Comic 767: Getting Angry

[Alt: Mr. Rogers projected an air of genuine, unwavering, almost saintly pure-hearted decency. But when you look deeper, at the person behind the image ... that's exactly what you find there, too. He's exactly what he appears to be.]

Given that some people - including me - didn't even realize that this comic is meant to be making fun of the recent news of Mel Gibson's rather horrible fights with his own wife-like-friend, I think this is a comic that will not age well. Like a few other comics he's made (making fun of the Obama inauguration, the death of Gary Gygax, etc) this one offers no real context on its own (heck, even the date is not easy to find), so a reader in the future will not have any way of knowing what this is making fun of.

So let's look at this the way a viewer in the future might: He sees a comic devoid of art, just text, that shows Mr. Rogers arguing very politely with his wife. Actually, scratch that - it refers to "Fred Rogers," which a viewer will have to realize was Mr. Rogers' first name. I didn't know that, at least not off the top of my head. I mean, I figured it out, but not everyone is as brilliant as me.

Anyway, the joke is powerfully lame. The joke is saying this: "Mr. Rogers is so nice..." "HOW NICE IS HE??" "He is so nice...that even when he argues with his wife he does it in a nice manner!" Really. That's all there is. And then when you read the alt-text, there it is again!

Yes, it's meant to contrast with the Mel Gibson tape, but a) that only works for those people familiar with the tape, and b) it's a stupid contrast. Of course Mr. Rogers is different from Mr. Gibson! Mr. Rogers is a lovely children's television host, and Mr. Gibson is a crazy psycho racist. That's true no matter what.

The amusing contrast would be to compare one of these men's public persona to a fictional, contrasting one. So you'd have either Mel Gibson secretly being really friendly (unlikely, because we all know it's not true) or the secret dark side to Mr. Rogers. That last one is a funny idea, all the more so because it violently clashes with the image we all want to have of him. Of course, it's also the subject of several well known urban legends, so it wouldn't be very original.

In short: A lazy current events comic that says nothing new about its subject. xkcd has been having a very bad few weeks.

update: I totally forgot! It's the latest in a long string of comics for children!

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You'll also see that there is a link to the store at the top of the site. There's no new product that he's advertising, so one might suspect that he just wants to counteract falling sales. No matter. The point is that I went back to the store to check it out, and found, for the second time, a Breadpig product that annoys me. This is a good time to say that this has nothing to do with xkcd; breadpig is run by Alexis Ohanian, a very friendly and thoughtful dude who sent me my review copy of the xkcd book and also took some time to have a very long conversation with me when I objected to another breadpig product. (that was the spiderpig shirt, still for sale, which i object to because it is a joke that the Simpsons made and breadpig is jumping on to make their own product).

ANYWAY the point is, they are selling this Animal Farm poster and related t-shirt. And I know it's going to seem strange to ask for self-censorship in the context of a George Orwell book, but I think it's bad form to take a popular book, still under copyright, and excerpt parts of it for a product you sell. I know it's just a short quote, but it's an iconic one, and I can't help but feel that if I were to write a book and someone who liked it made something like this, I would be annoyed. The author of the work, or whoever controls his estate, should be the one who benefits from the effort put into writing it and coming up with classic lines like "some animals are more equal than others."

I don't know. It's not as clear cut at the spiderpig case, but I still think it's a bad trend. an ORWELLIAN one, at that.

Comic 764: An Anthropological Study of Nerds

Because this one's exploding, we'll give it its own post, ROB-STYLE. FUCK YEAH WOOOOO

[ALT TEXT: "Cue letters from anthropology majors complaining that this view of numerolinguistic development perpetuates a widespread myth. They get to write letters like that because when you're not getting a real science degree you have a lot of free time." After presumably receiving a lot of angry letters about his alt-text, he added a 'Zing!' at the end. -Ed.]

