YMMV / South Park S12 E4 "Canada On Strike"

• Memetic Mutation:
  • The entire "I'm not your buddy, friend!" back-and-forth.
  • Cartman's "We are NOT resorting to that!" has been getting a lot of use.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • This episode was made back when hardly, if any, content creators were able to monetize on making viral videos as YouTube was still a novelty at the time. Nowadays, many content creators receive income from making their own videos and upload them to YouTube, and the show's official account has since released clips on the site.
  • The depiction of YouTube relying on viral videos that have long since faded from the public eye, such as Tron Guy, Afro Ninja, and Star Wars Kid. YouTube has since shifted away from the "viral videos", with most popular content currently coming from creators like Let's Players and vloggers who specifically make a living off of YouTube - the exact kind of career that contradicts the message of the episode. In addition to YouTube, other platforms such as Patreon and Twitch have come along that add additional sources of revenue for Internet content creators. This shift in viral priority is explored in some of South Park's later seasons.
  • Several internet celebrities parodied in the episode were viral at the time of the original airing back in early 2008, which include the Numa Numa guy (Gary Brolsma), Star Wars Kid, the sneezing panda, Tay Zonday, Laughing Baby, Dramatic Chipmunk, Chris Crocker (who made "Leave Britney alone!" video) and the Tron Guy.
  • Kyle is seen using his flip phone, which at the time of the episode's original airing was still commonly used. A few years later, flip phones have fallen out of relevancy and smartphones have significantly eclipsed the popularity of the older phones. Future episodes would show many characters, including the Boys, own smartphones.
  • The episode's stance on the 2007-08 WGA strike, that the Internet was too immature of a platform to reliably make money off of, while somewhat true in 2007-08, has become completely antiquated in the years since. In The New '10s and onward, the idea that "There's no money in Internet videos" is patently absurd, not only in the realm of the aforementioned content creators, but also in traditional media due to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu becoming major, if not the the primary sources of viewership and revenue for home media consumption of both new and existing films and shows. Major studios are now looking to get in on the action/cut out the middle man by launching their own services, such as Disney Plus. In fact, the rise of streaming and its effect on writers' compensation would be directly responsible for the WGA going on strike again in 2023, before that later ended in September of that year.

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