Comics 1023-1025: Xkcd Sucks Dot Tumblr Dot Com

Some reviews for you, including a very special guest review of 1025 by some cuddlefish named CrazyCod (coddlefish?).

1023. Some notes: first, Randy definitely wants you to know that he and his milk plant watch (watched?) Downton Abbey. This is important because last time he told you that he watches this popular British show on PBS he was intentionally getting the name wrong and you guys he was doing it to be funny.
This is one of the many XKCDs where I can see it being funny if it were written by someone who wasn't Randy. The execution is terrible--it reads like a pitch for a joke rather than an actual joke. I can see a number of webcomiceurs (or webcomiceusses) pulling it off. Randy didn't really try. He just described a scenario and said "wouldn't that be funny?

1024. It took me a while to realize that the pond wasn't supposed to be like a bunch of pacmen eating each other or something. I hear rumor that the fanboys think this is brilliant art instead of a passable "I guess you can tell this is supposed to be a pond and it's not fuck-off hideous" drawing.

1025.  [NB. the rest of this post is a guest review -Ed.]

Hello! I’m CrazyCod and I'm just now sending this review of Randy's latest comic-on-the-Internet to Rob (oh god i hope rob posts this i don’t want to have written it for nothing). Apparently, our collective sigh after 1024 turned out not to be a lame throwback to 1000 was loud enough that Randy picked up on it and decided to make 1025 even worse just to spite us.

 

So, let’s get straight to the point. Does 1025 have any comedic merit? I think it is pretty clear that it does not. There are several problems with the comic, the most important of which that it is simply not funny. Randy takes a hackneyed snowclone, which was arguably never funny to begin with, and substitutes it with another snowclone of his own creation. So, instead of “X would be a good name for a band”, we get “X.tumblr.com”! This is supposed to provoke hearty guffaws from the readers.

 

Well, given that my Internet habits revolve almost exclusively around xkcdsucks and assorted pornography, I thought that there might be a joke hidden in there that maybe I was just missing out on. Maybe, like certain bands that people worse than me would derisively attach the label “hipster” to, Tumblr blogs have long and pretentious names. As such, I travelled to the strange land of Tumblr in the hopes of understanding this comic. After navigating through the site’s utterly unintuitive design, I started reading through the blogs’ names, hoping to discover Randy’s source of inspiration. Even after browsing through the most pretentious of categories (I’m looking at you, Art and Film), I failed to find any blog names that were more than six words long, much less awkward, yet complete sentences about raccoon orgies.

 

And that brings us to another issue: the phrase “turns out some raccoons got in and were operating this, like, raccoon sex dungeon” is not funny! It's actually creepy and disgusting! I cannot fathom why anyone would think “that IS a good name for a band!” in the first place, much less make Randy’s mental substitution and think that it is a good name for a Tumblr blog. Most damning is that Randy could have used any other phrase for the “setup”, since the “punchline” works with any phrase whatsoever, but he chose to refer to raccoon orgies. Make of that what you will.

 

I’m not going to criticise the joke’s execution, because the joke itself is so bad that any execution would actually do it honour. The fact that there is a contemplative man saying “dot tumblr dot com” to a woman who is saying clearly inappropriate things to him doesn’t warrant a mention in the context of such a terrible joke. I would like to comment on the alt-text, however, that makes use of the deliciously self-referential idea that there could be a blog called (get this) dot tumblr dot com, because then its URL would be difficult to say out loud. Gee, Randy, that was hilarious when Slashdot did it, back in 1997.

 

I think you will agree with me when I say that a joke is less funny the more broadly applicable it is. As an example, take lightbulb jokes. Lightbulb jokes that can be applied to any group (how many republicans/democrats/whatever does it take to change a lightbulb just one but it doesnt matter they’ll never see the light anyway please like me guys) are infinitely less effective than lightbulb jokes play on a particular group’s characteristics and that wouldn’t work if said group was substituted with any other (how many kids with ADD would take to change a lightbulb HEY LET’S GO RIDE BIKES). Okay, that’s not a particularly funny example, but it gets the point across: change “kids with ADD” for “atheists” and the joke doesn’t work. Much like a friend to everybody is a friend to nobody, a joke that can accommodate any setup isn’t really a joke.

