Comic 546: Free at last?

A little while ago, a subversive political activist named Randy Munroe was feeling ornery because music that he downloaded was a little tricky to deal with. You see, if he downloaded music illegally, that made it harder to copy. Well, sort of: It was that one big bad company was selling some protected music, some unprotected. Others were just selling unprotected music. Randy did not notice those places where he could buy DRM-free music, and so he was angry.

So he decided to draw a picture that showed his anger. He put it on his illustrated blog, xkcd, and we all saw it and wondered why he didn't just buy unprotected music given that it was pretty easily available.

Then the people who sell music at apple decided that they would un-DRM their music. Never mind that there were programs readily available that could strip DRM out of programs using magic. This was a result of angry people on the internet, and they should all be happy about it. And so Randy was happy.

He drew a special picture for his picture blog, congratulating himself and fellow internet warriors. "We won the music DRM war" his character said. Also they said "Rock the fuck out" and Randy gave them hands and fingers for one brief second, only to make them into the gesture he assumes must go along with a phrase such as "rock the fuck out". So that was pretty dumb but let's ignore it for now.

With his righteous anger now taken away - and, we can always hope, the error of his previous comic brought to his attention - he now had to think of a new reason to be mad on the internet. And that's when he realized that the best reason...was no reason. It will always work. It will always "be free." Never mind that he doesn't understand when or how the music stores were DRM free. Never mind that his previous attempts to touch on worldly affairs were comically inept. He can justify all that, retroactively, and future incompetence as well, in one fell panel swoop. "I just like being self-righteous on the web." See guys, he wasn't trying to make a point! He's just being a dick.

Now, as a dick myself, and a guy who just likes being self-righteous on the web, I suppose I should be happy. I suppose I should enjoy the self-deprecating humor. Somehow I don't. It doesn't feel genuine enough to me. It feels like "oh ha ha, I was totally kidding guys, totally kidding. Uh yeah." Perhaps I'm being to harsh on it, I should really encourage this kind of non-pretentious humor. But the first three panels were so pretentious that the comic is still problematic.