‘South Park’ Season Premiere Messed With Viewers’ Amazon Alexas, Google Homes
South Park returned for its 21st season Wednesday, and with it came the requisite analysis and discussions about whether or not it hit the mark in lampooning today’s sociopolitical climate.
Wednesday night, however, many viewers also experienced a different kind of chaos when the show’s storyline about personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home triggered their real-life devices in some very interesting ways.
The episode, “White People Renovating Houses,” largely tackled the white nationalist movement, with a sub-plot revolving around the rise of digital personal assistants in the home. (Cartman naturally delights in programming the devices to hurl insults at each other).
Whenever he or any of the other characters on the show commanded Alexa to perform one task or another, however, viewers’ devices would similarly be activated, resulting in bizarre grocery lists (“titty chips” and “big hairy balls”) and alarms reset for odd times of day.
Frustrated viewers took to Twitter to share their experiences, with many declaring that they unplugged their devices rather than deal with the confusion.
Also during the episode, a human replacement for Carmen’s Alexa device, Jim Bob, is instructed to play Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble,” which he dutifully does – with an acoustic guitar and a country twang.
Watch below: From singing poops to Scientologists – looking back on ‘South Park‘s’ most memorable (and memorably offensive) jokes.