The anti-climate change, pro-Walmart, pro-Starbucks whatever-era was annoying as fuck. Like you said, it's not directly South Park but their annoying fans taking their shit too seriously.

Internet threads talking about climate change had some "man bear big" bullshit going around.

The thing is that I watched South Park during that time too and I loved a lot of the episodes. I just didn't take their commentary too seriously. I'm just like, "well they're obviously wrong". I was a Richard Dawkins fan and had no problem with them skewering him at the time either.

Like their central ethos was “caring about people is for losers”.

Worse even, IMO, their strategy of "attack every position so we can't be seen as biased" meant their effective ethos was "caring is for losers"

What people take away for themselves is a function of their already-existing bias. I watched south park during a formative period of my life and the lesson I took away is that everything can be laughed at, and how ridiculous some of the things we take for granted are.

Yeah there's definitely some of that. I don't know if they made these people or these people flocked to SP because they see some of themselves in it. I guess people who don't have established belief systems can be influenced that way. I've always viewed it from a leftist lens and perhaps I see what I want to see and miss what I don't. They're often ambiguous enough to let me do that. I can totally see how that could and perhaps does work differently for others.