XKCD Isn't Funny - #1405 - METEOR

I wasn't really sure what to say about this comic, until I followed the advice of Abraham Lincoln and "Simplified.":

MY HOBBY: LYING

No, that's not quite right, not in this internet age of Mouth Sounds and 4chan vs tumblr.

MY HOBBY: TROLLING

Once I realized that this comic really boiled down to that, I realized the problem that this comic has. The premise isn't the issue, which reminds me vaguely of The Onion in its subtle bitter satire.

The issue is that the idea isn't taken far enough. The humor in trolling (when it's done right) is in the shocked, confused, or offended reactions of the trolled. We don't see that, we just see one guy lying to another, followed by the caption.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1399 - CHAOS

When I was in fifth grade, my teacher had us all answer a question on the back of a worksheet. We all handed them in, and the next day she'd put them in an order. She brought in her assistant to react to the answers.

Holding up a sheet she read out: "For women." She turned to her helper and asked if she knew what the question was.
"No." her helper answered, shrugging.
Moving on to the next paper, she read out again: "So women could do stuff."
She took a quick glance around the classrom.
"So women were happy. So women were equal. So women had rights."
After she'd gotten through about half the pile, she got to the students that had actually answered the question, like "Women were given the right to vote so that women could be equal to men.". Eventually she reached Britney, who'd written a full paragraph.
"See how using full sentences gives context to the reader?" she asked, taking pointed looks at me and the other people that hadn't passed the little test.

I'm not asking Randy to preface this comic with "THIS IS A JOKE ABOUT JURASSIC PARK.", I'm just saying that as this comic stands, I thought it was just a mad scientist angry that no dinosaurs had escaped the meteor.

To be honest, I'm not sure how he would have given context to this joke. Maybe he could have added another character for him to complain to, or used a more famous quote to open things.

I'm going to close with a question to any of my regular readers: Do I seem like I'm talking down to you? I saw a comment on xkcd-sucks that said:
"Jon, please don't stop writing. You're so much better than "xkcd isn't funny" - that guy seems to write like he thinks he's smart, and it's too much like reading xkcd. The whole needing to login to post comments thing is just nuts on the turd."

I am always looking to improve my content, so just tell me anything I'm doing wrong. I don't think I can undo the needing to login, though. I checked that out, it looks like we're stuck with it in a post-Google+ world.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1396 - ACTORS

[As Greg was unavailable to write today's review, today's review will be written by his second grade self. We apologize for the inconvenience.]

hello cpu peeps the sciency peeps said to talk about this x-ray seed thing ok
i liked it it was like this joke kyle told me he was like
'oh do u think i am hot'
and i was like
'yes bc it is so hot today were getting out early'
and he was like
'well ur GAY for thinkin im hot'
and i was like
'what is that'
and he was like
'go away' and punched me in the arm he used to play games with me but not nymore

nyway x-ray seed is vray original bc i only heard this once b4 which is good sometims kevin says the same joke alot it can be vray annoying

lol shane r u redding this???? lol

XKCD Is Really Annoying - #1384 - KRYPTON

Well, that was dark. "The crying baby is annoying, let's send it to an exploding planet." That's almost Louis CK level stuff right there.

I don't really have a problem with dark humor, as long as it's done well. The aforementioned Louis CK is my third favorite comedian. It's a bit jarring to see Randy "kiss people" Monroe come out with something like this, though.

Regarding the comic itself... I don't really see what the point of it is, I don't see what Randy was trying to do with it. It's not a parody of Superman's origin story, since nothing from Superman actually has any impact on anything. Replacing "Krypton" with, say, Makemake, doesn't affect the comic at all. So what we're left with is "Let's kill an annoying baby."

Am I missing something here? I'm honestly asking, explainxkcd is down right now. Nothing in this comic is given any emphasis, I don't know what I'm supposed to be focused on. It really does just seem like a lame dead baby joke with a random Superman reference.

Two last thoughts:
1. Only showing the baby's cry in the first panel was a stupid decision.
2. Rob Swire did this much better.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1383 - MAGIC WORDS

This was a really hard comic to review for me. To start, the source of the premise is so obscure that  explainxkcd.com had to quote Wikipedia to live up to its URL.

One of my major issues with XKCD has always been that it never explains itself. Some comics are almost like Rorscharch tests or postmodern art, open to interpretation but really meaningless when you get right down to it.

