Comic 1374: WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!?

I'm honestly struggling to come up with words with which to fault 1374, because it was so devoid of humour and redeeming value, that any criticism I lay on it would seem petty.

Comic title: Urn

Alt text: Can this PLEASE be drawing with replacement?

It's a word play on the word 'urn'. Actually not even a word play, but more an acknowledgement that urns can be used for containing human ashes and for hypothetical probability exercises. I mean really?!? That's like if the teacher's question involved bottles, and the smart-ass student said "Herp. Is one of those bottles full of beer? If so, I drink it and get expelled from school and never have to do math class again." Or in a geography class, if a student was asked why a river forms meanders and says "Daaa. I pissed in the river. Lolololol." about If either of those jokes were told in one of my classes, it would amuse only the dumb kids. I mean, I'm all for making XKCD more accessible, but this is just stupid for the sake of stupid.

I know I've stopped doing alphabetical grades, but this comic gets an F, and a U, and a C, and a K.

Edit: explainxkcd.com has pointed out that this joke may have been in reference to the recent phenomenon of 'trigger warnings' in college campuses. If that is true, then that makes it 100 times better. It elevates the joke to something more like: "What's next, trigger warnings in high schools? No way man. The only way we'd need that is if students are emotionally retarded enough to be set off by stupid little things like this."

In case you can't tell, I approve of this alternate meaning. And I find it sad that there's NOTHING IN THE COMIC TO SUGGEST THIS. How typical of Munroe to spoil a good joke with piss-poor execution. He either thought of a funny situation to do with trigger warnings in schools, then forgot where he got the idea from and posted it without context, or he made the mistake of assuming that the news story would be so ubiquitous that everyone would know about it anyway.

Then again, I could be giving Randall too much credit, and it might have nothing to do with trigger warnings and simply be a bad joke. After all, it's unlikely that he would consciously write a comic where a female character is in the wrong.

Comic 1370: Randall's Midlife Crisis

So it occurred to me that the 1366th comic milestone went unnoticed. As of three weeks ago, there are more XKCD comics than there are horizontal pixels in my 1366x768 monitor. Moving on,

Comic title: President

Alt text: Anyone who thinks we're all going to spend the 2032 elections poring over rambling blog posts by teenagers has never tried to read a rambling blog post by a teenager.

At first sight, we have yet another preachy XKCD comic that lacks a punchline. Right? Wrong! This is a harbinger of Randall's midlife crisis. Let me explain why.

1370 picks up on a few of XKCD's common themes - the passing of time. This is something that was picked up on as early as 354. He seems surprised that [insert name of movie] came out closer to the moon landing than today. Clearly this is something Randall thinks about a lot. It's like his mind was fixed in 1999, and the idea that time has passed since then comes as a shock.

This is something that he was bound to confront eventually: the idea that he, Randall, is no longer of the young generation.

Randall has long considered himself the voice of this generation. XKCD is quintessentially a young man's comic. It makes jokes about todays technology and pop culture. And it's read by an audience of high schoolers.

Eventually though, the unthinkable will happen: Randall's XKCD will cease to be culturally relevant. It won't happen suddenly. It will be slow. Arguably it has already started to happen. Randall can't bring himself to confront that fear, so in his usual style, he wrote a comic about it.

The comic is a sincere acknowledgement that the older generation are mistrusting of the new, and handing over the world to them is a scary prospect. The little girl is here to ridicule the older woman for having these views. Randall would very much like to identify with this girl.

But on a subconscious level, he identifies with the woman. She is older, and like Randall she has felt the cognitive dissonance of time passing when you don't expect it too. Randall refuses to believe this, which is why he drew her with the blonde ponytail, a character design he usually used for his straw-men.

But make no mistake about it: this comic is a cry for help, to which I say: Randall, stop doing XKCD before it becomes culturally irrelevant.

Comic 1357: Showing you the Door

Fellows, it has come to my attention that I'm not posting reviews as often as I used to. Well today I'd like to change that. I don't know why, but I feel it's what Randall would want me to do. So here's a review for you.

Comic Title: Free Speech

Alt text: I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.

Whoo, six panels! The aforementioned Mr Munroe must have spent a full ten minutes on this one. I jest, I jest. But you know what? The comic doesn't. Because in all those six panels he forgot to include a single joke.

