Comic 980: "Money." It's what Randall wants.

UPDATE: xkcd forumite JiminP was kind enough to host a full-size version of the image. Clicking the thumbnail below will take you there.


Title: Money; alt-text: There, I showed you it.

Good [morning/evening/whatever time of day you're reading this], everyone. The Somewhat Organic Robots Campaigning For Sobriety (SORCFS) is back to write yet another review.

But before that, I should rant at you a bit about Garfield. Why am I starting with Garfield? Because I am, that's why.

As I've alluded to in previous posts, I'm actually a pretty big fan of newspaper comics. Some of them, anyway. Hell, throw me any story told in sequential art and I'll probably read it. Webcomics, comics books ("graphic novels" if you're a snob and in denial), newspaper strips, whatever. And as someone who's tried my hand at many variations of the art myself, I can tell you personally that it's not something easy to do. So I try to not judge too harshly when it comes down to what qualifies as "good" to me. At the end of the day, there are only two or three things that really matter to me when I try to say if a comic is objectively "good" or not. And the biggest thing to me is one simple question: why does the author draw his (or her) story?

To me, the "right" answer to the first question should really be that the author enjoys doing it (even if they work at Marvel or some other big company. They should be there because they enjoy their job. Hating editors and current storylines is permissible, I guess). For example: love me, hate me, curse me out in the comments for deigning to mention it, but I think Dominic Deegan is actually a decent comic.Okay, so the storylines are shaky and the characters aren't the best fictional people ever. I'll give you that. But you know what? I can tell that Mookie, the author enjoys drawing it. That, to me, is the most important thing in the cartooning profession.

Which brings me to Garfield. You know why I don't love Garfield? Because Jim Davis (AKA the guy who draws him) doesn't. Jim Davis freely admits that he created Garfield to be a "good, marketable character." And so Garfield has shambled along since the late 1970s being a perfectly boring character in a perfectly boring strip. But hey, the merchandise sells. To contrast this with some of my favorite strips: Calvin and Hobbes author Bill Watterson slowly turned against merchandising because it seemed "against the spirit of the strip." And Berkeley Breathed bowed out of drawing his newspaper strips because he felt like he'd prefer end his characters' story on a lighter note.

If you haven't already guessed, I'd feel justified calling Xkcd (I refuse to capitalize it properly) the Garfield of the webcomics world. High-profile, boring art, sells well. I'm not the only one who realizes this--according to the forums, the poster of today's comic was up in the stores before the actual comic was. That tells me a lot about the motivations of one Randall Munroe. And, if you ask me, it's a cardinal sin of cartooning.

Yes, I recognize that he needs money to survive. But that doesn't make Xkcd a good comic.

Okay, now that I'm done calling out the comic in general, here's some specific complaints about comic 980:

• It's a chart comic without a joke. Need I say more?


• Randall missed his normal deadline by something like 10 hours. Which, if he actually had a syndicated strip or something, would make him worthless as a cartoonist. Hell, it'd even be that way with his now-regular delay of a few hours past 12. I could have sworn that the "about" page of Xkcd used to say it updated at 12PM EST... (ed. note - I could've sworn that, too...odd.)


• In a few years this will be inaccurate or otherwise irrelevant. It's boring now and it'll be boring & wrong later.


• GOOMHR-Bait: Okay, maybe this really applies to any given Xkcd strip. but I'm betting that merely mentioning the fact that something is wrong fiscally with the country and world will set off this huge discussion by fans in the forum who think they're smart because they were already aware of this fact and can quote wikipedia. Here's to betting that at least one will claim there's a simple solution.


• typos: Well, apparently. I can't find them yet and they're sure to disappear, but the forumites are noticing. (ed. note - I didn't look at the entire image myself, but I did notice a discrepancy between EU's GDP and Europe's GDP. The forums say there are a lot more like it.)