I could understand the lack of elaboration on the jokes if XKCD's "thing" was really complex and detailed art, like one yaoi comic I found once  that had a really stylized, slightly abstract painted style. XKCD doesn't. It's not like it would take a massive amount of effort to draw another black and white panel with a talking stick figure in it.

I could also understand it if the jokes were always cheap, easy, and accessible, but they're not. Some of them, like this one, require a knowledge of a specific terminology in linguistics, the kind of joke that makes me imagine Randy coming up with his ideas by hitting the Random Article button on Wikipedia.

Another issue that affects a lot of XKCDs is the really weird way the characters talk, really blunt and direct. I've had an XKCD fan write in before saying that it's just part of the minimalism, to which I respond: Okay, sure, he's allowed to do it, but that doesn't make it any less of a terrible idea. To paraphrase half of all complaints about The Great Gatspy, doing something in a deliberately boring or irritating way to make a point may make the point well, but it sure doesn't make me want to hear your point out.

Lastly, the caption doesn't accurately reflect the joke. "Linguist with a foot fetish" means "A linguist that also as a foot fetish". A better phrasing would be "Linguists have a different meaning for 'foot fetish' than most people."

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1374 - URN

I'm slightly conflicted about this comic.

The setup is only a little bit sloppy, it's easy enough to tell that Standy is a teacher and Sitty is a student. It does come a bit out of left field if, like me, you don't quite remember what the "Imagine you're drawing at random from a..." was from, but it isn't really necessary, not really. It's just that a "Today, we're doing probability, so..." at the beginning of Standy's line and perhaps a more obvious height difference would make the setting more immediately apparent.

On the other hand, I have never heard the word "Urn" used in a non-dead person's ashes sense, which makes the punchline look really forced. It doesn't help that the punchline was really weak to begin with: "What if a student acted snarky to a teacher?". If Standy was doing a physical demonstration and Sitty pulled out some ashes, that could be a pretty decent next step to a punchline. SMBC-esque even:

Standy: "...so if you reach in, there's a two in five probability that you'll pull out a red ball. Does that make sense?"
Sitty: "Um... there aren't any balls in here. It's just a bunch of dust."
Standy: "Ash, actually. Your grandfather's."
Sitty: (increasingly alarmed) "Wait... what?"
Caption: "It was at that moment that Sitty realized why she was the only one who'd signed up for statistics with Mr. Munroe."

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1372 - SMARTWATCHES

 

When I did my first writeup of this one, I gave it a positive review. "Good job on this one, Randy." I said, calling it 'clever' and not 'uningaging', 'sorta neat i guess' or even 'meh'.

 

It was only when one William D posted the surprisingly insightful (and, perhaps just as importantly, brief) comment: "Clever doesn't equal funny. This xkcd was like reading Ikea instructions."

 

 

I used to be really into Slenderman. I liked the whole mythos of it, the format, I had this retrospectively-pretty-crappy idea for a mini-series of concept albums about it. Then, one day (I think on tumblr) I saw/heard someone wonder if Slenderman put his suit on in the morning, if he had to get it dry cleaned, etc. It was like a switch had been thrown. What was ever scary about him? He's just a tall guy in a suit with no face. (Dreams In Darkness is still awesome though)

 

Reading William D's comment wasn't quite that drastic, but it had the same sort of "look at your hands and wonder where you went wrong" effect on me. My blog is called "XKCD Isn't Funny", not "XKCD Isn't Good", and I was two or three urls too late to get any decent variation on "XKCD Sucks" (EDIT: I have since realized that xkcd_sucks.blogspot.com is avaliable but WHOOPS guess I should have thought about that before I got an actual audience on this account).

 

And this XKCD isn't funny. It is clever, sure, I'll let it keep that praise. The problem is, it doesn't actually have a punchline. It has nothing that takes it beyond "So I had this idea and isn't it kinda neat?". It may indeed be true that the idea is kinda neat, but it's delivered in such a dry way and doesn't have a point. The reaction isn't so much laughter as it is "That could actually work, huh, cool.".

 

Anyway, a sincere thanks to Will for putting me back on track.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1369 - TMI

The joke is that instead of using TMI in its traditional sense, Randy is overwhelmed by the amount of information that is available to him. This joke fails since "just... everything", while good in the sense that it doesn't slowly explain the joke to the reader, is too vague and pretentious to work as an actual punchline. "True.", added from offscreen, its speaker forever shrouded in mystery, comes off as a self-congratulatory "Look at what an awesome statement I made, guys!". The art adds nothing, showing the same figure at his computer for three panels in a row, and the alt-text just repeats the joke in a slightly different form. 2/10, rated that highly only to leave room to go further down.

