2014-11-18

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1448 - QUESTION


Sometimes I do legitimately wonder about things, almost childlike for a few moments. What kinds of people live on those islands north of Russia? Will I ever be happy again? What would the color red taste like? (these are mostly shower thoughts) And sitting here, I do have to wonder about Randy's thought process as he made this comic.

First of all, he must have come up with the joke, which is actually a reference to an Isaac Asimov short story that I've yet to read, so I thought "Isaac" was a reference to the famous one. Y'know, the lumberjack-looking guy in Mother 3? Or, if you're more 'INDIE (Including Not-Dumb Information Existence', that guy who got hit with an apple that one time, who happens to currently be the first autofill result for "isaa".

Second, our boy Randy decided to keep the reference in, which alienated people like me who hadn't even heard of it, but that could be that the only pop culture I ever consume is a certain webcomic (cough Questionable Content cough).

And lastly, we have the bizarre choice of presentation, a drawing of a sheet of paper being the only thing preventing the comic from being straight-up text. (new tag: "could be a tweet").

It's my old problems with presentation taken to their extreme, when there is none. When the joke is dumped on us like it would have taken a crapton of effort to draw a stick figure talking to a simple drawing of a computer. The joke is rendered pointless behind a total lack of attempt to sell it to the audience.

The alt text was pretty good though.

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