Comic 971: Randall's Rants

Title: Alternative Literature; alt-text: I just noticed CVS has started stocking homeopathic pills on the same shelves with--and labeled similarly to--their actual medicine. Telling someone who trusts you that you're giving them medicine, when you know you’re not, because you want their money, isn’t just lying--it’s like an example you’d make up if you had to illustrate for a child why lying is wrong.

Oh. My. Gosh. I don't know which to criticize first, the comic or the alt-text! This should even be a problem, because normally the two are at least somewhat related. Not this time!

Or, you know what, maybe they are. Maybe the comic is some sort of allegory about homeopathic medicine and how it's like reading blank books. But if that's the case, it needs a LOT of work, because no one's going to naturally assume that from context unless they've just read the alt-text (which makes a completely different point!)

See, until I read the alt-text (ironic, isn't it, that Randall adds novel-length alt-text in a comic about wordless books), I assumed he was just doing what he always does: setting up a strawman that doesn't exist and laughing at him. Look at it. Even the structure of the comic emphasizes just how clueless Randall is about what he's doing wrong. "Not true; there's some ink" and "a smudge" are completely useless to the point the character is making. Guy 1 says something. Guy 2 argues a different point. It's a perfect metaphor for today's update, if Guy 1 is the alt-text and Guy 2 is the the strip itself.

Is this making any sense? Well, at least it can't make any less sense than Comic 971. I mean, I've spent three paragraphs (coming up on four) ranting about this strip and I haven't even addressed its subject matter yet! That's bad, folks.

Look, the joke here is friggin' simple. "All your books are blank!" "My mind makes the books, and I refuse be a part of a system that says otherwise. I'm no sucker." "And you paid how much for these?" I can't stand xkcd, and even I smiled at the "Who sold you all these blank books?" line. You know why? Because that's the punch line! That's the joke! We don't need all these other panels of pointless dialogue!


Image by SinbadEV

But Randall's not content to ruin his comic with an awful setup and a too-delayed punchline. Oh no. Nope, he has to get on one of his, "Boy, people are stupid, and companies just take advantage of them. It's too bad they're not as smart as me" high horses. Carl from xkcdsucks (the original blog; remember when it wasn't awful?) said all there is to say about this sort of thing, so I'll just link to his rant here. In short, it says that people aren't stupid, they know that just because you put two different things together they aren't the same thing, and Randall's a complete douchebag for assuming otherwise.

I dunno, maybe I'm tired and hopped up on pain pills. If I'm missing some deeper point here, someone please tell me. Until then, I'm going to believe that this is just an awful, awful strip, and one of the worst Randall's done in recent memory.


P.S. I was in such disbelief when I read the alt-text, I actually screenshotted it in case Randy changes it. It's just...what was he thinking??

Comic 949: Enough With the Words, Randall

Title: File Transfer; alt-text: Every time you email a file to yourself so you can pull it up on your friend's laptop, Tim Berners-Lee sheds a single tear.

Right away, this strip reminds me of Comic 783. Randall uses far too many words to make a point that simply doesn't need them. Okay, the guy's having trouble sending a file. Randall's suggestions are complicated. The guy uses a USB stick instead.

END OF STORY.

We don't need to fight through 109 words to get to your stupid punchline. Worse still, it's a one-sided, "realistic" conversation. In other words, the character is talking for two people ("Oh, he just drove over to your house with a USB drive?"), and he's doing it in a very clumsy way for a webcomic. What's wrong with this exchange?

"So can your cousin email you the file?"
"Too big."
"How about FTP?"
"What's that?"
"MegaUpload?"
"And get chewed out by the wife for the porn popups?"
"Uh...AIM direct connect!"
"We don't have AIM."
"Oh! Dropbox! You just have to make an account, download the -"
"You know what? I'm just going to have him put it on a USB stick."
"Oh. That works, I guess."
alt-text: Glad I could help!

Same thing, half the words, and it would allow for multiple panels. Randall, you're making a webcomic. Don't wall of text the readers (yes, that's a verb now). Give us a COMIC. Show the actors! If you just want to write a bunch of text, make a blog (I'm sorry, BLAG) post. As usual with xkcd, the failing comes, not from the joke or the point made, but from the execution. This admittedly is a real problem for the average user (I've run into it many times), even if the more computer-savvy have workarounds.

