I really wish this comic was called trainspotting so I could say "Randy must have been trainspotting to have thought this comic was a good idea!" Too bad 'planespotting' isn't a drug-using euphemism.
This feels like Randy's just trying to show off how much he knows about planes, which is stupid, because anyone who would be impressed by that is not someone from whom you seek approval (because they're losers). The joke is literally "I know a lot about airplanes" with a weak disguise over it.
Also - "one of those people" implies that there are more people like this, or that the reader is expected to have seen people like this in other entertainment media, and either way I am baffled and terrified. I'm reminded of one time I clicked on a retweet that came up on my Twitter timeline and their bio was "a nice calm series of tweets about ASS WORSHIP" and I was exposed to a world of which I had never known existed, sheltered from the outside as it was. Is there a whole universe of people who can identify planes from fifty miles? Why did none of them find more productive things to do with their lives? Just imagine all of the webcomics they could have reviewed.
...is what I would say if I didn't check explainxkcd before posting this. HaHA! I stoped myself from making a stupid!
Okay, I admit that the previous four paragraphs are not fair criticism of this comic. BUT, I think in this specific instance I should leave my first impression up. The actual joke is that Randy is talking nonsense but pretending to know what he's talking about. He might as well be a computer technician saying "yeah, you have to reformat your megabytes and upholster the data". BUT (lesser but this time since it's not as important as the last one) unlike my example, which uses simple terms that even less knowledgeable people have a vague understanding of, Randy misused actual jargon. That means that in order to get this comic, you would have to actually be one of those crazy plane-knowing people. Sure, most people would get that "IVII" isn't a real number, but it's buried so much in the techy wordy words that a lot of people are just going to see it as another bit of high level speak in a block of high level speak that they don't have the vocabulary to understand.
In conclusion, most people are going to see this and not get the actual joke and just see this as an incredibly lame brag.
Also - who the hell says "what's that airplane?". Should've gone with the Pink Floyd reference.
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