XKCD Isn't Completely Terrible - #1364 - "LIKE I'M FIVE"

 

This is an easy comic to critique, which is disappointing for reasons I'll get into in the next paragraph (FORESHADOWING). The joke is here that Person A asks for a simplification using metaphor and Person B takes the metaphor literally. Certainly not terribly inspired, but y'know what, if it's that instead of blatant PSAs, I'll take it. There are really only two problems separating this comic from the "Hey, that's actually kinda funny" reaction I hope for every time I load up XKCD:

1. "Doing tons of math for my thesis." isn't actually a statement that needs simplification.

2. The punchline isn't elaborated quite enough. One more line, like "Come on, let's get you to the help desk, we'll find them, don't worry." would have made everything much clearer and therefore funnier.

 

Anyway, as I cleverly hinted at six sentences ago, I was disappointed that this comic was so close to being good. I'm just going to say it: xkcdsucks linked to me. That's just stupid. If this was a movie this would be the point where the suspension of disbelief would be broken. That's like if deadmau5 talked about how awesome No Rest Records was on Twitter, or if a garbageman was accidently promoted to CEO.

 

 So... here we are. Welcome, all you xkcdsucks-ers to my little blog. I hope you enjoy yourselves with all your comments and such.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1360 - OLD FILES

I don't find this comic actively unfunny, it's kinda neat seeing the evolution of filenames visually depicted like that, but at the end of the day (which it is, actually, 11:15PM as I type this), this is a "I was an angsty teenager once" joke, which I think was funny maybe the first hundred times I heard it.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1359 - PHONE ALARM

I guess Randy was too tuckered out with doing the artwork for the last comic to do anything but a flowchart. It's kinda sad because it's honestly not a terrible joke for a visual gag. The joke here is that when you use your phone as an alarm, the alarm sound is similar to the phone's ringing sound, so a person might try to answer the alarm like a phone.

That joke is pretty much dependent on the image of the person confusedly holding the beeping phone to their ear, saying "Hello? Hello?". It's not hilarious, but it's decent, maybe even alright. I'd probably still have criticized it if that was the only thing in the panel, but it wouldn't have taken much to add things and make it a fairly good comic. Like maybe "I'm sorry, it's too early for morse code, you can tell me why you're screaming later." or a second panel where the answerer would tell someone else "My phone is having some identity problems, it wants to be an alarm clock now." or "Did you know that when your phone reaches a certain level it evolves into an alarm clock?"

These are just off the top of my head, mind, but they're decent examples of how this same joke, if given a bit of artwork (literally just a stick figure in his bed with a phone to their ear) and a caption or panel could have made this into a funny comic, instead of a graph joke.

XKCD Isn't Even Funny - #1357 - FREE SPEECH

 

 

The first four panels are true enough, and it is in part due to those rights that I'm allowed to write this hateblog. (I live in Eagleland, so I have rights, unlike you savages in Cananada and France.)

First off, Randy actually called this one a public service announcement. That is literally what I called his two comics about Heartbleed as an insult. When Randy wrote "PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT" at the top of panel one, he admitted he wasn't trying to be funny or even entertaining with this.

I don't even need to say anything more. He didn't want to be interesting today, he just wanted to yell at people for a bit and draw a door. A nice door, sure, I've got no problems with the door, but it's not enough to make this more than a glorified tumblr post.

[EDIT:] I'm retroactively giving this the "WORST XKCD EVER (SO FAR)" award, specifically because it wasn't even trying to be entertaining or interesting or funny in any way. Every other comic was trying to be, at the very least, vaguely interesting. Even 631 was trying to be funny (I think), and even if it failed badly, at least it failed.

If XKCD, at its very best, is a rocket taking off, then a standard-level stinker is a rocket that explodes, a particularly bad one is a rocket that kills a bunch of people, and 631 was a rocket that blew up before it even launched. This one was a rocket that was planned, and as the plans were being sent to everyone they were intercepted by terrorists and used to kill the president.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't link to a much better deconstruction of this comic done here that was linked in xkcdsucks' parody of this comic. Read that. It's good!

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1355 - AIRPLANE MESSAGE

 

I really do hate this type of "cool fact", the kind that tells you the bare bones of something interesting but nothing else about how it works, why it's like that, or anything else but the absolute minimum.

