XKCD - #1952 - Backpack Decisions & Questionable Content - #3676 - Put It On A Jazz Drive

When I was a kid, I didn't really understand how jokes worked. I didn't really understand how anything else worked either, but that's beside the point. I think it's a fairly universal thing for kids, when they get a laugh out of someone, to tell the same joke over again to see if they can get the same laugh. I've heard a few different people with children talk about things like this happening. And then the next stage, when that doesn't work, is somehow making the punchline 'bigger'. "To get to the other side!" becomes "To get to every side everywhere!", and so on. 

Just in general, kids don't understand the 'more is less' idea. You can see this in Hyperbole And A Half's "The Scariest Story", where the idea of 'a closet' quickly becomes 'THREE HUNDRED CLOSETS'. I remember specifically from my own childhood, after I first saw the Spongebob episode "Graveyard Shift" for the first time (and keep in mind I was like, five) I tried telling my own scary story, which took the idea of 'the lights will flicker on and off and etc' and turned that into 'and the lights will go up and down the wall and turn red' or something to that effect. 

I find it kinda interesting how when you do 'scary' too much, it stops being scary and becomes funny. Like, 'the killer with a hook for a hand' is scary, but then if you make it 'the killer with a hook for a hand and a skull face and he leaves a trail of blood with every footstep' suddenly that becomes a cartoon. Conversely, if you do 'funny' too much, it stops being funny and just becomes dumb, or, on occasion, a little bit creepy. 

I understand that in the two comics above, the exaggeration is part of the joke. I understand that. But the exaggeration is taken to such a degree that I can only think that these characters as depicted would not be functional people. And yes, I am taking the joke seriously, but only because of how the jokes are presented. 

In the XKCD, Randall is framing the comic to be #relatable. The first-person caption, the fact that the stick figure is standing in a store instead of shopping online, the way the graph underneath lists common things like laptops instead of Randall-specific things like 'hosting server' or etc. These things are meant to make the reader put themselves in the stick figure's/Randall's shoes. We are meant to be laughing with him, not at him. 

In the Questionable Content, we are viewing a moment in a story. This story includes a recollection of a suicide, discussions of war by a veteran who lost all her squadmates, a near-death from drinking, etc etc. My point is that Questionable Content, although it may be generally comedic, has Serious Moments. And in order to take these Serious Moments seriously, there needs to be basic order and logic. Sure we can have super science cardigans and all that; but nobody is going to spontaneously learn to levitate, the laws of physics still apply to everyone, etc. If someone is punched in panel one, they should have a bruise in panel two. Logic needs to apply.

In short, because of the context and presentation that these two comics have, the silly one-off gags that could be funny instead become worrying. Like, Emily just described herself as having vivid long-term hallucinations that she can't distinguish from reality. That's a problem! That's a big big problem! She works at a coffee shop with boiling liquid all day! I understand her thing is that she's unrepentantly weird, but there's a difference between enjoying weird food and literally being unable to tell what's real and what isn't. I know it's just a one-off gag, but now for every strip Emily appears in, I'll be thinking "Why has she not gone on meds yet that's what they're FOR.".

The XKCD comic is less unnerving since we don't have as much of an established universe, but it's still troubling. Again, I understand, exaggeration, comic effect; but the comic does not lend itself as framed to cartoonish hyperbole. Look at the art, it's a detailed drawing of a standard shopping aisle. And the guy is going over concerns that a person would probably actually have when buying a backpack. That makes the comic seem more grounded in reality. 

A better image would be the guy literally digging through a massive pile of backpacks, with the narration like "That one doesn't have pockets, that one's not waterproof, none of these are good enough, none of these are good enough", and then the caption could be "I've spent more time trying to find the right backpack then I spent trying to find the right college." I'd still think it was a weird choice for a comic, yknow, like, seriously, it's just a backpack; but it wouldn't be worth a write-up. 

On an entirely unrelated note, I don't know to what extent any of you are invested in me as a person beyond the #content I produce. Which is totally understandable if you aren't, really, I'm just a guy. But on the off chance you've been wondering why I took that break back in 2015 (back when I thought one paragraph out of four counted as 'reviewing the comic'), please feel free to check out the first thirty minutes or so of the latest episode of my dumb podcast (autoplaying sound warning if you click the link), where all is revealed, possibly to an uncomfortable degree. 

In conclusion, I dyed my hair again.