Comics 1020-1022: So It Has Come To This

1020. LOLOLOLOL PENIS

1021. So, on the one hand, I can't tell what the joke is supposed to be here. On the other hand, it doesn't actually bother me. It's a decent pencil sketch and though it fails to capture the murderous look in the eye of every seagull, you know, whatever. Reminiscent of the very early XKCDs, back before he felt like he had to make every comic into . . .

1022. This one isn't abnormally terrible but it is pretty much representative of what XKCD is now. This is something I've seen people say before, and as a genre of joke it's pretty common as well: say something unnecessarily dramatic in response to something mundane as a way to generate humor. Whereas most people will be content with making this joke from time to time, Randy decided, probably after seeing someone use it, to codify it into his comic forever. Randy thinks that mundane, not-really-that-funny ways of being funny are worth putting into comic form and sharing with the world. It's hard not to think that maybe he's not actually trying to be funny here. Maybe he's just trying to hijack a common joke so that every time his fans make a common joke they think of him. Regardless of whether or not he's trying, it works, and it's becoming a problem.

Comics 1017-1019: Apparently This Is Still A Thing

1017. Randy thinks that imagining something he thinks is cool is an extreme sport! He also wants us to think that he imagines something he thinks is cool while he's waiting for something. This is pretty sad.

1018. lolrandumb is not funny, Randy.

1019. Whenever Randy gets political he always does it in a really dumb way, and he gives everyone with left-leaning politics a bad name. This one has the traditional old Randy smugness--"it's totally dumb to buy advertising that everyone who views a site will see when you can just hire people to shill for you on a section of the website that most people don't read unless they want to argue with people"--where he thinks he's smarter than, you know, people who actually know what they're talking about, by drawing a completely unrealistic comparison between two things that are completely unrelated.

See, the point of political advertising on websites (or most advertising, really) is not to win people over to your side. It's about name and brand recognition. Whereas the point of hiring someone to shill for you on the internet is to sway opinions about something people are already aware of. The comment sections of news articles aren't particularly good for this since discussion doesn't actually happen there. You want to go to active forums and things, build rapport, enter a community, and subvert from within. This was my plan with joining the xkcd sucks community, for instance. In a few weeks I'll write a post about how much I love xkcd and instantly all the haters will revert to drooling fanboys, and Randy and I will high-five while he slips me a ten dollar bill for a job well done.

Totally worth it.

It seems likely that Randy may be instead (additionally?) suggesting that many or most political comments online are in fact astroturf comments as described in the comic. This has always been one of the dumbest features of online communities--the accusations that people who disagree with them are just shills--and I'd say I'm disappointed in Randy for encouraging such behavior but let's be honest. It's impossible for me to be any more disappointed in Randy than I have been for the last, oh, thirty-four years.

Comics 1013-1016: Oh Look At The Time

I usually try to do these on Saturdays but I was doing something I actually liked this weekend instead (jk jk i am incapable of experiencing pleasure). Here is a special bonus pack of FOUR shitty one-sentence reviews!

1013. Without the last panel, this one would be pretty good, relatively speaking.
1014. The situation in this comic is so contrived I can't even think about anything else.
1015. In which Randy admits that he hates his readers.
1016. Did you know that nerds hating/overthinking Valentimes is a thing?

Comics 1010-1012: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

1010. Here we have a lame superhero, Etymology Man, giving an etymology in an inappropriate situation! How wacky! As the wave comes crashing in to drown our heroes, he is still giving an etymological lecture, and generally scoring a great victory for pedantry in the process. Too much setup, not enough joke. Though as an aside: I've never encountered someone who whips out their pedantry penis about 'tidal wave' vs 'tsunami.' Is this a thing?

1011. The worst part about this one is I'm terrified this means that Randy is one step closer to bringing his hot porn star daughter fantasies to fruition. More shotgun humor from our intrepid comics auteur. How dull.

1012. Apparently Randy was so thrilled with the joke in 1010, he decided to use it again! "I can make this better," he said to himself. "The people at xkcd sucks always complain when I use too many panels. Well I'll show them! I'll put this wall of text in only one panel!" This joke wasn't particularly interesting the first time. Stop trying to make it happen, Randy.