• Size. This is too big and unfocused to be actually interesting in terms of content. To crib a post from the generally vitriolic but accurate Xkcd forum poster SirMustapha:
  Reaction of xkcd fan:"Wow! This must have taken so much time, it's no wonder the comic is late!"
  Reaction of xkcd hater: "This comic is so completely worthless, it's amazing that Randall should spend so much time in it!"
  Reaction of both: tl;dr"

Alright I'm done here. To sum things up: 980 is a big boring chart that seems like it was created mostly for the purpose of money. As a comics purist, I find this to be a bad motivation. As an artist, I fing the comic to be poorly executed. I therefore feel like I am correct to repeat the title of this blog: Xkcd sucks.

Stay Sober,
~SORCFS

Comic 979: Randall Attempts Poetry...and Fails

Title: Wisdom of the Ancients; alt-text: All long help threads should have a sticky globally-editable post at the top saying 'DEAR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's what we've figured out so far ...'

Okay, there are several things that make this strip suck. The first one should be obvious to all of you, but I'll say it anyway.

This comic is UGLY.

I'm not even talking about ugly in the traditional "xkcd is stick art" sense. I mean that having a "poem" (if you want to call it that) as the first panel and a guy yelling at a computer as the second panel just looks BAD. But the problem is, I can't think of a way to improve the formatting, at least not as the comic stands now. There's too much text to be used as a caption, which means that formatting it this way is truly the best Randall could do with what he gave himself.

But this leads into the second problem with today's comic. The image is nothing but post-punchline dialogue. Randall said all he needed to say in his little poem, and the second panel probably should've been condensed to alt-text. Unfortunately, that means that this comic, at its core, is simply text. And it's not just any text; it's a POEM. A bad poem, but a poem nonetheless (note the "artistic" separation of the single sentence). It should properly read, "Never have I felt so close to another soul, and yet so helplessly alone, as when I Google an error and there's one result: A thread by someone with the same problem and no answer last posted to in 2003." The touches of purple prose and the format of the presentation bump this simple sentence into poetry status (despite the lack of rhyme or meter). Those interested in the humanities would call this free verse.

Get that? This comic, minus the PPD, is a poem. It's a journey into Randall's self-proclaimed most hated of studies: the humanities. xkcd, a comic of "romance, sarcasm, math, and language," has sunk so low as to use POETRY (and nothing else) as today's update.^* That's...shocking, to say the least. I don't know what to make of it.

Okay, onto the third and final problem of today's strip. In addition to being a poem with PPD, this comic is using referential humor (a nice way of saying it's GOOMHR-bait). If readers laugh, it's that "ah heh heh, I've totally been there" laugh that's not really prompted by true humor, but simply a situation that the reader happens to recognize. It's like people laughing at "the cake is a lie." That's a game reference, not a joke, and this comic is doing the exact same thing. We're supposed to like it because we've all experienced this (I actually have, but that doesn't make the comic any funnier). But that's no substitute to actual humor.


^* I actually don't have a problem with humanities or poetry. They might not have long-term career value, but they're not as worthless as Randall so ardently proclaims. My issue with this is not that poetry is being used, but that it's being used by RANDALL MUNROE in place of an actual comic.

Comic 951: Money Funnies

Title: Working; alt-text: And if you drive a typical car more than a mile out of your way for each penny you save on the per-gallon price, it doesn't matter how worthless your time is to you--the gas to get you there and back costs more than you save.

Okay, I'm going to begin by drawing attention to the stupidest part about this strip: the guy's response to Sarah's question.

"Because a penny saved is a penny earned."

You're not saving pennies! You're not saving anything! This quote is so completely inappropriate as a response that it would make perfect sense if the girl was the one saying it! The only justification I can possibly think of for the quote is if you take it absolutely literally; that is, that every penny you save is directly equivalent to pennies earned while working, and every time you make money you should consider it to be some sort of salary. Obviously that's stupid, but it's also the point Randy's trying to make, so who knows.