Why Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" Fails

Full confession, I have never been a big fan of 'the t-swift', before or after her shift from strummy country-pop to trendy dance pop. I do like "Love Story" and "I Knew You Were Trouble" though, even though they're kinda dumb.

That's really what Taylor Swift is best at: songs that are dumb but fun. Like "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together". That's a stupid song, but it's FUN stupid, it's FUN to sing along to "Weeeee... are never ever ever... getting back together". I mean, fun for teenagers. Not me, I'm an adult person.

When Swiftaylor tries to be dark, it really just comes off as immature. Take the bridge: "I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me | I'll be the actress starring in your bad dreams". I'm just thinking 'Well, maybe people'd trust you more if you weren't caught lying'. And 'bad dreams'? Old Taylor is dead but the edgy new Taylor can't even say "nightmare"?

And that's really the biggest problem with this song. It's set up like an edgy diss track, when it has no teeth at all. Compare it to Remy Ma's Nicki diss, which brought those #receipts and kept bringing them the whole track. Is it fair to compare a pop song to a rap song on lyrical detail? Not totally, but it does illustrate the point that "LWYMMD" doesn't name names, except in the vaguest terms. If you look at the genius page right now, you'll see people saying the song could be about Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, or Katy Perry, but it's just not clear. So it becomes just a general 'unnamed person is bad' track that might as well be another 'my ex broke up with me song'. And that would be fine, if the song itself wasn't broken.

First, look at the lyrics, removing all context: "I don't like your perfect crime | How you laugh when you lie | You said the gun was mine". Crime/lie/mine is a super basic rhyme scheme (It took five people to write this???), and the image they create is totally disconnected from any kind of reality - someone's accusing Taylor Swift of murder? and then her only reaction is "isn't cool, no I don't like you". Weak!

The beat isn't terrible, but there's a lot of weird decisions. Like how the first verse is percussion only, and there's no transition to the piano-driven pre-chorus, even though there was a perfectly suitable transition effect used at the thirty second mark when a new drum comes into the mix. And interpolating "I'm Too Sexy" was just dumb. That song is one of the (enjoyably!) goofiest songs of all time. Even people who don't recognize it are going to subconsciously associate that goofy mood with the attempted seriousness of "Look What You Made Me Do", which takes away from any power the song might have had left.

In conclusion, the only way that the song works is if it turns out to be some kind of meta-diss. Like, "Look what you made me do, you upset me so much that now I can't recognize a bad song".

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1762 - Moving Boxes & #1763 - Catcalling

Is this even a joke? Like, it's funnier than a blank white square, but it's still less funny than actual formed comedy. Every box might as well just have been labeled "I'm quirky".

Not all jokes make sense broken down into a setup/punchline equation, but let's just go with this for a second.
Setup: Randy forgot to label his boxes when moving.
Okay, that's fine. It's not the most interesting setup, but not all setups have to be interesting. Maybe someone helping him move will unintentionally open his sex toy box instead of his blanket box.
Punchline: Randy labels the boxes with words that do not represent what is inside the boxes.
Like, what even is that? That's not funny! That's not a joke! If this was Questionable Content or whatever and it was just in the background, it'd be kinda cute as a character thing, but this is the entire comic, this is all we're given!

Literally everyone who has heard the word "catcalling" as thought of a variation on this joke.

Also, missed opportunity: Not having it turn out that the definition of 'catcalling' was somehow integral to the structure of the universe.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1759 - British Map & #1761 - Blame

This is probably the weakest a comic can be without getting a thumbs-down. The joke boils down to 'certain words sound British', which is obvious to anyone that knows anything about history. We speak English, which was developed (mostly) by the English, who also live in Britain....

That said, it is kind of amusing in a vague way to imagine towns named after Pokemon, and "BBC Channel 4" is actually a clever pun that could only have arisen though this specific joke. Plus, I asked Jon (Levi), with whom I do a podcast, for his thoughts about this comic, and he said it pissed him off! That's how you know a comic's good, when it pisses off the British. 

I think most people will find at least one funny bit in this comic, even if as a whole it might leave them cold. It's still better than 'time is passing (again)' or 'im very smart with science' or...

This is set up like a parody of people, but no one in the history of ever has had this thought process. Even in a longform way that this comic just sums up. This comic parodies something that doesn't exist, which would give it a nifty dada quality if it was intentional. 

And I'm not just being dumb! Explainxkcd has (at time of writing) like five different theories on what this comic could mean. 

Also, who uses Facebook anymore? That exact question was asked two years ago on this very blog, the last time XKCD mentioned it. 