"But Jon, you magnificent yid," I hear you say. "It's not supposed to be funny. It's supposed to make a point." Good point, I say, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make its point in the most obnoxious way possible. For those of you keeping track at home, that double-negative means it does go about making its point in the most obnoxious way possible, even more obnoxiously than the way I'm making this point right now, you schanda.

Public service announcement: prefacing your webcomic, or anything for that matter, with the words "Public service announcement" is a bad start, because those three words are shorthand for: 'This is something important that I think everyone really needs to know right now because I am a smug arsehole.' Thank God he went with the shorthand. The wall of text is large enough already.

The further you go through the comic, the less necessary each panel is. Consider that the comic would have still worked if you got rid of the last panel. In fact you could have cut it short at 5, 4, 3 or 2 panels and it would have made its point just as effectively. Even the first panel would work as a standalone, and that's because he makes the point in the first panel. The other five are taken up with directionless ranting.

Again, the artwork is awful because it does nothing. Aside from an unnecessary picture of a door, the other five panels are just Stick-Randall talking. And for some reason he zooms in and out every other panel, like it's a TV show that has multiple camera angles.

There's a reason why TV stations do the thing with multiple zoom levels. It's because people on TV have faces. You see more detail when you zoom into a face, but when you zoom into a white circle on a white background, all you see is a larger circle. Fuck.

I have often accused XKCD comics of being smug, but frankly this outclasses anything I've seen recently. It doesn't even try to make a joke by cutting off a guy's arm.

Finally, let it be said that free speech doesn't shield Randall from criticism either. If he truly practices what he preaches, then everyone is equally fallible and can be called out for their bullshit, except for me. I have been posting bullshit on this blog for over a year now, and no one has ever called me out for it.

Comic 69: It's better if you imagine it with canned laughter

Comic title: Pillow Talk

Alt text: Maybe I should've tried Wexler?

I don't think this comic was very good. It's not very bad either, which is why it took me two weeks to think of anything to say about it. Next time, suggest a more interesting comic, you schmucks.

Let's start with the joke. I'll give you that there is some mileage in the whole 'nerd in an awkward romantic situation' setup. But the more and more I think about it, the more find myself comparing it to a throwaway line in said on something like The Big Bang Theory. It sounds like something Leonard would say, or Howard, or Raj, or Sheldon. Ah heck, they're all the same character anyway.

If I had to say which is better, XKCD or TBBT, it's not a clear-cut decision. On one hand, you can read three panels of XKCD in 10 seconds, whereas an episode of TBBT has a run time of 22 minutes plus ad breaks. So with XKCD, the pain is over faster.

On the other hand, TBBT at least has the semblance of characters you can relate to and care about what happens to them. And they will at least try and work that joke into a storyline. So at least TBBT has that. Whereas XKCD presents only the bare bones of the joke, with only the most rudimentary setup.

Speaking of bare bones, the artwork in this XKCD is drop-dead awful. I know it's early XKCD, but oy vey! The only artwork is a faceless stick figure, who doesn't change pose in three panels. And Randall doesn't even do the thing he does in later XKCDs where he uses their arms to express body language.

In fact this comic is scarcely more than a tweet. Perhaps Randall could have just posted it to Twitter and saved us the bother (note to editor: did Twitter exist in 2006?). If only it was 11 characters shorter.

PS: I know I haven't been giving you much in the way of actual thought-out critique. If you still crave a timely review of the latest comics, I suggest you check out XKCD's newest hate-blog on the block: XKCD Isn't Funny

Comic 169: Randall Hates Riddles

Okay, Anon 8:26 has requested this review quite a while ago. Sorry it's taken me so long to get to it. Except I'm not sorry at all. I've been spending the last two weeks counting my money from the Facebook acquisition (artist's impression). Did I mention that we're owned by Facebook now? Good. We promise that not a thing will be affected by this.

Title: Words that End in GRY

Alt text: The fifth panel also applies to postmodernists.

So, we have another comic where it would be funny if it was just Black Hat being Black Hat. But instead of that, it has Randall's moral agenda strewn across it like a dirty towel.