The worst part is that I actually disagree with what Sarah (yes, that is her name, get used to me calling her that) is saying. If I fill up my car with 15 gallons of gas at $3.62 instead of $3.57, you know how much I'm saving? 75 cents. Three freaking quarters. Heck, I go to gas stations that I know have my gum, and if their gas is the cheapest, that's a bonus. And yes, that means I agree with Randall. Ouch.

But the thing is, I know people who do this. My mom and grandparents do this. And to be fair to them, they're just trying to be thrifty. That's not a bad thing, even if you compare it to "working less than minimum wage." Not everything is a freaking job, Randall. You should know this better than anyone, given that you only "work" about an hour a week. Should we stop donating money to charities? Should we not volunteer? After all, that's like LOSING money! That's even worse than this gas thing!

Don't kid yourself, Randall; you only did this as GOOMHR-bait. Stop being such a utilitarian douchebag.


P.S. Jon alluded to this in his bingo post yesterday, but it does seem like the forums are getting a bit more cynical (or at least more critical). I like this trend.

Comic 945: You're Sorry Alright, Randall

Sorry this is late. I didn't have too much to say about this comic, so I was kind of hanging back and exploring my other options. Incidentally, the original blog only beat this one because the person I contacted about guest posting ignored me and sent a review to Rob instead. Go figure. Luckily, I got some xkcd Sucks Less submissions in the meantime (see the news at the top of the page), so one of them is going to pad this review.


Title: I'm Sorry; alt-text: You know I've always hated her.

Honestly, when I first saw this strip, I kind of chuckled a little. I don't believe this situation has every happened to me (at least, not recently), but I understand the premise and I'm well aware that the issue exists. This isn't Randall making up a straw man like he usually does.

Still, that's not to say that this comic is perfect. My first thought was that this would make a decent "My Hobby" comic, but I couldn't think of a way to condense the caption to do so. However, one "Schnouk" sent me an improvement that I honestly think makes the comic perfect: a rare (hypothetical) gold star for Randall. I'll save that for the next xkcd Sucks Less feature.

In the meantime, here's another "improvement" he passed along to me.



Would xkcd be better with faces? It would be more terrifying, certainly. However, in all seriousness, perhaps it's the facelessness that makes me so apathetic about each new strip. Even if I can relate to them, they're little more than text. Expressionless stick figures can very nearly fade away into invisibility, leaving the (often too numerous) words to be the entire comic.

Eh. Enough musing. Long story short, I kind of liked this comic, but it could have been SO much better. Stay tuned for Sunday's installment of xkcd Sucks Less to see how.


P.S. To make up for this late review, I've got a special post that I'll be putting up on Saturday. It's going to overshadow bingo a little bit, but I think it'll be worth it.

Comic 932: Central Ignorance Agency

Balls. Raven's dead and Ann Apolis has finished her guest week, so it looks like it's on me to review xkcd again. Normally this would be alright, but Monday's xkcd kind of sucks. I don't mean that in the "this is complete garbage and my review will be fueled by my hatred" sense; I mean it's bad in the "obvious point with no joke" sense.

Let's take a look.


Title: CIA; alt-text: It was their main recruiting poster, hung nearly ten feet up a wall! This means the hackers have LADDER technology! Are we headed for a future where everyone has to pay $50 for one of those locked plexiglass poster covers? More after the break ...

Here's the thing. This comic is little more than, "Haha, people who aren't experts in a field sure don't understand that field, am I right guys?" It's GOOMHR-bait combined with an unnecessary elitist stance. Clearly, only an EXPERT would know that the CIA's classified files aren't in the same place as their public website.

I don't know, is this really something that Joe the Plumber wouldn't realize? It's like saying, "How does the CIA keep their documents secure? What if a postal worker lost them or sent them to the wrong address?" Or perhaps, "Why is Area 51 such a secret? Anyone can just walk right in, right?" My point is, there's an obvious disconnect between government operations and normal life, and you're not giving Joe the Plumber a lot of credit by lumping all the "normal people" together and assuming they have no common sense.