Fuck yo shit, I can't even believe this shit. Have you seen this shit? Fuck, I just watched this shit. Fuck Jessie Heisenberg, man.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1753 - Thumb War & #1754 - Tornado Safety Tips

My biggest issue with this one is that the meter gets messed up in the last line. I know Black Hat is a kid in this comic, but I was a kid once and I knew how to stick to a rhythm. Back in second grade, me and both my friends would make up tons of new lines for that dumb 'I hate you, you hate me' song and we knew how to count syllables, dammit! It's an easy fix too, just add "the" in front of "thumb" or switch "won't" out for "will not".

I really like the idea of seeing Black Hat learning to be menacing, and I hope we get to see a good comic about it someday. OHHH! Did you see what I did there?

I know that the lack of actual menace is explained by Black Hat being a kid so I can't complain about it, but I'm going to anyway. It's not menacing! That 'I hate you, you hate me' song is more menacing than this! That had explicit mentions of various types of weapons and their usages, this is vague and doesn't even paint an abstractly ominous picture.

The thing that made Black Hat work in the past was a kind of catharsis factor mixed with Rule Of Cool. Don't we all kinda want to smash in the windows of jackasses with vanity licence plates? Isn't it just fun for someone to steal a nuclear submarine just to get a hat back? But no one wants to be this guy, anyone can be this guy, and it's not cool to be this guy. It's not chaotic evil, it's boring evil.

All that said, if there's a sequel where someone comes along and teaches him to actually be wacky mayhem guy and then we see him using an electric toy car to short circuit the P.A. system, this comic is retroactively made better.

Also not menacing! It's just unhelpful! I will say that it's kinda funny because it is all technically true but useless, but the inclusion of Black Hat just throws things off. It doesn't even need a character to pin it down, but if it did, Beret would be the way to go, since he's the weird guy.

Actually, this comic could be made pretty good if it was established that this was inside some kind of "In case of Tornado" emergency kit. Imagine, people look inside the box desperate for help and then they just find this flyer? Morbid, yeah, but funny!

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1730 - Starshade & #1731 - Wrong

Is "Starshade" an intentional Gregor The Overlander reference? 'Cuz that'd actually be pretty cool, especially because "Gregor" is basically my name and it'd therefore almost be a me reference!

Pranks aren't funny if they're nice. Well, that's not true, there can be nice pranks like painting a dome like R2D2 or whatever, but pranks can't be purely beneficial to the recipient. That's a surprise gift, not a prank.

The kinda-funny idea slightly to the left of the core of this comic is that these two people are able to set up the massive space thingy without NASA knowing until its in place. None of the process or action by which this feat is achieved is shown in the comic, and that's just a shame. It still wouldn't be as funny as if they were actually screwing with NASA, but it'd be funnier than just hearing vague descriptions of things happening off-screen.

This one could have been funny if the guy was wrong about something else. Like, can you really blame him for not knowing something about quantum physics? That shit's confusing as hell!

See, for a guy being wrong to be funny, we have to know how he's wrong. So I will give credit where credit might be due and I will admit that if I knew what they heck "particles" were, maybe I would enjoy this. However, I think we can all agree that this joke would be more accessible if he was wrong about something like the digestive process or whatever.

Now, onto the elephant of the room: This comic is almost certainly about the phenomenon known to us poor peoples of 2016 as "mansplaining" which is when a man corrects a woman because of sexism, or something like that. I'm a man so I might be wrong about that but that gives women a chance to womansplain me back and the genders will be equal again so yay!

Randy, as has been established, is a feminist-y type of person. I'm not going to get into the politics since honestly who cares about my poorly-informed opinions? I'll leave the gender debates to my 15-year-old self. I bring the mansplaining thing up because it means that Randy is trying to make a point, and this point is being made very poorly. All we see is a guy deny that he's wrong and then be wrong in a different way, no lesson is taught or learned, the bad guy is not brought down through a pie in the face or a verbal knockout, we just see things As They Are (in Randy's perception).

I've been reading The Naked Jape for the past few days, and there's a chapter that discusses the different theories about why jokes are funny. I won't get into it for space reasons, but basically there are four theories, none of which cover all types of jokes but together they cover pretty much everything. The one thing that all the theories agree on is that for a joke to work, reality has to be at least a little bit altered. That's not to say that all altered reality is funny, just to say that for a joke to be made, reality has to have been altered; all thumbs are fingers but not all rectangles are squares. That's also not to say that real life can't be funny, just that standard real life isn't funny; a guy picking up groceries is not funny on its own, he has to be picking up KY jelly and fruit or have forgotten his pants or whatever.

