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Died in a Blogging Accident has lived up to its name and died... in a blogging accident. That is to say it has concluded. You can still re-live the magic by clicking here to start at chapter 1. For genuine criticism of XKCD, please click the top link to the right (XKCD Isn't Funny).

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Comics 1262-1264: The Future of Xkcd

I hope you have noticed by now that I am incorrectly capitalising Xkcd on purpose. Randall prefers it to either be all lowercase, or all caps. Anything else is an insult, and I would encourage you to do the same.

Hover over the images to see the alt text. And if you are browsing on a mobile device, you can view the alt text by downloading the Xkcd-sucks app, available on the App Store and Google Play... never!

Comic 1264: Slideshow


Of all the annoying things he could have picked that annoyed him about today's HTML5-dominated, social-media-oriented, search-engine-optimised, internet-that-has-become-a-parody-of-itself. He picked slideshows.

Web design has committed far greater sins, including share buttons that follow you as you scroll down a page, contextual ads disguised as hyperlinks, fake download buttons, pages that get longer as you scroll so you can never reach the bottom, and (perhaps worst of all) blogs that don't have an RSS feed. But slideshows, really?

I've only really seen them on the front pages of estate agents and companies that want to show off their product portfolio - i.e. not the sort of website you come to to enjoy yourself (unless you're an Apple Inc fan, in which case you can fuck off). So it's not a problem for your daily internet usage, not even a first world problem.

I had a look around Flickr, and I couldn't find any examples of this happening. So the alt text is lying.

F for relevance, or lack thereof. F- for crappy alt text. F-- for humour, because there is no joke. Oh, and before I forget, F----- for smugness, and using Xkcd as his personal soapbox.

Comic 1263: Reassuring



This is a comic that is trying to be depressing by telling us that computers will become more powerful than our own brains. He did this before in 894 (Progeny) with a better joke, and fewer words. That older comic made a better joke, and in fewer words.

I get the impression some fans are using Xkcd as a news site. When something happens to Curiosity or Voyager I or whatever, many people, including self-confessed nerds, would not hear about it unless there had been a topical Xkcd on the subject. Following that logic, this comic's function is alert people that computers had beaten Go. So I checked if that was the case. As a matter of fact, it was topical... in 2009.

Here is an article on the subject, which was posted four years ago. As a matter of fact, it makes an interesting point.

“It’s a silly human conceit that such a domain would exist, that there’s something only we can figure out with our wetware brains,”

You see Randall? It really doesn't matter that computers will become more intelligent than us. So stop clinging to your false ideas of 'Humans are better than computers, because... some reason.' Of course they're not better. It's only a matter of time until a computer comes along that writes better Xkcds than Randall.

F-- for topicality. D for humour. D- for wall of text. B for the alt text, which was funny and original. It was better than the actual comic, and should have been the actual comic. Randall needs an editor to see the potential in ideas like these. D for the artwork, because I am so bloody bored of stick figures sitting at computers and talking.

Comic 1262: Unquote


I tried to come up with something to say about this comic. It's not offensively bad. The Star Wars reference doesn't kill it. But it doesn't say anything remotely original. Yes, people will eventually forget about Star Wars and stop quoting it. So what?

My apathy towards this comic is such that I'm going to give it a rare E for humour, artwork, alt text, everything. After all, it's not as if anyone could be emotionally affected by this comic in any way.

"I got tears in my eyes, thinking about that."

10 comments:

  1. F for bad reviewer.

    That slideshow one was really annoying, for some reason it took years to load the first time I saw it. So I genuinely thought the joke was 'slideshows are super slow'.

    "Web design has committed far greater sins, including share buttons that follow you as you scroll down a page"

    Finally someone who has the courage to tell it like it is. Sometimes those buttons even hide the text a little. Extra annoying for greedy capitalists like me who never share anything. On that subject, there's also the fact that it is now mandatory to have a FB account in order to register on some sites. Following share buttons is annoying; mandatory FB is plain bad/wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  2. For 1263 you missed the point of the comic and then criticised it by agreeing with it. I am embarrassed for you and will from now on stick exclusively to Rob's offerings over your feeble effort.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My point is that it's bloody bleeding obvious that computers will supersede humans at any worthwhile task*, but Randall is wrong to make comics bemoaning the fact, because he has nothing new or original to say on the matter.

      *Anonymous troll comments not included. Please don't go.

      Delete
  3. "........I've only really seen them on the front pages of estate agents and companies that......"

    "estate agents"?

    Nice touch. You mimic a Brit-Fuck well. Now had you "kicked an Xkcd comic to the kurb to sort it out" well, that would have added the icing on the Spotted Dick..

    "........I hope you have noticed by now that I am incorrectly capitalising Xkcd on purpose........"

    Well. you are actually capitalising correctly - from "x" to "X" is the correct method of capitalising this letter. And how would we know you were doing this purposefully? I mean, like, you know, we are oblivious to your motivation, are we not?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "You mimic a Brit-Fuck well."

      It's not difficult, since I have been one all my life.

      "Well. you are actually capitalising correctly"

      Correct or not, Mr Munroe prefers a non-standard capitalisation, or rather lack thereof, for his opus. My reason for capitalising it is simple: I refuse the give that man what he wants. How could my motivation have been anything else?

      "I mean, like, you know"

      Your accent, it is slipping, my dear.

      Delete
  4. You have both too much time on your hands and not enough wit to make an intelligent comment about each comic. From a web design perspective, you think pages that get longer as you scroll down are worse than pages that make you click through a slideshow?

    What's worse, intelligently popping in content as you scroll down a page instead of pre-loading 5000 images, or making load a new page for every image in a series of 10, 20, 50?

    Get a grip.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jon Levi is actually Randal. I figured it out guys.

    ReplyDelete