 

Example: "Kangaroos can't fart." That doesn't tell you why Kangaroos can't fart (bacterium that eat the chemicals that cause gas) why the information is useful (people are trying to transplant the bacterium to cows to lower the amount of methane they produce), and, most irritatingly, it's almost always phrased in the simplest possible way, which a lot of the time, makes the fact harder to verify. So let's put the expected joke right up here: Citation needed.

Here are my questions about this fact: What's the most potent chemotherapy drug? Why does adriamycin come from dirt? What makes the dirt from an Italian castle more useful for the purpose? How is adriamycin extracted from the dirt? I don't know, but I am literally going to refrain from looking any of it up out of spite. Piss off, Randy.

Also, the letters on the banner would be too small to read from the ground, even if you could sneak in and change a banner without it being noticd, which of course, you couldn't.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1354 - HEARTBLEED EXPLANATION

 

 



Since Randy's decided to give us a PSA instead of a joke, I'll give a little announcement of my own.

I recently started my very own record label, where I'll be uploading my music for the forseeable future. Also it'll be entirely pay-what-you-want (even $0!) so you don't even have to pay if you don't want to. Neat! Check it out!
I currently have a few albums and EPs in the works for future release. The most finished are Fast Food Friday, the debut album by my drum 'n' bass project Mick, and Seapunk Is Stupid, the debut thing by my vaporwave/sound collage project Vaporlnd. I'm really proud of what I've got so far, but I'm going to be polishing it up extra shiny before I release anything, since I want it to be quality stuffs for your enjoyment.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1351 - METAMATERIALS

I've been at a vacation resort without internet for the past five days, so forgive the lateness of this post. I'm going to admit I actually chuckled at this one. Sadly, it was because I misread the comic.

When I was reading this, I read it as the standard "Roses are red | Violets are blue" beginning to a poem, so it was funny to me when I read "alter their hue" and had to go back to double check. The joke there would have been on the reader, making them go back and read the words again and notice they read the words wrong. That would have been a very clever play on our expectations if it had been intentional, akin to "Did you know the the human brain doesn't notice when the the word "the" is writen twice?"*

Let's pretend that was the intended joke, in which case the fix is actually quite simple. Take away the color and detail of the first two panels and make the flowers look more alike (still different enough to notice when looking back, though). That way people that pay more attention to the comic would also be fooled.

Also apparently metamaterials don't actually work like that, but honestly who even gives a crap about a four-day old XKCD? (Answer: ME APPARENTLY)


*I tried to find the original post of this, but couldn't find it. I didn't come up with this line, so if anyone can find the link so I can give proper credit, that'd be swell.

XKCD Isn't Funny: #1349 - Shouldn't Be Hard

Before we get into today's comic, I'd like to ask any of my regular readers (of which, after checking, I realize there are none) if they remember why I started this blog. I pretty much owned up to just starting it because the other two XKCD hateblogs had shut down, and I'm willing to sell to a hungry audience. However, XKCD-SUCKS started back up after just a few weeks, and xkcd sucks has posted something very special the other day. I'll probably keep going (you can't get rid of me that easily), and I'm certainly happy to see Rob come back after his five month absence, but I can't help but be a bit irritated that one of my main motivations for writing this blog seems to have disappeared. I have to also admit that I'm a bit irritated that their posts will probably be better than mine. Regardless, let us commence with the review!:

*clears throat*

Yeah, it SHOULDN'T BE HARD to criticize this piece of crap, but you've made it that way, haven't you, Randy!

It wouldn't be that difficult if there was only one thing wrong with a typical XKCD, but sadly, we have not been blessed with such a universe. Today's comic verges into Not Even Wrong territory, almost seeming like something the guys behind South Park left on the cutting room floor when scripting the "Chewbacca Defense" scene. I think I've used this line before, but it almost seems zen, clearing the mind of all thought.

Randy: "This probably isn't going to be hard."
Other: "Your computer is made of stuff. It's going to be hard until someone else simplifies it."
Randy: "I shalt return the computer to its component stuff."
Other: "I will fetch a tool, but not one you require."

