The South Park underwear gnomes joke was a parody of dot-com startups (i.e. around 1999/2000) who didn't have a clear business model.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts

Interesting that the 1999/2000 dot-com crowd were aiming to turn a profit eventually, even if they didn't know how. Seems like even that isn't a requirement in the current bubble... ;)

According to the linked article the episode was from 1998, which actually makes it fairly early in the game even for poking fun at stupid dotcom sites.

The modern version:

   1) Acquire millions of users
   2) Get acquired for billions of dollars
   3) Not my problem