And of course, Randall's not content to just make his point (however elitist) and be done with it. No, he uses one of his longest alt-texts ever to hammer in the idea that "this is stupid and if you think this you're really stupid and man, what's with those normal people, huh; I'm so glad I'm a Computer Expert and don't have to be that dumb." Randy, as far as "computer experts" go, you're probably one of the stupider ones. These little insights that you have are NOT exclusive to you. Get off your freaking high horse already.

Comic 928: On Octopiodeses

Raven has apparently committed internet suicide, so I guess I've got to do the reviews from now on. Lucky you.


Title: Mimic Octopus; alt-text: "Even if the dictionaries are starting to give in, I refuse to accept 'octopi' as a word mainly because--I'm not making this up--there's a really satisfying climactic scene in the Orson Scott Card horror novel 'Lost Boys' which hinges on it being an incorrect pluralization."

Okay, I'm going to say it right now. I don't GET this. It LOOKS like Randall drew a bunch of silhouettes and called each a "mimic octopus." Right away, that's not funny, but whatever, that's only the setup, so maybe it'll get better.

Oh.

No, that can't be.

REALLY?

Is that REALLY the joke? That two mimic octopuses look like a single real octopus? WHY?

Look. Immediately prior, there was something that COULD'VE been funny, where you have a single octopus mimicking a whole school of fish. Humor is about exaggeration, and that might not have been a bad way to go. How would it work? Man, I don't know, maybe some guy goes to the aquarium section of the zoo, sees all sorts of sea life, and asks a zookeeper how many animals they have there. He answers "Oh, just one mimic octopus." The alt-text could be, "Actually, there are two mimic octopuses, and he just talked to the second." Is that funny? I don't know, but then again, THAT'S WHY I'M NOT WRITING WEBCOMICS.

I guess I don't understand the attempted subversion. Maybe if the final picture was captioned "Common Octopus," there could have been humor. That's a mimic, that's a mimic, that's a mimic...oh, and that's a real one. Again, I don't know; I'm not a comedian. But why do two mimics look like one normal one? I checked the forums briefly, and no one there gets it, either. Wow. Way to fail, Randall.

The alt-text really bothers me, too. The main reason you should be refusing to use "octopi," Mr. Comic-about-language, is that it's WRONG. No one cares how many nerd points you think you've scored with your stupid Orson Scott Card reference.

Seriously, Randall, get a clue. And then get a sense of humor. And some artistic ability. And a work ethic. Some social skills couldn't hurt.

But most of all, GET OUT OF THE WEBCOMIC BUSINESS.

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 920: YouTube, Bruté?

...

This is Ravenzomg with your review of this thing about this thing called "YouTube Parties" which I'm sure you are all aware of/active participants in.


Title: YouTube Parties. Tooltip: That reminds me of that video where ... no? How have you not seen that? Oh man, let me find it. No, it's okay, we can go back to your video later.

So. It's July 1st and three of us are waiting around at someone's place between "events" in the course of our National Celebration.

And I can't get this song/animation out of my head, so I suggest we look it up.


My friend then suggests, "oh, there's this 5-second film you have to see..."

Long story short, everyone thinks their interests are the shit. Everyone. And this comic communicates this idea.

This comic is like a thing that happened.

Like.

Okay, I don't want to stray into ad hominem attacks. But my complaint about this comic is the concept of "YouTube Parties". In my anecdote, we ended up watching four videos for a grand total of maybe 8 minutes before deciding to watch the pilot of a children's show from the early 2000s, and from there we ended up going downtown for various Festivities.

But he's created this idea of the "YouTube Party", where a group of people (here there are five of these Void Creatures) gather and watch videos as the Title Event. They plan it enough to turn off the lights to watch (Randall has put in the effort of shading to show us that this is, indeed, in the dark).

So this opens up two venues:
1) This "YouTube Party" is a real thing that exists, and people ARE in fact this awful and lame.
2) "YouTube Party" is a made-up thing and Randall had to create this bizarrely anti-social situation to illustrate a point that is pretty unambiguous.