But never mind that for now. I actually looked up the riddle in this comic. And it turns out that Strawman is saying it WRONG. What's that you say, a mistake in an Xkcd comic? Randall doesn't get do-overs, remember. Let me explain. It goes like this: 

Think of words ending in "-gry". "Angry" and "hungry" are two of them. There are only three words in "the English language." What is the third word?

Obviously you don't pronounce the quotation marks, unless you are a schmuck. Note that that version of the riddle actually has "language" as an answer. That wasn't so hard to research, was it? Surely Randall would never make an elementary mistake like this?

Oh, but there is another version of the riddle, which is a bit more like to what Strawman is saying. However this one has "what" as the answer.

"Angry" and "hungry" are two words in the English language that end in "-gry". "What" is the third word.

For the curious, my source for these can be found here*. 

So, why would Strawman get the riddle so badly wrong, and still gloat about it to Black Hat? Easy, because he's being written by Randall Patrick Munroe. The guy writes straw men for a living. And no, I won't be PC and call them straw people, because all the straw men in Xkcd are men.

It was actually Randall's craft of the written word that caused Strawman to get the riddle wrong. Because if he makes Strawman dumber than anyone with enough intelligence to form the syllables to tell a riddle, he is therefore making Black Hat look smarter. Intelligence is relative, boys and girls.

Take a moment to consider this: Randall is trying to make a psychopath who cuts the hands off people that tell annoying riddles seem more reasonable than the teller of said annoying riddle. It's clear that he hates the annoying riddle tellers so much, he is going out of the way to insult their intelligence. And it comes at the expense of this comic actually, you know, making sense.

Furthermore, are we to believe that Black Hat constantly carries around a knife that is shark enough to cut bone on the off chance that he will meet an annoying riddle teller like this? This all but shows the further ways Munroe has distorted the universe to make this scenario possible:

The only way it would make sense for Black Hat to carry around this absurdly sharp blade is if he was harassed by these riddle-tellers all the time. But wait, what if he was? As soon as you believe this, Black Hat becomes a much more sympathetic character. With this interpretation, do you not start to see the riddle-teller as less of a victim, and more of an outright villain? But don't believe it for a second. Randall weaves elegant lies.

Panels 4 through 6 are just pure Randall rants, with a backdrop of screaming. Make no mistake about it, this is Randall's power fantasy. He would like to do this to all his enemies, such as the people who claim that his comic sucks (come and get me, big guy!) or for those who claim that women are any less than a master race. If you offended Randall in a dark alleyway, and he had a little more courage (okay, a lot more), then he would do this to you. In the alt text, he even points out panel 5 as a warning to postmodernists, as if to say 'you're next'. I ask you what kind of rational person would do this?

The worst part is that the whole thing is incredibly smug, and yet Black hat seems completely oblivious to the irony of calling someone else smug while doing this.

So there you have it. Once again, I have shown you the true horror of a seemingly 'innocent' 'comic'. I'll leave you to think about whether anyone would listen to me if I had just cut off their arm.

Oh, and since I haven't given it a grade yet, I'll award a grade based on the above points: F+ 

Try some subtlety next time.

*It's nice being able to cite a source for once without using the fucking Harvard Referencing System.

Facebook Acquisition

Sometimes when a once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity comes along, you just have to chase it, drop everything, and pursue it as your ultimate dream. That is what happened when I joined Xkcd-sucks in 2011. And while I haven't been here from the very beginning, I have watched Hyphen grow for a blag that averaged only tens of views a day, to one that regularly reaches into the triple figures. And we couldn't have done it without you cuddlefish. We have been on an incredible journey together. And now we are ready to embark on the next stage of that journey.

I am proud to announce that Facebook has decided to purchase us for £5500 million (or just over $9000 billion USD). Xkcd-sucks will become part of the Facebook family. This is a very big day for all of us.

Mark Zuckerberg with our founder, Gamer_2k4, as we sealed the deal

Xkcd-sucks was purchased in the same round of acquisitions that included Oculus VR, a startup that is building the next generation of virtual reality. We don't really have much in common with Oculus, or indeed Facebook for that matter. So naturally the purchase was a perfect match. Confused? Let me explain to you how it works. I won't go into every detail of acquisition process, because it's complicated, but I'll simply it enough for a goy to understand:

Facebook's board of directors all take it in turns to write the names of companies on different segments of a giant coloured wheel. Each of these is a company that Facebook could probably get away with buying if it wanted to. Mark Zuckerberg then spins the Wheel Of Acquisitions, and decides to purchase whatever company the spinner lands on. This method has been used before to purchase Instagram and WhatsApp.