So, with the previous paragraph in mind, reconsider the comic. If this is just reality As Is, then what's the joke? There isn't one. And we already talked about how there's no point being made, so what's the appeal of this comic? There isn't one.

I want to close on a quick disclaimer. I may have political views, but I do my best to set them aside for this blog. I'm not criticizing Randy for putting forth a feminist statement, I'm criticizing him for putting forth a badly made feminist statement.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1728 - Cron Mail & #1729 - Migrating Geese

Ha! Take THAT, Cron! Randall "XKCD" Munroe just ripped you a fucking new asshole! I bet you thought you could get away with sending lots of mail, but not on his watch! Now everyone who reads this comic knows how much you suck! I never heard of you before in my life, but now I know to AVOID AVOID AVOID, and furthermore

Seriously though the joke is just him whining about a computer inconvenience, who cares. That's not to say that having a big email backlog is completely devoid of comedy potential (I recall Allie Brosh doing some good things with it), but if the joke is as contentless as this comic, the seed exists in an unwatered state.

I think the biggest problem with this comic is that his "hardball" retaliation is completely toothless. Here's hardball: printing out every one of the emails and mailing them back. Revenge isn't funny if it takes five seconds to plan and execute, revenge is funny when it takes lots of preparation (especially if the revenge is for something minor. See: Dan VS., some of the Kramer subplots in Seinfeld, even #405

I gotta admit - the only reason I'm reviewing this comic right now is because this is the last thing I can do while still pretending to be productive before I have to tackle my homework backlog. Why didn't any of my high school teachers tell me college was gonna be hard!? Well, okay, they did, but why didn't they MEAN it? Back then I could write three essays in a day on a book I'd never read and get hundreds on all of them! (real thing that happened by the way) Now if you don't spend every waking moment studying suddenly you haven't done any of your homework.

So this comic - this fffffffffucking fffffcomic. It's not good. Actually the "Kevin" part is okay, but THAT's IT. None of the comic has any context or reason to exist. A goose being a CIA informant on other geese is a funny idea, but we don't get to see any of it, we just get the idea. This is a comic of broad, nondescript concepts, with no reason or connection for anything.

Any one of these ideas (except for the valence geese, that just sux) could have been made into a real joke. A goose CIA agent informing on other geese has SO MUCH POTENTIAL. As is, it's like saying "a guy gets hit in the crotch by a golfball" instead of actually seeing the guy get hit in the crotch by a golfball.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1722 - Debugging & #1723 - Meteorite Identification

I'm really on board with the concept of this one, but I think something's lost in having it all described to an audience surrogate. I wish we got a shot of him crawling through a dark tunnel, and in his mouth there's a piece of paper with an IP address written on it in blood, something like that. The sword of Martin The Warrior sounds important, shouldn't it get some kind of actual buildup?

Also, that 'long story short' is bullshit. It reminds me of how amateur fanfiction writers will use the word "somehow" to mean "i couldn't think of an explanation but i wanted it to happen anyway". Half the fun of the joke is the transition from boring tech speak to exciting archaeological (?) discovery, and that takes that away.

That last line by White Hat is totally unnecessary as well, it's just spelling out what's supposed to be funny. The correct reaction would be "...wait, what?".

To steal a joke from Jon Levi, I'm not mad with this comic, I'm just disappointed. This was such a cool idea for a comic and we end up with this bland, nondescript, and non-descriptive 6/10.

I'm gonna get killed by getting hit by a meteorite just to spite this comic.

For real though, who has been so personally affected by people who think rocks are meteorites? That's the only group I can think of that would enjoy this comic. I feel insulted on behalf of people that expected an actual joke out of XKCD on the day this went up; instead, they got lectured that they should give up that hope of ever seeing a meteorite.

That interpretation is probably too harsh but this comic still consists of nothing than "You have not seen a meteorite" and it's like fuck you man! I saw one on Monk once!

I actually considered heading to the American Museum Of Natural History where they apparently have meteorites on display, but that's a three hour trip each way and I ain't got that time to give away, sorry. I drew a rough replica of what the blog would have looked like if I'd done that, tho:

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1720 - Horses & #1721 - Business Idea

I've heard Horses is a good album but I haven't gotten around to listening to it yet. There's too much good music out there!