I can't touch 1 without calling boring people boring, and I can't touch 2 without saying something you've all heard in 918, namely, "Why don't you understand human context".

Sooo, let's change tact.



Notice that he says "YouTube Parties" as the title, and then "titles" the comic in the image "The Problem With YouTube Parties". Now, I understand some people only get the image and not the title.

But does Randall actually need to spell it out? It's as if he's afraid we won't "get it", and it's honestly the sort of redundant condescension that borders on "irritating".



Is there any ambiguity about the setting here? There's a group of people around a laptop; a bottle and glass are on the table; the first figure mentions that they're watching [or will watch] a "video", and the punchline takes off from there. The fact that it may or may not be a "YouTube Party" is just needless name-dropping baggage, especially given that YouTube is the third most popular website on the internet and when people below the age of 30 say "video" in connection with a computer, you probably think "YouTube" [minus the Party] all on your own.

Randall used to get the idea.

Don't let the presence of a human-ish figure fool you, this was comic#46. He didn't put on a caption "The problem with being Emo" or whatever, he let it stand on its own and make its statement!

The tooltip just elaborates on the joke in a slightly different way, but a) that's par for the course and b) the tooltip, if unoffensive, is basically a "freebie" anyways.

So all in all, he has nice potential in this comic, but he's SMOTHERING IT. There is a talented man in there somewhere, and he I still believe deep down that he just needs an editor to help him escape.

Comic 918: GoogleD=

Good evening, this is Ravenzomg of Ravenzomg fame here to review another mediocre comic! Mediocrity draws us together in a greater pact of apathetic dissent.


Title: Google+ . Tooltip: On one hand, you'll never be able to convince your parents to switch. On the other hand, you'll never be able to convince your parents to switch!

So there's this new site that's a social-networking thing, and it's not Facebook! But it's still in a beta mode, and you can only get in if you got a special invite, or if you know someone who got that invite. Randall, trying to champion the bizarre geek quality of liking non-mainstream, difficult, and obscure methods to do their shit, told us about it very subtly in his comic. The comic is called "Infrastructures", the number is the 743rd, and the site is called "Diaspora", and it is May of 2010.

Please read a few lines of that article. In fact, nevermind, you're not going to so let me copy/paste like some sort of first-year university student the night before an essay worth 25% of his final mark is due.

One of my favorite sites is XKCD, which features brilliant tech-related comics drawn by Randall Munroe.
[...]
By the way, if you haven’t visited XKCD before. You should. It’s good eaten’ for your mind.

I'm just going to let those comments sit on their own without commentary.

Let me begin by restating that XKCD #918 is mediocre. It inspires neither mirth nor rage in yours truly, and honestly the flaw is again the medium. I don't know who these two Void Creatures are, and I don't care. But if this were, say, Saphalia and Grim what the fuck did I just say there why didn't i just make up real names then I'd be more intrigued by this discussion and perhaps touched by panel 3's admission. Instead, all I get is two awkward stick figures puppeting Randall's thoughts. Characterization is essential in separating yourself from your creations. Hell, even WhiteHat has a distinct voice and I don't revert to saying, "It's Randall", but instead say, "It's goddamn bakery man" or whatever. The point here is that by virtue of their not possessing any recognizable traits except for the implicit ones in this comic, we don't really care at all and this may as well be a text update in the form of a chatlogue.

SP: you should join Google+! =D
GR: What is it?
SP: not facebook!
GR: What is it like?
SP: facebook!
GR: ...
GR: Oh, what the hell.
GR: I guess that's all I really wanted.

Please tell me what we lost in this transition. Well, besides crappy art.

To be positive, I'll admit that the joke is structured correctly. Panel 1 introduces the setting, panel 2 is a beat panel, and panel 3 contains the "joke". Panel 1's dialogue is awkward and stitled, but that is pretty well the point -- to illustrate how ridiculous the idea of switching to any other social-networking site is becoming and mocking the incentives geeks are willing to take to be more hipster. Going back to my awful transcription, the girl's dialogue really sounds more like a chat log to me. But maybe I'm just biased. But the stiltedness completely fits the concept of online chat.