Let's all pause and take a moment to reflect on the fact that this comic's alt text has (so far!) provoked probably the most agreement this blog has ever seen regarding a comic/alt text. (Even 631, which brought out the "haha you are afraid of vaginas because you are either gay or 12 or both, whereas I, because I am straight and male and heterosexual and masculine, love all portrayals of vaginas, ever, because I am straight and male and never overcompensate for anything" trolls in force.)

Wasn't that fun?

Part of the reason it bothers me is that even if you assume that he's not bashing fine arts people (which isn't the worst assumption you could possibly make, since he doesn't ever really mention them)--people who are, with few exceptions, far busier than science people and therefore obviously vastly superior--he's still ignoring the fact that most social science people spend just as much time with reading, studying, research, lab work, etc. as hard science types. I could see an argument for non-social science types (English majors) having slightly less to do, on account of not having a lab. but they are still quite frequently very busy.

It's amusing that he is attacking people who are pedantic about their field. This is Randall "The Southern Half Of The Globe" Munroe. Randall "I Nitpick Over Electron-Labeling Conventions" Munroe. Randall "I Intentionally Bastardize The Wording Of Common Puzzles And Then Attack That Wording For Being Difficult To Understand" Munroe.

He is the KING of the fucking pedants, is what I'm saying. He, and his fans, are much more likely to email someone who gets a petty fact "wrong" than most other demographics--certainly much more so than the one he's attacking. And he doesn't limit himself to science facts, either. He's a pedant about everything, and, as pedants usually are, he's wrong about it just about every time.

An anthropology major or someone in a related field might email him about this one, it's true. But they're probably not going to email him about a completely unrelated field. Compare to, for instance, Randy himself. If he had not written this comic, but instead stumbled upon it, having read the Wiki articles he used to make it, he would probably have emailed the writer, saying that this view of neurolinguistic development perpetuates a widespread myth.

Randy is a physicist. His entire background in the humanities consists of "reading articles about it on Wikipedia and subsequently disparaging the experts in those fields who made the Wikipedia article he just read possible." And yet he disparages them on his comic even more frequently than I devour a thousand cheeseburgers in one terrible gulp with my horrible gaping maw.

Which is to say, a lot. (Because I am fat.)

Even the forums are coming down pretty hard on this one. Bets on how long until Randy either mysteriously changes the alt text or issues some sappy apology?

also fuck you carl
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OK now it's carl writing.

FUCK YOU right back, Rob! I'm glad you wrote this though, I didn't want to admit I may not have the time for this one. I'll let this be the official post on 764 because then i have less work to do, but we can't let this go without mentioning something else:

First it was comics about basic math (3x9, in this case)
Then it was comics about learning the difference between similies and metaphors.
Now it's comics about Sesame Street.
Am I the only one noticing a powerful trend towards appealing to children?

That will be all.

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Wait, no, carl again, back with updates. First off, to people reading this post in the future, read the comments. There's a huge amount of them but some really good discussions going on.

later update: It just occurred to me: when was the last time we had an xkcd character with eyes? I think it helps a lot. Just imagine how weird it would be without them. I think he should do this more often.

another update: Rob, i can't believe you forgot where "cuddlefish" got started! it was here. As you can see, it was Amanda's idea. It is interesting that while she constantly refuses to become a regular blogger on this site, she has given us by far our most lasting meme.

also: This is linked to in the comments but I want to make sure everyone sees it.

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Last update, added way after our original post insulting this comic:


Zing!

Comic 759: Destroy the Radical

I used to think Randall was lowering his standards to make high school kids appreciate his comic. Now I realize he's gone all the way down to second grade.

i'm guessing that the overlap between kids who like this comic and kids who like this is pretty huge. [link should be working now, if not, google "proof that girls are evil"]

I might write more about this comic later but quite frankly, i don't think i need to.

- - - -

update: Some relevant links: a PvP parody of this comic that is perhaps the first PvP i've ever enjoyed; and a good comment from Bill about having seen this idea before [I was actually thinking to myself that the one place I know of where the alt-text idea works really is trig identities, because the questions you'd get on a test are not What is the Answer To This Problem but How Can You Make This Thing Look Like That Thing]