This comic actually made me Think about self-driving cars and how I would want them to be judged, which I'm counting as a point in XKCD's favor even though I ended up coming to the conclusion that it was wrong. Horses can't navigate, a self driving car with a GPS smashes a horse in terms of functionality (and also speed and comfort and etc).

That said, I am okay with this joke. People being impressed by the digitized intelligence of a horse is just inherently funny to me for some reason. The comic could have been better, I'd have added a bit where someone rebrands the horses in the computer and we end up with something even worse, but as it is I am not unsatisfied.

Points are deducted for the awful art in the first two panels, tho. C'mon, Randy, that chick's head is deformed in two different ways in the same comic, your job is literally drawing stick figures, how have you not got the hang of this yet.

How many of my readers watch Castle? Man, that show had like two good seasons, didn't it? And that finale's gotta go down as one of the worst in history. Anyway, y'know that one bit in that first episode where Castle's talking about the case pretending it's a book idea to his writer buddies? He's like "So everyone thinks this guy did it.... and then he did." All his writer friends are like "wow that's dumb, not how mystery books work bro, put a twist in that"*

That's how I feel about this comic. We're given every indication that a guy is going to have a dumb idea... and then he does. If the joke was just supposed to be that he's dumb, why do we get the two panels of nothing buildup? They're basically filler except XKCD comics don't even need filler so I don't even know what they are.

He's not even being dumb in a funny way, he's just presenting an idea that happens to be bad. It reads more like Randy's trying to make him hilariously boring, but he's not being long-winded or big-vocabulary'd enough.

*Proof that I'm nitpicky about everything and not just XKCD: That scene is so dumb, real crimes aren't like books, if you are investigating a crime please do not base your conclusion on what would make the best story

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1718 - Backups & #1719 - Superzoom

I find this very relatable. I backed up a folder once.

I'm actually going to leave the joke itself completely alone. In the analysis of why this joke doesn't work, lets put aside what's common knowledge and what isn't, whether tech jokes should be made accessible to dumb people like me, let's just sweep that all to the side.

In this comic, a guy has somehow set it up so that his folders are being backed up and synced with what is implied to be all computers on Earth. We don't see any of the process by which this system came to be, which is the most interesting part of this story. Even if it's not necessarily funnier, it'd be much more entertaining to see than the guy narrating his computer issues to us.

Now for the punchline, it is revealed that the backup process thing is growing and infecting more computers. This would be MASSIVE in real life. There is SO MUCH potential for a punchline with that information. Off the top of my head I came up with him getting a call from the army telling him to delete his porn since its clogging up their targeting systems. But all we get is someone off-screen saying "Oh my God. You are why we can't have nice things." What does that even mean in this context? I know it expresses disapproval but what is it actually saying?

Douglas Adams has a bit in The Salmon Of Doubt where he talks about that "Do Re Mi" song from The Sound Of Music and he complains about how "La, a note to follow so" is a really obvious and lame placeholder for something better. And that's what this whole comic feels like, just completely first draft.

[EDIT]
Wow okay I was wrong about the syncing up to every computer thing, and what's actually being suggested is that he's just getting better external hard drives, which is WAY MORE BORING than what I thought but whatever. My points about how the comic reads like a first draft stand, though. In my defense, I did check explainxkcd, I just misinterpreted the explanation. I take full responsibility for my misunderstanding, but the misunderstanding would still be less likely to have occurred if Randy made his comics more access able.
[/EDIT]

This one is actually kinda cute. The first panel is a liiiiiitle exposition-dump-y, BUT it also comes off as something that someone amazed at technology or trying to do a humblebrag. Also also I am a not-monster who understands that such exposition is necessary in a four-panel joke that needs to establish continuity.

After the first panel's over, though, even *I* can't find a nitpick! The guy's showing off his new toy, that is what a guy showing off his new toy sounds like. And then as a second part to the punchline we get the little line about Kevin, which is cute without distracting from the joke and is generally Nice.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1708 - Dehydration & #1709 - Inflection

I don't hate the joke in this one. I can appreciate the irony that someone heavily researching water would forget to hydrate. That said, the execution is pretty first-draft.

I know that XKCD is supposed to be minimalist and stuff, but that still doesn't excuse the dialogue in panel one. Who talks like that!? It sounds like someone reading the first line of an autopsy report, it's so clinical and precise. I'd submit it for a Bulwer-Lytton, if it wasn't also so boring.

Then a bunch of people chime in on this BORING conversation and I know it's just a joke comic strip but if you actually read it it's not good.

