Butters might be gullible and bullied constantly, but at least he’s TikTok famous now.
The character, who is a mainstay of the adult series South Park, is getting the hero edit on TikTok. Over the past few months, fans have been making catchy videos highlighting their favorite Butters moments, to the delight of many. At time of publication, his hashtag has been viewed more than 1.2 billion times, with the top videos getting as many as 4.9 million views.
The idolization of the character is accompanied by a more generalized resurgence of interest in South Park proliferating on TikTok. The animated show is a long-running, raunchy comedy created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It debuted in 1997 and is currently airing its 26th season. The series follows the antics of four school boys in a Colorado town. It’s most known for its often offensive and irreverent sense of humor, as well as its simplistic and distinctive visual style.
Butters isn’t technically a member of the official group of four main characters, but he’s a mainstay on the show and regularly plays a large role in episodes. As a character, he tends to play the role of goody two-shoes, and he has a rather docile and gullible nature. This means he’s often the target of pranks and abuse from other characters on the show, and it has endeared him to fans.
In the TikTok below, we see moments of Carter and Butters spending time together while a sped-up, pitched-up version of “Put Your Records On” by Corinne Bailey Rae plays in the background.
It’s important to note that this is South Park we’re talking about here, so some of the clips use a wide range of explicit and derogatory language, including racial slurs and sexually explicit language. (The most-liked clip on TikTok contains such language, so we have not included it here.)
Another running bit of the series is that Butters lives in constant fear of his parents, who abuse him and ground him frequently. So some of the edits compile sympathetic clips of Butters crying, like the one below.
While Butters is often the one who’s picked on by the friend group, he does have his moments where he lashes out. People have been picking moments where he’s especially cold and editing them to heavy trap beats with dramatic cuts between clips to build hype during the video.
Other hyped-up videos highlight the moments when Butter takes on his alter ego, Professor Chaos.
Unlike many media trends that can fall in and out of fashion, South Park has never really left. It kind of waxes and wanes as far as its cultural relevance, since the show has continuously aired since 1997. In a similar way, Butters has long been a quiet star of TikTok. His voice has been behind TikTok trends like the “It’s fine if you’re gay, Butters, I dont care” sound and “kill john lennon” sounds. Still, the Butters trends in the past few months have catapulted the show to a new level of prominence on what has become one of the world’s most popular apps.