And perhaps that's an issue here -- these are based on real conversations, but by "real" I mean "in a chat client", and Randall hasn't rewritten it to be a natural conversation, instead copying it nearly word-for-word.

But this is just supposition and cannot reaaally be confirmed one way or the other except hyperbolicly through repeated confirmation that this sounds valid.

Let me say upfront that I have a Facebook account that I check daily and do use. I managed to get rid of my old account bogged down with a hundred+ people I didn't give a shit about in favour of about 14 "friends". Let me also say that if I get an invite to Google+, I will bail like a rat on a sinking ship. Why? I don't even know anymore.

I AM THIS GEEK. That's me. In panel 3. I made a Diaspora account just because it wasn't Facebook, and it was awkward and clunky and I spent maybe 2 days using it before letting it fall into decay. I still have a Myspace profile full of angsty poetry dating back to like 2005 (although I only use myspace now for music purposes).

I distinctly remember, when Facebook was new and weird and not popular, telling people, "let's get in on this Facebook thing." Why? Because it was new and different from Myspace.

This is the geek sickness, the desire for the new, the shiny, the different.

And in these barely creative scrawls Randall has captured this idea.

However, this does not make this a good comic. This is not funny, this is not entertaining, and this is not new. Everyone knows about this geek attitude, and he's just using a recent example to illustrate a point that everyone knows. We're talking syndicated newspaper comic level of humour.

"It's entertaining!" No, not really. "It's deep!" No, it's pretty shallow and uninventive. ....So where does that leave us? A mediocre sketch that is intended to illicit what we used to call "Agreement Chuckles".

This is exactly pandering to someone like me, someone who thinks Facebook is devilish but cannot switch until a viable alternative occurs. And yet here I am, saying that it's mediocre. It's not awful, it's just not INTERESTING in any way.

In other words, it's another XKCD update.

Sigh.

Comic 917: Failing Us; Cute Kinda?

Good evening to one and all, this is Ravenzomg reviewing today because Gamer has not been hulkified by this particularly uninteresting piece of.... work.


Title: Hofstadter; Tooltip: "This is the reference implementation of the self-reference joke."

I was going to write the review in one huge acrostic, but that'd just be stupid since this comic is not about acrostics, it is about abbreviations. (Do not look for a huge abbreviation either, you will not enjoy it.)

So the joke is about Hofstadter, and if you know who this guy is, then you already know we're going to get some stupid joke about analogies. If you don't know this guy, go to that article and read, like, 10 words in.

Hofstadter is a man who has published many quite official books and articles on language, logic, philosophy, as well as quite interestingly rewriting a classic Russian piece to retain its poetic charm. In short, he's taken his passion and he has run with it.

(I just set myself up for personal attacks, but that's not really where I am going with this).

Now, this comic is sort of okay. But the biggest problem is that it is entirely GOOMH bait for anyone who knows about Hofstadter. That is the point of this comic.

The joke, which is the cute little acronym (goddamn it, yes it is an acronym not that other thing) "I'm so meta even this acronym (IS META)". This is the joke. It's a cute little throwaway thing you write down in a particularly boring lecture.

But then it occurs in panel 2 of 3.

Panel 3 is useless Post-Punchline Dialogue, unless you think the acrostical "WIN" is intentional, which I do not. So we have a joke that is kinda okay if it weren't 33% of his workload for the week, sandwiched between two useless panels. Panel one? Oh, yes, I will get to that.

Now, in fact.

Panel one sets us up with an author we've already mentioned has proven himself to be quite capable of language games. Randall has created a little lark, and he legitimizes it by saying someone else created it.

You understand how fundamentally weird this is? It's like goddamn fan fiction. He's inserted his own words into Hofstadter's mouth, and in his created universe it is factual. No, you know what? This isn't like fan fiction. It is fan fiction.

The more I think about it, the creepier this gets. And this coming from the writer who wrote a fan fiction that was almost (but not actually) slash-fic between Rob and Randall.