Of course, this brings up another question: Why is it that the "early adopters" are the ones having trouble? Randy, do you even know what an early adopter is? The ones who have been around the internet the longest are the ones who would know the best way to do this. Furthermore, "sending files," at its most basic, IS something the average computer user knows how to do. The problem is that file have increased in size faster than email clients have increased their limits. People know how to email files. They simply don't know what to do with big ones.

Finally, we come to the alt-text. Randall, what's emailing a file to yourself if not essentially uploading it to a web server? The average user sees it as simply as this: emailing yourself a file suddenly puts it on the intertubes forever. You can get it from anywhere now. Why should that make the guy who invented the internet (no, not Al Gore) cry?

Ugh. This comic had a drop of potential, perhaps, but it was all wasted in the execution. It's wordy, it's drawn out, and parts of it don't make sense. Way to ruin another idea, Randall.

Comic 938: WORDS (about cancer, what else)

Okay, I am seriously about to blow a fuse here. Randall, LEARN HOW TO SET UP A JOKE. This is not freaking rocket science (even though you should be the expert on that anyway, right, NASA boy?) Here's a tip. If you have to cram 120 words into three panels before you can get to the punchline (which, on the Ravenzomg scale of Wordiness™, means you'll probably need a bigger scale), you're doing something way, way, way wrong. I mean, just look at this freaking thing!


Title: T-Cells; alt-text: 'We're not sure how to wipe out the chimeral T-cells after they've destroyed the cancer. Though I do have this vial of smallpox ...'

What is this, Subnormality? Randall, we get it. You read an essay on leukemia (which, according to one forumite, is here, because it's next to impossible to read Randall's "citation" in the strip), and it's all relevant to your personal troubles and speaks to you and whatever the heck cancer articles do for you. That doesn't mean you have to write an essay of your own in response! Yes, okay, you get one point for being current this time (only five days removed!). However, your execution gets about 15 negative points, so you're well below breaking even. By the time you've given me the context for the joke, I don't care about the joke anymore. Here's hoping it was funny.

Oh. The joke is, "It sounds like you're putting something bad in me to protect me from something worse. Are you really a doctor?" Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what vaccination is? Furthermore, the doctor's response is, "Almost definitely," which is just such a load of BS. "Hey, this sounds wacky!" Randall thinks. "Surely anyone crazy enough to suggest it would be so nuts that they wouldn't even know if they're a real doctor or not!" Except, apparently smarter people than Randall have studied this and decided it's worth a shot. In other words, he's talking out of his butt and making fun of things that he doesn't understand. Just a day in the life, right?

I don't really know much about this, so instead of shooting my mouth off about it (like some WEBCOMIC AUTHORS), I'll just quote someone who seems to be clued in to this; namely, xkcd forumer BlueLabel.

I'm sorry but I was pretty disappointed with this comic. I get that Mr. Munroe is probably not a specialist in genetics methodology but lentiviral transduction is a standby technique in biological/life science labs. A perfunctory review of modern gene therapy approaches couldn't possibly overlook this technique. It's a shame that it's been so grossly mischaracterized here. Usually the science jokes turn on the readers' understanding of the concept being discussed - here it's only funny if the reader is ignorant of the technique.

Just to clarify, there is nothing new or novel about using modified retrovirus to deliver genetic material to human cells. This is an incredibly common lab protocol. I was transducing glioma cell lines as an undergrad. That this is what's been highlighted as the innovative aspect of this research is rather shocking to me.

I've bolded a rather important part of that quote. See that? In his webcomic for nerds, Randall is banking on his audience's ignorance. Now, that's not really a surprise if you understand what xkcd truly is. It hasn't REALLY been for nerds since the early days, when he was talking about taking Fourier transforms of cats. More recently, it's just been a big wank-fest for people who think they're nerds but are really just a bunch of antisocial toolbags. But hey, whatever pays the bills, right? Who else is going to buy a T-shirt with nothing but a stick figure on it (FOR FORTY-TWO DOLLARS), just so they can feel like part of some exclusive group?

