XKCD Isn't Funny - #1675 - Message in a Bottle

Okay, the idea of combining a mailing list with messages in bottles is cute, but this is the worst possible way to execute that idea.

"Unsubscribe" is presented completely out of context, which makes the reader have to guess about what it's referring to. I think most people in this day and age would think of it in a YouTube sense, which wouldn't make sense at all in this comic.

Maybe the guy could be shown throwing a bottle of his own, and he gets one back, and they have a brief conversation (like it's brief to us, to them it's weeks and weeks) about how they're both trapped on desert islands. And then the guy opens up a differently colored bottle one day and it says "Unsubscribe". Actually, even better - "Hey, sorry, but could you please take me off your mailing list?" It makes the joke clearer and more accessible without sacrificing the original punchline, or at least the intent of the original punchline.

Also, I'd like some more characterization for the guy who opens the bottle. I'm not saying he has to be Walter White or anything, but I'd like to know if he's fending for himself on a deserted island, Far Side -style, or if he's just walking along a regular beach. It kinda changes the way you read the comic depending on which interpretation you go with (in this way, and only in this way, you can compare Randal Munroe to William Shakespeare). If he's alone on an island, he's desperately hoping to get some useful information from the bottle, and his disappointment is funny. This interpretation is funnier if it's a spam ad, though. If the guy is just some shmuck, then I think we need more characterization for the sender.

Maybe the sender is on his island, and he keeps getting tons and tons of bottles, and he's running out of space on his island because he's got so many. In a last ditch effort, he writes: "Unsubscribe from this mailing list?" and checks the box next to it, and when he throws it into the ocean all the bottles disappear.

I kinda find it funny how the art gets increasingly simplified as the comic progresses. First we have that cool front view with a coastline and hills and birds, then the surf loses some of the detail and we switch to a standard side view, then the background disappears completely. It should at least return in the last panel.