Matt Damon is still being roasted for his “Fortune Favors the Brave” crypto ad.
The latest South Park movie on Paramount Plus, “The Streaming Wars,” plays like a prolonged crypto roast, targeting celebrities who made fools of themselves hyping up cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
Crypto-mining and NFT-minting are incredibly energy intensive, belching out carbon emissions for the sake of enriching a handful of investors; South Park connects the dots, telling a story of an environmental crisis exacerbated by greedy con-artists.
The movie shows South Park suffering through a crippling drought, which is making the town’s inhabitants even more unhinged; hence, a waterpark-owning entrepreneur has a plan to replace the town’s water supply with urine – what could go wrong?
Beloved celebrities are soon enlisted to push the propaganda campaign, and convince the townsfolk that urine is just as good as clean water. Of course, it’s directly referencing the ridiculous crypto advertisements that so many celebrities associated themselves with – Matt Damon’s infamous “Fortune Favors the Brave” Superbowl ad provides the punchline, the mantra celebrities chant to themselves before taking a sip of urine for the camera.
Damon’s painfully self-serious ad, which frames the act of buying crypto as an adrenaline-fueled adventure, has never been forgotten by the writers of South Park, who have mocked and referenced the ad several times.
But it’s not just Damon who South Park subjects to urine-infused humiliation – the movie also skewers Gwyneth Paltrow, Larry David, Naomi Osaka, and Tom Brady, who have all voiced their support for crypto. Resse Witherspoon also makes an appearance, as she has become famous for her bizarre tweets, which weaponize inclusive language to push crypto and NFTs on her fans.
While South Park had plenty of crypto-enthusiasts to choose from, they missed two important celebrities, Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon, who tried to promote their Bored Ape NFTs to a baffled audience, who weren’t quite sure whether to laugh or obey the applause sign.
However, South Park has already dedicated quite a lot of time to mocking NFTs, depicting adult Butters as a delusional NFT promoter, who is considered so unhinged by the town that he is locked away, after convincing hundreds of innocent people into investing into a worthless asset, and falling into poverty.
These days, most of the celebrities who agreed to promote crypto and NFTs have backed down, as the subsequent crypto crash really emphasized how absurd the “Fortune Favors the Brave” slogan was.
Doubtless, all of those thoughtless celebrities were paid with real dollars to promote cryptocurrency – perhaps next time they’ll think twice about pushing a glorified pyramid scheme onto the public.
Thankfully for us, South Park never forgot; Matt Damon is never going to live it down.