The joke is apparently supposed to be that Randy is replacing the task he may or may not have found difficult with a simpler one. The alt-text adds that the supposed simpler task is actually harder.
1. We don't know what Randy is trying to do at all. He hasn't started yet, we don't know if it's hard or not (BUT I KNOW SOMETHING THAT IS HARD! ;) awwww yeahhhhh).
2. Just because a computer has to be programmed does not make doing things on it hard "until someone else makes it easy". Once you have a computer and the knowledge of how to program one-

-[side note]: although it is hard to invent a computer, saying you have to invent the computer to do things with it is like saying you have to invent sand to make glass. The resources have been made avaliable to you, which is not the same thing as making it easy. Making something easy would be closer to making Blogger so people don't have to start up their own websites to start hateblogs on, rather than putting up a tutorial on how to make a website. [/side note]-

-, it's fairly easy to make "HELLO WORLD" pop up onscreen.
3. Randy is wasting a perfectly good computer there.
4. A blowtorch can't turn a computer "back into sand". You find a way of doing that, we'll probably be on our way to creating perfect, instantanious recycling.
5. It is easy to destroy a computer. Randy's the one who had his stupid point about turning "back into sand". He's making things needlessly difficult for himself.

[EDIT:] To Geoff in the comments that I am unable to reply to directly for some reason: No, I've never actually programmed anything, unless you count a lego robotics course I took when I was like, eight. However, that doesn't disprove my point.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1348 - BEFORE THE INTERNET

Y'know, I could see pictures for sad children pulling this off, like almost down to the wording. But pfsc has those beat panels that really make this type of humor work.

And that's all I really feel like writing about today's XKCD. Could be alright, wasns't. Whatever. #PhoningItInFriday

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1345 - ANSWERS

I had to check explain-xkcd to even get what he was trying to say here. Based solely on the explanation given there, which as of this date may or may not be correct, this comic is an attempt to display the following joke:

"We don't know why we sleep, but no one loses sleep over it."

In which case... what? How could Randy try to portray that, and come up with the abomination shown above? I can't even explain why this fails to be funny, I can barely explain why it fails to show the joke it's supposedly supposed to be showing.

Okay, so:
Dude: "Humanity is curious."
Chick: "No it's not, we sleep, and don't know why."
Dude: "You're right, I'm wrong."

What type of mental gymnastics was Randy doing when he wrote this? This almost comes off as dadaism, all non-sequiturs and moon-logic. So the girl's response is supposed to in some way contradict the guy's opening statement, based on the guy's reactionary closing statement. The problem is, it doesn't. She might as well have said "You're wrong, mice eat cheese.".

People are studying sleep (thus, the 'no one loses sleep over it' is incorrect), which is mentioned in the alt-text, leading me to believe this comic may have been so incomprehensible that even explain-xkcd couldn't understand it, and honestly, its explanation is the best one out so far. The forums have mostly been ignoring the lack of sense in favor of debating what we know about sleep, and I thought it was just a rehash of #203.

As a second point, the odd way of describing sleep also makes the reader think the joke is just in the way of describing. There's not even a real lead-in to the supposed second half of the joke.

If anyone has a better understanding of this comic, please say so, and I'll add on a bit to this post explaining why the comic sucks at portraying that, too.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1335 - "NOW"

Geez, what is it with you, Randy? You fluctuate so rapidly between ACF (Actually Pretty Funny), SCHICETAI (Such Complete Horseshit I Couldn't Even Talk About It), and today's IRTC (Infographics Rather Than Comics).

I'm reminded of a quote by Yahtzee from his Top 5 of 2010 video:
"The message Square Enix now seem to be bringing across is: “We just want to make films! How much more gameplay do we need to remove before you’ll figure that out? We’ve pared it down to the point where all you do is clop down linear hallways and their A.I. subroutines do the combat for you. Now stop expecting us to make games so we can remake Spirits Within!” But you just can’t take the hint and stop buying Final Fantasy, can you, you cruel bastards."

Well I don't personally agree with the statement (I'm not much of a game guy) it does reflect how I feel about XKCD. All he wants to do is make infographics and political cartoons, but every time he tries to shift his career, all the people that are still entertained by XKCD jump out of the woodwork and force him to draw stick figures making sex talk at each other again.

And also if you check the forums like I do, you'll see that this is one of at least three revisions he's done, having ballsed it up the last two+.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1332 - "SLIPPERY SLOPE"

I’ll have you know that this comic offends me deeply, Randy. My sister died because people were considerate. You should take this comic down right now, so that other people aren’t offended by such pornographic filth. I mean, look! One character isn’t wearing any clothes at all, and the other one’s only wearing a hat!

This is disgusting, Mr. Monroe. You should be ashamed of yourself.