Okay, in all this ranting, I haven't gotten around to commenting on the alt-text yet. Surprisingly, it's well done. It furthers the joke without being required for the joke, and doesn't explain it or anything like that. Randall gets one more point for that. Unfortunately, his total is still -13. But hey, sub-par is what we've come to expect from this comic, and it hasn't let us down.


P.S. For those of you who don't read comment threads on older posts here, Jon's going to be a bit late with bingo. Something about falling into Eyjafjallajökull or something.

Comic 921: Rivendell Parcel Service

Raven said she wouldn't be able to get a review up until tonight, so, even though this comic doesn't really make me angry, I'll take over for now. I'm sure I'll find something to hate.


Title: Delivery Notification; alt-text: You can arrange a pickup of your sword in Rivendell between the hours of noon and 7:00 PM.

Wow, look at that! Color, shading, passable art in some panels? Which comic am I reading here? Oh. With the level of disconnection the guy's head has in panel 4, there's really no question. Yup, this is xkcd.

Okay, first complaint: The UPS form. I'm not sure how to feel about Randall free-handing it, since perfectly straight lines would sort of detract from the sketchy style of the rest of the comic. On the other hand, the bar code looks absolutely horrible, and there's obviously a pretty striking difference in art once we get to the elves. Okay, he should've used a freaking ruler.

Second complaint: Panels 6 and 7. This is unnecessary dialogue that exists only to set up the "elves make and deliver a sword" part of the strip. Randall SHOULD have expanded panel 5 to the end of the row, and had the guy saying, "The laptop is there. It's mine. I'm going to get it." There would be a beat, then he would say, "I'll need a weapon." That would have the bonus effect of giving more space for the sword delivery panel, which feels cramped as it is now.

Third complaint: The forging montage. It's a nice arrangement of pictures, it's looks alright (for xkcd), and it successfully conveys the feeling of narration over an otherwise wordless scene. So what could possibly be wrong with it? The text. The freaking text. The pictures provide a nice flow. So what does Randall do? He ruins the flow by cramming two sentences above the first image and leaving the last sentence until the third image. And he doesn't even get that right! The first two sentences respect the borders of their image (although I think the second sentence could be fit in two lines). But the third? It overlaps the middle panel! It looks darn ugly. A caption for one image should NOT begin over another one.

Fourth complaint: Maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but I didn't understand the last two panels on the first read. I thought the guy had come back from his trip to the UPS depot, still sans laptop, and as his roommate opens the door for him, we see that UPS tried to drop off his package again and left another note. Can you blame me? It would be funny ("ha ha look at this tool get all worked up and then have nothing come out of it"), and we wouldn't have to explain away the fact that apparently elves use the exact same notification forms as the UPS.

If you haven't gotten it yet, the actual joke is that the elves tried to drop off the sword and no one answered, so they left a note. The alt-text (done right for a change!) helps explain this. And you know what? That's kind of funny! I like that, or rather, I like the concept. It's humorous and it's backed by tolerable art. This could have been a good strip!

But of course Randall, being Randall, ruins it! He spends too much time getting to the point, and by the time we wade through the miscues of excess dialogue and badly flowing text, the punch (and the joke) feel lost. As has happened so many times before, it feels like he had an idea ("what if the elves reforging Andúril couldn't deliver it") but wasn't sure how to set it up. What he settled on wasn't bad, but it could have been better.

Case in point. I see from the xkcdsucks comments that Raven's going to disagree with me, but I really liked Anon552's edit of the strip:



Maybe it's just because the edit changes the punchline to match up with what I originally thought Randall was trying to do, who knows. On the other hand, it gets rid of an unnecessary elf sideplot, clears up the ambiguity in the punchline, and hits a lot harder and faster than Randall's version. It's what 921 should've been.

Why doesn't Randall just get an editor already?

Comic 915: Clueless Randall

Man, I was hoping for a break. I really was. I spent a ton of time writing two reviews, and I was kind of counting on Randy to serve up something boring so Raven could have her turn. Instead, I got this:


Title: Connoisseur; alt-text: Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.

