I feel like it's a fair criticism that I can't tell where the 'serious infographic' ends and the joke part begins. I'm sure I had some lesson on the types of volcano back in grade school once, but without this comic making me look it up I wouldn't have even known there was more than one kind of volcano.
(And just to make it clear I know that by the time we hit "waffle cone" we're in joke country but I wasn't sure if somma or metasomma were also jokes or not. I may be comedy blind but I'm not that inept.)
That said, once we actually get to the joke part, I am mostly on board. "Doot Cone" sucks and "Waffle Cone" and "Inverse Volcano" are kinda just there for me, but all the others are fairly enjoyable ideas. ("Antlion" is the exception, it gets a pass because it reminded me how cool antlions are.) "Ghost Vent" is the kind of humor that I actively enjoy seeing from XKCD, even if it's not funny. It's like a lighter and softer version of Pictures For Sad Children's style of surrealism.
This comic would be better if it didn't have the framing device that it does. The jokes could work, but because they're being presented as advice, I can't help but feel vaguely insulted. I'm not dumb, I don't need to be told not to break my windows!
People being ignorant of obvious things is an easy formula for humor, but I think some of the enjoyment we get from watching stupid people is "I'm smarter than that". Giving the tips directly to the audience removes that element. We don't get to laugh at a character being stupid, the closest we can do is laugh at the speaker's assumption that we wouldn't know it.
Maybe I'm just too prideful, but I think we can agree that the comic wouldn't have lost anything if the guy was telling his advice to another guy instead of us. Maybe the other guy could come back with "...yeah, I know... have you... have you been living like that?" or something and the first guy could be like "Oh, you figured those out already? Wow, you must have all sorts of tricks by now!". It'd make the exact direction of the comic more clear.
No comments:
Post a Comment