[If you didn't see my post requesting general feedback about this blog, as well as an unsatisfying explanation for why posts are sporadic for the next 10 or so days, check it out here]
While I will almost surely regret this tomorrow, I am staying up Past My Bedtime to post some quick and fairly belated thoughts on this comic, because they are simple and short.
1 - Hey hey, just when I foolishly thought he'd already mocked every meme out there, he comes out with another one.
2 - Hey hey, just when I foolishly thought he'd gotten sick of goddamn google search . Dude: It's just a search engine. Relax, ok? We don't all want unscientific studies in place of our comics.
3 - "Cups" should be "cup/cups." With the plural in there, "2 girls 1 cups" is both ungrammatical and inaccurate, as a google search for it brought up, as of this writing, only 2,750 hits. You'd think that maybe he'd make mistakes elsewhere in the chart, not in the key block.
4 - What's the point? There's apopular well-known video online, and it has many google hits. But variations of its name do not! EUREKA. I must report these findings to the world!
1 - Hey hey, just when I foolishly thought he'd already mocked every meme out there, he comes out with another one.
2 - Hey hey, just when I foolishly thought he'd gotten sick of goddamn google search . Dude: It's just a search engine. Relax, ok? We don't all want unscientific studies in place of our comics.
3 - "Cups" should be "cup/cups." With the plural in there, "2 girls 1 cups" is both ungrammatical and inaccurate, as a google search for it brought up, as of this writing, only 2,750 hits. You'd think that maybe he'd make mistakes elsewhere in the chart, not in the key block.
4 - What's the point? There's a
Update: It's tomorrow, and I regret it!
This is a really minor complaint, but it bugs me that the "x" variable is paired with the vertical side, and "y" with the horizontal. I realize this isn't a coordinate graph, but since there's no particular reason why "Girls" and "Cups" should be on the sides they're on, I wish it were done the more intuitive way.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, I have to admit that I find comics like this kind of pleasing. You're completely right that they're not funny, and I suppose that's pretty harsh criticism for a comic. But I like them for the same reason I like sorting M&Ms by color--because seeing minor things sorted out systematically gives me a very small warm, fuzzy feeling.
Now might be a good time to bring up OCD, but that's an even more tired source of humor than Star Trek.
Suspicion: These are not the actual Google results, but rather numbers chosen for subtle comedic value.
ReplyDeleteOf course, every Google search is invalid now that this comic is up, but "7 girls 7 cups" returns over 2,000 hits, and at first glance not all of them are xkcd-related.
Comedically, however, (7,7) has little individual purpose, other than to be in a large area of '0's. (5,6) fills the role of "confusing outlier."
pat: I suspect if it was actual google search results, they were in quotes? When I search "7 girls 7 cups" I get about 425 results. But you're right, they do appear to contain not-XKCD-related searches.
ReplyDeleteEasily one of the best titles.
ReplyDeleteKristen - your first point is good, if only because Randall often takes pride in his nerdy attention to detail. Had the labels for the Cups axis been along the bottom it would be worse.
ReplyDeleteI have no comment on your love of organization. As you say, it's a comic and it should do more than make you feel fuzzy.
As to whether the numbers are real, god knows. He might have done the searches a few months ago (you know, when the video was actually still popular) and only drawn up the comic now. Also maybe it has to do with whether there are spaces in between the words? I was under the impression that the original video was "2girls1cup" with no spaces.
Next on xkcd: a graph of "long cat is looong" measuring the number of results for different numbers of Os in "loooong".
ReplyDeleteGoogle Results for:
ReplyDeleteDickroll: 32
Hickroll: 21
Rickroll: 804109834280342098
Flickroll: 23423
Stickroll: 2
Rickdroll: 82
Look, I wrote next Friday's xkcd!
I really hope you do #468, because I have something snarky to say about that one.
ReplyDeleteI'm probably not going to post on it - maybe if it wasn't this week but I don't have enough to say. BUT What you should do is e-mail me your snarky comment and we can make it another SUPER SPECIAL guest post - czwheeler@gmail.com
ReplyDeletesweeeeet
You're completely wrong about #4 -- the "eureka" part, quite legitimate and a bit disturbing, is that variations of its name DID result in Google hits. Gaaah! :)
ReplyDeleteOk ok, FINE "variations of its name do not have nearly as many hits!" EUREKA, etc.
ReplyDeleteTell me what the joke is supposed to be and I will reconsider #4.
You can't call Google unscientific. If you desire to know the number of sites which contain a single statement, or more accurately, the number of a ratio of sites which contain different statements, then Google is your best bet. This is like saying Wikipedia is no a scientific method of finding out what Wikipedia members have to say about a particular subject.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Google does not differentiate between singular and plural unless you are very explicit in how you type it in. As a default, Google will add or drop an 'S' for any noun.
Finally, as I come to understand the comic, it is a farce on people's interest in Girls and cups. i myself find humor in how much people (including myself) cling to pop culture.
I have to disagree, on several counts. Google may, I'll admit, be your best bet, but that doesn't mean it's going to be a good one. Google has to estimate - a lot. To say that the number of google results for a certain search phrase means that that number of websites exactly contain that phrase is very, very wrong.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, wikipedia isn't a scientific method of finding out what wikipedia editors think about a given topic (not that your analogy is apt anyway, but still). It's a way of finding out what certain editors choose to express, some times. Nothing more, nothing less.
As to the comic being a "farce", what do you mean? As far as I can tell, the point of the comic is that the phrase gets the most hits with 2 as the first number and 1 as the second, BUT THAT ISN'T SURPRISING, because there's a viral video with that name and with none of the others!
What humor there was in this topic was exhausted in comic 75, which I enjoyed.
ReplyDeletehttp://xkcd.com/75/