Comic 891: How To Make A Joke Feel Old

[Everyone's least favorite commenter, "The Mole Who Gets Paid Sometimes, I Guess," has submitted a guest review, which is good because this comic is fuck-off boring. -Ed.]

Well, look who's here again? Yep, it's the Mole, and as crazy as ever! And do you know who else is crazy? I have no idea, but I know Randall is suddenly feeling old, it seems. Because, really, look at this comic:



Oops, this is not Wednesday's xkcd is it? Nope, it's one from 5 years ago, when Randall was... 21 years old. Here we see past Randall, a care-free youngster raising a flag for the world to see. And it says: I don't need to grow up, I'm young and I'll seize that for as long as I can. Oh, past Randall, how you have inspired us...

...then, five years later:



Randall is now 26 years old and apparently realized he just spent 5 years making comics starred by stick figures rambling about nerd interests and receiving comments that were, in the peak of its eloquence and significance, reduced to "GOOMHR". Now Randall is feeling old. And I feel no sympathy for him.

Because, firstly, this is not the first time Randall invokes this "fear". There was that shitty shitty comic that dealed with the same stuff. But what is this fear? What the heck is going on that people who barely reached the half of their life expectancies(I'm guessing at least 72 years for developed and emergent countries) are already having middle-age crisis? Where 20-year-olds are complaining about they youth these days, without realizing they are the "youth these days". I know people who feel old before 30 years old and I do tell them "stop that; you're not even 30 years old, stop feeling old, you have a lot to live through. You can get back to it when your 40." And I think it's amazing that I have to tell them that.

And how does Randall choose to show us why we should feel old? Why, he shows us when famous movies were made! Because, really, that shows it, right? Well, anecdotally I can say I really thought Shrek has been launched more than 10 years ago. It has 3 sequels and one spin-off in the making by now. And the phrasing on that last one is incredibly convoluted, isn't it? "Closer to the moon landing than the present day", really? Well, yes, really: 22 years from 1989 to now, 20 years from 1969 to 1989. So, while that's true... it's just plain confusing. That's Randall's writing on board, ladies and gentlemen!

But most important: THIS IS NOT A COMIC. You can't just draw a table by hand and call it a comic, Randall. These things don't work like that! That's not even an inforgraph, it's just a table. A table that could as well be represented as... well, as a table, instead of a big image. So we have shoddy unnecessary art to pair with our stupid argument.

Veredict: the comic is shoddy. It's not even a comic. I rest my case.

Mole out.