GAH.

I mean, let me try this out.



Awkward as shit, and not just because this was inked with a regular blue pen and took less time than perhaps an xkcd comic (hahah, who are we kidding).

The lesson here is that name-dropping is absolutely awful, and creating something and crediting it to someone else, regardless of how good you "think" it "is", is just abhorrent and weird. Why did I mention Randall? Couldn't I have just talked about the Llamas without pretending someone else famouser than I talked about llamas?

Yes. Yes I could.

Fuckin' weird.

Comic 916: Randall, the Security Expert

Well, well, well. Raven SO badly wanted to do a review, and I was ready to take a well-deserved break, but then she was all "I can't post it until Saturday!" Since I respect you guys far too much to force you to wait that long, I'll take over. I wouldn't want this to turn into xkcdsucks, and I'm sure none of you want that either.

So what have you got for us, Randall?


Title: Unpickable; alt-text: The safe is empty except for an unsolved 5x5 Rubik's cube.

Well, the good news is that Randall has ditched the wordy, drawn-out, monochrome format of yesterday's comic, and instead given us a half-colored single panel. At first glance, I like this: whatever point he's making is likely to be punchy, there are no characters so there's no stilted dialogue, and the art isn't awful. It's not his best work, but it's far from his worst.

The basic idea here is that if you're going to be attacked by geeks, you're best leaving your stuff in an inconspicuous place while giving them a problem to keep them occupied. I expect this is a response to how hacking groups like LulzSec conduct their attacks; they hit high-profile targets just to show they can, so you're better off being under the radar. In short, Randy makes a semi-legitimate point about the nature of hackers, and he does it with color and the right amount of panels. Good job, I guess. You look at it, you laugh, and you move along.

However, this wouldn't be a criticism blog if I didn't dig deeper into the strip and pick it apart. Let's start with the obvious flaw. Anon 1:12 on the xkcdsucks blog said, "Security through obscurity does not a joke make." I disagree with the premise; it's solely because the idea is nonsensical that it becomes a joke. However, he has a very valid point about security through obscurity. It's AWFUL. It's probably the worst "security" there is, and if you're trying to keep your stuff safe, leaving it out in the (hidden) open is the worst thing you can do, regardless of who's attacking you.

Also, in the course of reading and reviewing the strip, I was reminded of another xkcd. If you can't be bothered to click the link, the summary is that nerds think that if they make their security system elaborate enough they'll be safe forever, when the reality is that all it takes is one weak link (in this case, the drugged and bludgeoned owner of the system) to get through. Today, Randall is saying just the opposite: If the security is elaborate enough, you can toss your valuable stuff in a shoebox, because the hackers will never get through the (incidentally unimportant) safe, and they won't think to go the easy route first.

That's why this strip fails when 538 doesn't. Comic 538 presented a stupid situation based on a geeky stereotype, but then it went deeper and showed the problem with that situation! Comic 916 shows no such self-awareness. It presents the stupid idea and just runs with it. Perhaps if the alt-text has said something like, "Of course, security by obscurity is doomed to fail. But a nerd can dream, can't he?", I might be more tolerent. But, much to my chagrin, it says nothing like that.

And having said that, we've reached my biggest annoyance with the strip: the alt-text. "The safe is empty except for an unsolved 5x5 Rubik's cube." But you just said the safe is unopenable! How did the cube get in there? How will it be gotten out? And why would the hackers bother with it? If you're breaking into a website, you're doing it to steal or screw with the data underneath. Remember when the PSN got hacked and credit card numbers were compromised? Do you think the hackers would've sat there and tried to defraud those accounts right then and there? No! If the Rubik's cube interested the hacker, he would take it and be on his way. He wouldn't sit there playing with it.

So, in summary: decent comic on the surface, lousy composition underneath. It's still one of Randall's better works recently (which admittedly isn't saying much).


