XKCD Isn't Funny - #1418 - HORSE

Well, the readers have spoken (by the way, thank you all for feeding my fragile ego), you're gonna get a review for every single XKCD that happens from now on, regardless of the circumstances. Woo!

The first thing that jumped out at me when reading this comic was that it was essentially a rerun of #1031, but with worse art.

Before I started this blog, I did click through the archives of xkcdsucks and xkcd-sucks, both to see what running an XKCD hateblog would entail and for the entertainment value. The thing I noticed when I was reading them was that they tended to be much less leniant on originality than I am. For instance, Gamer_2k4 criticized #1393 for using the same premise as a lot of other comics, while I (geez that's a terrible review, it barely explains my position at all) praised it for taking an old concept in a new direction.

There's another example I can think of, but can't find the actual post, where Carl said that two comics that both centered around an innocent mistake resulting in large consequences, which to me seems like decrying an entire section of comedy tropes.

So I do feel a little hypocritical when I look at this comic and say "What? That's it? He just changed the words he was using in his browser text replacement." and it does take a bit of mental self-justification.

For one, the entire joke remains the same. 'I replaced word A with word B, now sentences with word A seem like they're about word B and it's funny because the sentences look absurd.'. That idea, just by itself, reminds me of the hilariously badly written, typo-ridden fanfiction that people like The Holy Cabbage would do dramatic readings of. More to the point, what has been changed from #1031 to #1418 aside from the words? It's the exact same plot, just with a different starting point. Actually, since #1031 showed the screen he was reading, this version of the joke actually has less detail in it.

Explainxkcd points out that the joke is also the same in #1004 and #1288, and I'd really like to bring everyone's attention to the latter of those two. It's just a list of these things; common words that, when changed to other words, make sentences look silly. And really, when you've made a list of varients on the same joke, why even bother continuing with it? You've already admitted you're just repeating the same idea.