XKCD Isn't Funny - #1408 - MARCH OF THE PENGUINS

Phew, I was worried there for a minute; after a comic I couldn't work up any sort of real opinion about and a stupid infographic, we finally have something I can get nice and worked up about.

Gamer_2k4 opened his triumphant return to xkcd-sucks with a brief sampling of just a small handful of the comics that our Mr. Munroe has made on the subject of aging, and feeling old, and how we're all going to die soon, etc. I'm not going to do that for the sake of being lazy and terrible brevity, but there is a long history of this kind of humor, is what needs to be understood.

There's such a history, in fact, that the second panel has to reassure us that this isn't more of the same. "I get it." she says, spitting right in the eye of her own creator.

Haha, something that'll only be mildly funny and even then only to me just happened! I'm listening to my iTunes on shuffle as I type this up, and one of the 'songs' that came up was just a British guy saying the word "incantations" and cutting immeadiately into the next song! Hahaha!

Black Hat is acting weird (or weird for him, so like... normal-er than usual?), I can't think of any other example of him apologizing or repenting for anything he's done before. He felt sorry for himself during the JOURNAL series, but that's about it.

Do you (yes YOU, the one reading this!) think XKCitizens will ever get tired of being shocked by Black Hat's capacity for cruelty? Will the tiny little "oh god"s and "I hope I'm on your side"s ever cease? Eventually Black Hat's going to come in and say something like "I stole food from the orphanage and used it to make a sculpture of Hitler." and the reaction, already down from "What the fuck is wrong with you!?", will just be "Again?".

Now, like all other losers that hate themselves and have no talents and whose best album was just a long list of ripoffs of other better songs and who will never know love because they're too busy hating successful webcomics, I love me some self-deprication, even if it will never love me back.

This comic comes off as something further than self-deprication, though, it seems more like self parody. The joke really only works if you're aware of XKCD's tendency for aging jokes and are expecting more.

I remember back in ninth grade (two days ago) when I had this idea of making a Let's Play channel with my at-the-time best friend. Because I didn't quite understand the concepts involved, I pre-planned what all the running gags, etc, were going to be, and it was only a few items in that it got to "I even pre-wrote this joke, look at how shit at comedy I am!" [not an actual quote but it might as well be]. At those levels of self-deprication, it stops being funny that the comedian is down to earth and able to mock himself a little, and starts being almost masochistic.

#1393 worked as a single time subversion of expectations, partially because of the background info an XKCD reader has, but mostly because it genuinely had a full setup and punchline. With this, the entire joke is "Look at how repetitive my material is!", which makes me wonder if there are any fans going "You know what, he's right, his material is pretty repetitive. That incredibly handsome genius over at XKCDIsntFunny.blogspot.com had a point.". A quick look through the forums says that it hasn't happened yet -or at least, no one's been vocal about it- but there's still hope that one day everyone will agree with all of my opinions, so there's that.