P.S. The original image of the comic had an ugly, out of place line of color on the right side of the safe; you can see it on Raven's mock-up (get it? because she's MOCKING it? -_-) of the strip here (by the Z). As of the writing of this post, that's gone. Now, I don't really fault Randy for not going "DOO DOO DAH DOO! I MADE AN ERROR!" However, it just shows what a hack he is. He's sloppy and doesn't actually review his work before posting it for the world to see. I guess that's what you get when your brainstorming process starts at 11:50 PM.

Comic 913: You're Out Of Your Head, Randall

Hello all, and welcome to the very first installment of XKCD SUCKS. I'm Gamer_2k4, half of the dynamic duo that's taking charge here. For those of you who don't know, I made a guest post here and there on the original xkcdsucks blog. Now, I'm helping Ravenzomg (the other half of the duo) with a new blog, to give you what xkcdsucks couldn't: timely, topical reviews that aren't complete garbage.

Anyway, that's it for introductions! Let's see what Randall's given us to work with today.


Title: Core; alt text: If you're a geologist or geophysicist and you don't introduce yourself by saying your name, then gesturing downward and saying "... and I study that", I don't know what you're doing with your life.

Annnnd it's a doozy. Good thing, too, because I'd rather not write a review if an xkcd is just meh. Right away, this feels like GOOMHR bait (for the uninitiated, that's "Get out of my head, Randall," a common saying among the author's fanboys). Why do I think that? Because if he's not expecting to garner empathy from the strip, he's just announcing that he tweaks out for no good reason, and it's not like Randall to admit (or even recognize) his weaknesses.

So what's the problem with this? Well, the main thing is that there are a LOT crazier things to get freaked out about than being above a hunk of iron. Think of all the insects crawling around under the ground! Think of the fossils that no doubt exist buried deep down! Think of the mineral veins and the fossil fuels! Heck, if you want to go with man-made things, it gets even better. Any time you walk down a street, you're going over sewer mains, electrical cabling, gas and water piping, perhaps even subways! There's a whole WORLD right beneath your feet, and if you want to freak out for fifteen minutes, do it over something worthwhile!

Balls.

Okay, I'm not done. You want to freak out? Look up. Above you, right now, there are hundreds of satellites that make everything YOU do possible. TV, internet, radio, GPS, phone calls, freaking everything! You can't live without them, and yet you want to get worked up about freaking IRON? You really suck.

Deep breath. Calm down, Gamer. Okay. The next problem with this comic is, believe it or not, the fact that it's colored. Now, this wouldn't be a problem, except that, since the bar is set so low already, people react to the inclusion of colors like it makes up for everything else. Consider the opinion of one "Anonymous" from xkcdsucks:

Also I thought that despite the lack of actual humor, the Magic School Bus comic was better than most of his other ones just because of the inclusion of pretty colors.

Sarcasm or not, it's a pretty major problem when people think your comic is good simply because it has splashes of color here and there. People say, "this is awesome," Randall thinks "I am awesome," and the vicious cycle continues. No, Randall, you're not awesome. You went from an F- to a solid F. That's nothing to be proud of. And of course, the Magic School Bus coloring took so much out of him that the next comic (one that wasn't just stick figures, and actually alright for coloring) was monochrome, and today's had three, count them, three, colors outside of his usual spectrum. And yet, people will praise him for it.

Moving on to the alt-text (title text for you pedants). "If you're a geologist or geophysicist and you don't introduce yourself by saying your name, then gesturing downward and saying '... and I study that', I don't know what you're doing with your life." You know what they're doing with their lives? Not being complete tools like you! I'm a software engineer. You know what I don't do when I'm introducing myself to people? I don't POINT AT A COMPUTER AND SAY "UH HURP DURP I STUDY THAT." But I guess you'd know that if you ever interacted with people.

So, to sum everything up, this is a new blog, we're the best xkcd hate blog out there, and Randall is in top form for our first post. Tell your friends.

P.S. I like how he drew himself with a book, as though that was where he was reminded of this tidbit. Don't kid yourself, Randall; we all know you were inspired by this page.