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AUGHGHGHGHGGHGHGHG
Oh. Some of you may not know what my brain is melting for. Here.
Title: Tween Bromance; alt-text: Verbiage. Va-jay-jay. Irregardless.
The xkcd forumites (an apparently exiled people now that there's no forum link on the xkcd main page) have indicated that this strip is derived solely from a 30-page thread about words they hate. If that's true, that makes this the second worst comic Randall has ever made (beaten only by the infamous 631).
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, this comic was written ONLY to make the fans rage. Think about it! You have probably hundreds of people saying, "I can't stand this word, I can't stand that word," so what does Randall do? HE DRAWS A FREAKING COMIC STRIP WITH THE WORST OF THE WORST.
And he knows it, too! As evidenced by the reaction of Megan in the strip, this is an effort being made only to annoy, irritate, and liquefy the brains of whoever reads/hears it. Look. Sometimes Randall is just lazy. Sometimes he's so lazy that he'll just write out a sentence intended to bug the readers (one that doesn't even make sense, for that matter). But never, NEVER has he been so lazy and mean-spirited to take what HIS OWN FANS explicitly say they hate and just dish it up like that, with nothing else as context! (And if someone on the forums says "goomhr i hate those words too", so help me, I will rape that person with an angry porcupine.)
And when I say "nothing else as context," boy, do I mean it. If you don't know about the forum thing (and you probably don't, given that you CAN'T ACCESS THEM FROM THE MAIN PAGE ANYMORE), who can say what's going on? Was the stick man dictating something to Megan, changing up the words as a cruel joke? Was he quoting something he found on the internet? Does he just walk up to her and say that for no reason at all other than that he's Randall's avatar and Randall is a complete dick?
I couldn't figure out if Randall was trying to make fun of pre-teens and how they talk, or bad fanfiction writers, or furries, or if it was something else all together. Is he referencing something? Is there a precedent for this somewhere? Who knows?
My face started contorting in twitchy disgust by the time I hit the second panel. I haven't felt physical uneasiness from an xkcd since the milk strip (YOU MADE ME GOOGLE "XKCD LACTATION" TO GET THAT LINK I HATE YOU SO MUCH RANDALL DIE DIE DIE), but I did when reading this one. And then I get to the third panel to see Megan doing the exact same thing! Do you get what happened? RANDALL MADE ME IDENTIFY WITH ONE OF HIS CHARACTERS. I never want to be in an xkcd, and I especially don't want to be the stick representation of the girl he's stalking. It's bad enough when Randall includes the readers (me) in his strips unfairly (like here), but when I'm actually IN the strip, in anguish, that's all kinds of messed up. It's messed up that I'm there to begin with, and it's even more messed up that I'm there because Randall KNEW he'd be injuring he readers and put an avatar of us in the strip to prove it.
And the alt-text? What alt-text? It's just more words that we find offensive. Even after the strip is done, even after assaulting us with this supposed "joke" in the title and across all four panels, Randall still doesn't let up. It's like he doesn't even care about his readers! Then again, why should he, given that the original poster in this comic's thread said, "I understand every word but not the comic itself :(", following it up with "And thus my vexation has been alleviated," once the strip was explained. Really? You're okay with being reamed by Randall as long as you know why?
Luckily, not all of the forumites are like him. Most are confused, hurt, miss the point (attempting to sing the title to the tune of "Bad Romance"), or ask what happened to the forum link. Some speculate it's because Randall just posted a a bunch of personal information and wanted to dissuade discussion. He disabled comments for that particular post after all, so perhaps. But if so, that's just the feather in the hat of this awful, awful day for xkcd and xkcd fans. Randall's pulling the strings like a freaking puppeteer. "I'm going to say my piece, but YOU CAN'T TALK ABOUT IT! Oh, here's something to take your mind off that: BROMANCE GUESSTIMATE FRENEMY YIFFED PREGGERS BARBARA STREISAND".
Seriously, Randall, CARE A LITTLE. I know you've got a fanbase who'll generally lap up anything you put before them, but don't abuse that! When they made the "least favorite word" thread, it wasn't subtitled, "Give Randall ideas for his next fan hate strip!" If your fans want to shove drills into their ears and pour bleach into their eyes, they'll do it. Don't give them a reason.
P.S. As I was reading the xkcdsucks comments, someone mentioned Megan's transforming chair. Chalk up another point of failure for this comic (lazy, mean, and now quite possibly the future recipient of a stealth edit).
First review on this blog that I enjoyed reading. Impressive research of the terrible backstory behind this abortion of a comic.
ReplyDeleteI think this comic is Randall telling us, "Yup, I am just a huge troll."
ReplyDeleteThink about it. He does a decent comic for a while. It's not great, but it does have a lot of nerd cred that seemed, even in the beginning, to be specifically designed to hook nerds and turn them into raving fans. He does this long enough to get a stubborn, loyal fanbase that loves everything he does and will repost it everywhere.
He then enters Phase 2, where goes about whipping his ass with a Wacom tablet and putting the result up on the internet. He knows his fans will eat it all up and repost it on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Tumblr, their personal blogs, print it out and tape it to their notebooks and stick it up on corkboards. And despite the fact that it took him all of 5 minutes to create, and even THEY don't REALLY like it themselves, this is exactly what they do. Now, three times a week, Randall gets to successfully troll millions and millions of people. He must just sit back and laugh.
Especially because his fans do all the grunt work for him and then they turn around and PAY HIM TO DO THIS.
And that's why I hate XKCD and come here. Because I can't just not read it. Because the fans who tell me, "Just don't read it," then link me to it every single fucking time. And because, for Christ's sakes, Randall gets paid to do this. He is earning enough money off this that THIS IS ALL HE DOES.
I only guessed that this was about people finding words repulsive because I read Language Log, and every so often that topic comes up-- and then only because of the word "moist", which always gets mentioned in that context.
ReplyDeleteLanguage Log also links to xkcd sometimes, so I'm sure Randall is looking for another shout-out from them. Even though he just got one:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3227
captcha: pymnet. ARGH STOP IT I HATE THAT WORD!!! AREN'T I HILARIOUS????
I didn't think this strip was that bad.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the forumites would literally suffer pain by seeing those words again - after all, there was an entire thread featuring them in the xkcd forums which they'd all read through.
The point of the comic is to proclaim that Randy (on behalf of the forumites) hates when people use those slang (or whatever) words.
And so, job done. I hate those words too. It's still not an especially funny or entertaining comic, but it does what it's intended to do, and I don't accept the argument that it's a slap in the face to the forumites, I think it's the exact opposite.
Randall is making a living off of what he does, so we can never deny him the point that he is good at what he does. Not webcomicking, but creating an idol of his "geek" comic that a sufficient number of geeks are willing to pay into in order to claim part of that manufactured status.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Happy Canada Day woooooooooo
However uncool this makes me, I am just extremely cheesed off that Randall belted out the word "taint" in the main text of his comic.
ReplyDeleteI think what makes you 'un-cool' is your use of the verb phrase: 'cheesed off'.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cVlTeIATBs
ReplyDelete