"

"You Have 0 Friends" is the fourth episode of the fourteenth season of the animated television series South Park, and the 199th episode of the series overall. It aired on Comedy Central in the United States on April 7, 2010. In the episode, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny make Stan a Facebook profile against his will and he becomes embroiled and frustrated with everyone asking him for friend requests. After he gets fed up with Facebook, Stan tries to delete his profile but is sucked into a virtual Facebook world. Meanwhile, Kyle starts trying to find ways to get more friends on Facebook after he drastically starts losing them due to his befriending of a third-grade friendless Facebook user, who everyone thinks is a loser.

The episode was written and directed by co-creator Trey Parker and was rated TV-MA L. "You Have 0 Friends" features several references to Facebook, while Stan's plotline parodies the 1982 Disney movie Tron with Stan in the role of Kevin Flynn. The episode also parodies the CNBC series Mad Money and Chatroulette.

"You Have 0 Friends" has received positive reviews from critics with some thinking the parody of Facebook while late, was hilarious and spot on. According to Nielsen Media Research, the episode was viewed by by 3.071 million viewers and became the cable lead in the 18-49 Wednesday night.

Plot

Kyle, Cartman and Kenny surprise Stan by creating a Facebook account for him. Stan protests, saying he does not want to get "sucked into" Facebook. Cartman warns Stan that if he does not add any friends to his Facebook profile, he will end up like fellow student Kip, a Facebook member who has had his account for six months and has no Facebook friends. Kyle starts to pity Kip and adds him as a friend, much to the joy of Kip. Kip is shown to be shy and nerdy, and tells his parents about his new "friend". They are happy for him and allow him to spend time with Kyle, which for Kip means taking his computer to the movies and spending time on Kyle's FarmVille farm. His parents are unaware that he is only chatting online, and think Kyle literally lives on a farm.

Stan reluctantly begins using his account after his father's repeated requests to add him as a friend. Meanwhile, Kyle notices that his number of friends on Facebook is drastically decreasing. Cartman begins hosting his own Facebook friend advice podcast entitled Mad Friends, where he claims that others are removing Kyle as a friend because he added Kip as a friend. Stan soon discovers that maintaining his account and engaging in typical Facebook activities, such as making sure his Relationship status is In a relationship when his girlfriend accuses him of trying to get more girls, are sources of continued annoyances. Eventually having 845,000 friends on his profile, Stan attempts to delete his account. Facebook will not allow him, and Stan is literally sucked into a virtual Facebook world through his webcam. He is brought to a "gaming arena" and is forced to play Yahtzee with another player. Stan wins immediately, and his opponent disappears from the digital world. Stan escapes and retreats to Kyle's FarmVille farm.

Meanwhile, Kyle, becoming ever more distraught at his dwindling number of friends, turns to Cartman for advise on how to make more friends. Cartman introduces Kyle to Chat Roulette, where they encounter a host of men masturbating on the web camera. Eventually, they meet a young Jewish boy who adds Kyle, only to delete him when he finds out Kyle has Kip as a friend.

Seeing Stan on his computer screen, Kyle tells him that, according to Stan's profile page, he is hosting an online chat party at Café World. Stan encounters the virtual representation of his profile there, and is once again forced to play Yahtzee. Again, Stan wins quickly, and his defeated profile disappears. Stan is then returned to the physical world, where he informs his father that his profile had gone "rogue", and that after defeating it in battle, Stan was able to send his Facebook friends elsewhere. In an effort to keep his Facebook friends from deserting him, Kyle deletes Kip as a friend. Kip sees this on his account and is devastated, until he sees that he has inherited Stan's 845,323 friends.

Cultural references

Mad Money (whose set is shown) was parodied in the episode as Mad Friends.

The episode prominently features several aspects of the online website Facebook, including the Facebook games FarmVille, Café World and a digital version of the Milton Bradley game Yahtzee. Also, many aspects of the virtual Facebook world Stan gets sucked into in the episode parody the film Tron. The episode also features the website ChatRoulette, as well as the fact that many men use their webcams to show their genitalia. Cartman's podcast, Mad Friends, is a parody of a segment from the financial show Mad Money on CNBC. The restaurant Casa Bonita, previously referenced in the episode "Casa Bonita", is mentioned by Cartman in his podcast. Kenny connects to the internet with a computer provided through the One Laptop per Child program. On both Stan's and Kyle's Facebook page you can see that their birthdays are October 19 and May 26, they both correspond with Trey and Matt's real birthday respectively (the birth year on Stan's page is given as 2001, and the birth year on Kyle's page is given as 2003, which is a two year age gap, the equivalent of Parker and Stone's age difference. This despite the fact that the show began in 1997). When Stan attempts to delete his profile, it responds, "I'm afraid I can't let you do that Stan Marsh," which was a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Stan's computer also uses a line similar to that of one in Tron, when his computer tells him that he's gonna have to put him in the "game grid".

Reception

In its original American broadcast, "You Have 0 Friends" was watched by 3.071 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research making it the second most viewed cable show of the night after In Plain Sight and beating last week's, "Medicinal Fried Chicken". The episode also received a 18-49 rating of 1.7 and a share of 5% edging out Tyler Perry's House of Payne for the cable lead in the demographic.

The episode received generally positive reviews from critics. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly said "The half-hour was shrewdly precise in its targets: The older audience that communes on Facebook (such as parents and grandparents) as well as lonely kids; as usual, "South Park" is merciless when it smells a baby-boomer-adopted trend." Ramsey Isler of IGN gave the episode a 9/10 saying it was "[o]utstanding" and "brilliant from beginning to end, and one of the best episodes the series has served up in a while." Carlos Delgado of iF Magazine gave the episode an A- saying "You have 0 Friends has the right amount of humor, intelligence, and sarcasm to match any South Park episode. The question is, does it become an instant classic?" Cristina Everett of the New York Daily News called the episode "hilarious, yet heartwarming," adding that the Kip Drordy subplot was "endearing."

TV Fanatic gave the episode 3/5, saying there was "too much Facebook" in the episode and that "it was a great parody, but just a decent episode that could have had more LOL moments." Todd VanDerWerff of the A.V. Club was more critical of the episode, giving it a D+ saying "But, then, what turned me away from South Park a while back was that the vast majority of the episodes just sort of fall into that camp. The show, confident in its legacy as a TV legend, has mostly just started doing bland episodes that say, 'Did you ever notice this?' and then coast from there. It's like the series—which can still pull out a great episode from time to time and still remains enjoyable enough if you don't think about it too much—has abruptly turned into a hack stand-up comic or, worse, a 44-year-old suburban dad who just doesn't understand what his kids are up to but knows he doesn't like it.".

Within 24 hours of airing, Kip Drordy had over 10 fake Facebook profiles made. The earliest known profile, mistakenly using the name Kip Jordy (instead of Drordy), had postings as early as 10:14 P.M., 14 minutes after the show had begun airing. [1] the largest of which has over 150,000 fans, although appropriately no friends.

External links

• Episode guide at Southparkstudios.com
• Episode guide at Southparkstudios.co.uk