"South Park" recently aired an episode showcasing a bunch of YouTube celebrities and how they were all theoretical multi-millionaires. I think the guy who sang "Chocolate Rain" is supposed to be $100,000,000 richer, at least according to the show. So how does that work?

In the old days, you'd be in the real, physical world, and set up a stage. Then you'd get on that stage and perform. And people would pay to see you do it. So if everybody pays $1, and you have an audience of 100, you just made $100.

Now, with the internet, we can all show our performance to many, many more people with incredible ease. So, if 100 million people see your $1 show, then you are theoretically $100 million richer!

But this is where the problem is. (From here on might be excruciating because I guess I'm spelling out what many consider to be common sense.)

You perform for a camera. Save your video. Upload it to YouTube. It becomes Google's property. Google shows advertisements. Every time a viewer of your video clicks an ad, Google makes money.

Google is stealing our Theoretical Dollars!

It gets interesting though. The $1 show is now free for the audience. Whoever clicks an ad generates revenue, but one click is usually worth less than a dollar. Say 20 cents.

So 100 million people watch your video. One million (one in a hundred) click. Twenty cents per click times 1 million clicks = 20 million cents, = $200,000.

100 million viewers = $200,000, for Google not you.

If you set up your own site, then you could collect. For every hundred viewers (audience members), you get 20 cents. (Or $2 if you're on the ball.)

BUT!

You don't have to pay to see all the other shows…

So it's like you're a Rock God, and in your contract it stipulates that you'll receive only 1/500 of your normal salary, because the rest covers lavish "complimentary" trips to all the other rock concerts in the world, ever. Sweet…

I like "The Daily Show." Occasionally, I'll tune in to watch a new episode as soon as it airs. It's fun to find out about something the same time as everybody else watching.

When it finishes up, my brain gets to thinking:

"Ha ha, what a great show. Oh, it's over. Well, at least now I can enjoy some relaxing theme music as I watch the credits. Na, na na na na na na Na, na na na na… Hey, is something wrong with the screen? It looks like there's a problem… is that a Phantom Image?"

When I was younger, I remember having seen a problem with the TV signal more than a few times. One channel would be showing its programming mostly fine, but you could also see faint images of another channel trying to intrude. They were almost transparent, but the action they revealed was cohesive enough that you could recognize the source of the image by switching channels a bit. Usually the intruder's origin was one or two channels above or below the one you were already watching.

I noticed that a similar thing seems to happen on Comedy Central during the credits. A black background is shown on the left half of the screen, with the credits in white text. Meanwhile, the right half of the screen is divided into two (more or less square) areas, top and bottom. The bottom area shows the name of the program that just ended, or the program coming up next. The top usually shows some content from the ending show, like an extended Moment of Zen.

It is in that upper right-half area that I noticed the Phantom Image. But what channel was it coming from?

Initially I thought it was actually a lingering image from earlier in the show. Part of my reasoning for this conclusion drew on another thing I'd noticed. When I was watching Comedy Central credits, as soon as they ended I'd usually see a quick flash of a still image, which appeared to have been a piece of the pre-credit broadcast. So like if Stephen Colbert was saying hello on "The Daily Show," and then the credits aired, they'd finish and for a split second you might see Colbert frozen in mid-wave (as opposed to a still shot of Colbert introducing a new "Colbert Report"). That image would then be immediately replaced by the next show, or a commercial. So it seemed like data from within the previous show was "spilling over" during the credits. That must explain the Phantom Image… problem solved… Right?

Wrong.

I noticed something else recently. Something far more sinister.

I don't know the name of the show that had just ended. But I do recall that I was paying greater attention to the Phantom Image during the credits. Again, it seemed to overlay the upper right quadrant of the screen, but just barely enough so that you would probably dismiss it if you weren't paying attention. This time I was lucky enough to get a good look at the enigma.

It appears that the Phantom Image is really a near-transparent textual ad, fading in and out, that reads something like "ComedyCentral.com".

My original guess had given the network the benefit of the doubt. "Oh, it's just a data transmission error." But now, it seems apparent that the network is trying to fool its viewers into feeling oddly attracted to the Comedy Central website.

Will they deny this issue, as the Food Network denied having intentionally placed a screenshot of a McDonald's logo directly into the middle of their program?

Will Comedy Central remove the offending transparency and claim that I, the writer of this post, am insane?

Will anybody even care?

Stay tuned next week for an all new episode of "South Park!"