I told you it was complicated.

I later got a phone call from Mark (whom I might add is a nice Jewish boy), telling me that first class flights were waiting to take us Facebook HQ in California. There we hashed out the deal over coffee and matzos. I was the one who negotiated the price.

The conditions of the deal were as follows:

• Xkcd-sucks to pay all of its profits to Facebook Inc.
• £7.5 million (about $12 million USD) to be granted annually for the Xkcd-sucks division to keep producing its wonderful content.
• Gamer_2k4 to join the board of directors at Facebook Inc.
• Facebook Inc. to assume copyright of all thoughts, ideas and concepts related on this blag.
• Remaining funds are to be paid to Xkcd-sucks founders in Facebook shares and long term bonds.

FAQ (or what do these changes mean for you)

• What will happen to the Xkcd-sucks blag?

In short, not a lot. We have struck a deal with the big F that allows us to carry on as pretty much the same company we were before, only with more money :). Facebook sees our potential, and knows better than to mess with a winning formula.

• Will I be able to keep my anonymity?

Absolutely. Facebook values your privacy, and we all agree that it is something you shouldn't have to think about. You will always be able to post anonymously, but you may notice some new commenting options, such as Wordpress, OpenID, Blogger accounts, and more.

• Will we get any new features such as Facebook integration?

There are no current plans for integrating with Facebook. However, with Facebook's backing, we might have enough cash to bring back old favourites like Xkcd Forums Bingo, and more. Watch this space!

• Will there be an Xkcd-sucks page on Facebook?

We are not sure if there is a market for such a product. Facebook will be carrying out market research to  decide whether we will get funded for that. We'll let you know of any developments in that area.

• Wait, do you even use Facebook at all?

No.

• What about Jon Levi's Twitter?

Facebook understands the importance of our relationship with Twitter, and will allow this partnership to continue for the foreseeable future.

• What will happen to Died in a Blogging Accident?

Facebook will hold the movie rights until a suitable director can be found. Our plans of a July release date for the original text remain unchanged.

• What does Randall think of this?

He remains in open negotiations with both Apple and Google for the sale of the Xkcd webcomic. At this point a sale is unlikely. He declined to comment on the Xkcd-sucks acquisition.

Gamer_2k4 and Zuck taking a tour of my new office

It's been an amazing three years. Here's to three more! Remember that every cuddlefish made it happen. Let us know what you think of this deal in the comment section below. And don't forget to share your favourite Xkcd-sucks moments.

Comic 1345: You're Wrong

Title: Answers

Alt text: Stanford sleep researcher William Dement said that after 50 years of studying sleep, the only really solid explanation he knows for why we do it is 'because we get sleepy'.

Ah, here we have yet another instance of Randall trying overcome years of patriarchal oppression by having a girl prove that she is smarter than a guy by beating him in a battle of wits and generally making him look like an idiot. This is such a cliche in Xkcd. D-

But what bothers me is not the fact that she's a girl, as much as the complete falsehood of what she's saying.

No, spending a third of our lives asleep does not make us any less curious. That's just something our bodies force us to do. Unless of course she is referring to the fact that we don't know why, in which case... still no.

Let us disregard the fact there a multiple theories on why we need sleep. Let us disregard what we know all animals with conscious minds needing sleep. Let us disregard this io9 article that says that sleep is a necessary process to take out the brain's trash. Also disregard the fact that we can only hunt during the daytime, and every other thing that tells us why we need sleep. Then Megan's argument might start to make sense. F- for failing to think things through.

And the alt text? Just because one scientist is as clueless as Randall, doesn't mean they all are. M-

'Touché' indeed. What a tool. I bet Randall says 'touché' in real-life. R-

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A shorter version of this review appears at no-hyphen. And this is really exciting. After a five months absence, is no-hyphen coming back? Who knows. The liveliness of no-hyphen's comment threads were always something I hoped to reproduce. So enjoy that comment thread. But when it has died down, you know where to come to, right?