It's boring, yes, but it's boring for the wrong reasons. This isn't some one panel strip that Randall tossed out at 11:59. No, instead we're taken on a journey through five panels where Randall systematically blows past opportunities for legitimate jokes or criticism and falls on his face in Joe Biden's mayonnaise. Yes, it's as unpleasant as it sounds.

The first two panels are absolutely fine. Some snobby guy gets all high and mighty about wine and someone else is set to take him down a peg or two. So what does Randall do? Does he go the scientific route and cite experiments that prove how subjective wine tasting is? Nope! Rather than have the guy say, "If YOU'D pay more attention, you'd realize that your hobby is a complete sham," Randall has him AGREE with the connoisseur. Add a tally to the "missed opportunities" column.

And this is the point where the strip starts to lose its focus (or gain it after being completely out of focus; I'm not sure which it is and I'm not sure it matters). Hat Guy makes a legitimate point that some things have more depth than others. This is TRUE, but it's also an opportunity for Randall to say, "Yes, and as far as that goes, wine tasting is ridiculously shallow." Okay? Randall's made no secret that he's an elitist when it comes to math and science and things of that sort. He likes tearing apart things he thinks are stupid and "less pure" than math. So why doesn't he do it? Yes, serious connoisseurs can be pretentious and make much too big a deal about things that don't deserve the attention. Wine tasting is especially egregious in that regard. But instead of calling them on it, Randy plays their game; rather than saying, "Your field sucks and I can prove why," he says, "Your field sucks, but so does everything else."

It's not the first time this has happened in xkcd. Randy sets up a straw man, but attacks it so clumsily that I find myself SIDING WITH THE STRAW MAN. That shouldn't happen! His approach is unnecessarily self-deprecating, and it totally misses the point. Unfortunately, that "missing the point" is what moves the comic forward, so I guess we might as well hang on for now and see where it goes.

So, instead of taking the opportunity to turn Hat Guy's point against him, Randy makes a nonsensical comparison. Here's where the comic gets completely out of control. He suggests locking people in a box. Instead of saying, "No, that's a stupid idea," Hat Guy CALLS Randy on it! He might as well be saying, "Prove it. Prove that locking people in a box with Biden photos will make them snobby connoisseurs." So we've gone from what could be a solid subject for decent ridicule (wine tasting) to a bunch of nonsense where a character ACTUALLY LOCKS PEOPLE IN A BOX FOR A YEAR.

This in itself isn't awful, strictly speaking. This is xkcd, quirkiness abounds, etc. etc. But it doesn't make sense! This isn't Mr. Hat. This is just some random guy (I've been calling him Randy, but he might be anyone.) He goes from (ostensibly) being the voice of reason to being the hand of insanity. There's a bit of humor in how far overboard the guy will go to prove his point, yes. But it's a point that doesn't need to be made! It's a point that only results from a series of missteps and bumbled opportunities for something better.

And I think that's the downfall of this comic. It's not the first time this has happened. Randall has a punchline, a situation that he finds funny. And yes, there's something inherently funny in a bunch of idiots arguing over pictures of Joe Biden eating a sandwich. But it's funny because it's someone ELSE. Unfortunately, Randall doesn't know how to set the situation up, so he fights his way to the punchline, and ultimately says, "Yeah, everyone is like this. THIS COULD BE YOU." This is the same reason I hated Comic 906. He shows us a stupid person in a stupid situation, but instead of letting us have a good laugh at that person's expense, he says, "Yeah, that's you. You're the stupid one." Look, I don't mind self-deprecating humor. I have tons of faults that are worth poking fun at. But I DO take issue with self-deprecating humor that DOESN'T APPLY. Sure, laugh at me for being a goofy guy on the internet who makes too big of a deal about a webcomic. Whatever. Doesn't bother me, because it's TRUE. But once the joke becomes, "Hey, did you hear about the time Gamer asked where the 'any' key was? What a moron!" I take issue with it. I KNOW where the 'any' key is.


P.S. It's a nice touch that the guy gestures so wildly in the third panel that he spills his wine. Unfortunately, that's all the good that can be said about this strip.