I am okay with panel three, that gets a pass from me. The laptop/book/whatever in her hand is a nice touch, even if it does disappear a second later.

The final panel has an okay punchline, but then follows it up with three post-punchline things. The first one, okay, that's a reasonable thing to say to a dehydrated person. The second, ehhh, if it's going to be a final punchline it should be moved to a new final panel. The last line is just completely unnecessary and not funny and doesn't make sense even. Have you ever tried drinking water straight from the tap? It's hard, you pretty much just get your lips wet at best. At worst, you just waterboard yourself.

I saw this joke in screenshotted tweet form on tumblr about a year ago, and it didn't have all that boring linguistic stuff in the front.

And if you're going to put two big-ass blocks of text about linguistics in front of a punchline, can it at least be assumed that the reader knows what an alphabet is? Even if the reader doesn't know the subtle nuance of the technical definition, everything needed to understand the comic can be inferred from "you can show the changes through spelling"

Also, where does Bald's question come from? The conversation is entirely based around inflections and suddenly he pops in with that. Pictographic languages aren't touched upon at all until his mention of them. I understand that IRL ("in real life" for all my readers that don't go on the Internet) random comments only tangentially related to the current conversation can get blurted out, but this isn't a conversation we're having over fast-food, this is Dialogue and should be treated as such.

I wish I had an up-to-date iPhone so I could end this review with a bunch of thumbs down emojis, but I don't, so just pretend these squares are emojis that aren't displaying through your browser.

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XKCD Isn't Funny - #1703 - Juno

I wish I'd seen Juno so I could be like "This comic is even worse than Juno!" (I heard it was bad)

This comic couldn't be a tweet (at least without editing), but it's definitely set up like one. The first two panels are just a substitution for the link the the article he'd be riffing on.

The joke itself is perfect for twitter, snarky, short, doesn't make much sense if you think about it. Why would she say that during a press conference? The whole point of a press conference is to not look like an idiot!

This comic should have taken place during the landing. We see the dramatic countdown to landing, the cheers, and then someone checks in. "Hey, we landed on Saturn?" Slowly, the celebration fades. On the display, we see Jupiter's rings up close. Sheepishly, one of the scientists asks "...Saturn?" It'd be a much more dynamic presentation of the same concept. The comic as is has a very static presentation, the visuals are Star Wars Prequel boring, just three people standing doing nothing.

That wouldn't be so bad if the joke was funny, but it's so Twitter throwaway. There should have at least been another joke in the announcement panel to make it seem less like he's just trying to be an alternative news source.

Questionable Content Isn't Funny - #3275 - The Revenant & #3277 - Vengeance

As I'm writing this, it is my birthday, and Jeph Jacques was kind enough to give me the present of a comic that NEEDED to be reviewed by me, even though Jeph Jacques more like Jerk Jacques for blocking me on twitter.

These comics both take place shortly after an intense emotional experience in which Faye almost relapses into alcoholism. This is Serious, and is presented as so in the first two panels of #3277 and the comic preceding #3275. But then things suddenly go off the rails and the humor gets cartoony. 

I want to make it clear: Humor is great as a coping mechanism for the self and for others. One time after a friend told me about their history of self-harm, I made this dumb joke about a person I saw out the window, and it cut the tension and we were able to relax a little. But we didn't suddenly burst into a pun-off, the mood was still down. My friend didn't even Laugh laugh, he did a kind of exhale and he smiled a little. 

Now, I can believe that a person can genuinely make jokes in times of emotional crises - I'm a guy who made jokes about the redness of my throat while I was throwing up bleach - but I can't believe that another person is just going to jump right in and add on to the jokes. Martin is supposed to be Faye's best (?) friend, he should still be concerned about her enough to impair his humor.

With the second comic, I don't know if it's reasonable for the illegal robot fighting place to have a furnace, but I do know that it's not reasonable to reforge glass after smashing it. The reveals in panels 1, 2, & 4 are all sweet on their own, but put together they just become over the top. I understand that the steadily escalating thing is a standard joke format, but it's one that works best in settings without consequences. Squidward can get away with trying to run Spongebob over with a steamroller, Hal would go to jail if he did that to Dewey. 

If Bubbles was making a joke, like she was trying to reassure Faye using humor, this comic would be okay. As it is, nothing we see gives us any indication that she's being anything but serious. This is a weird course of action for someone as serious as Bubbles. 

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1698 - Theft Quadrants & #1699 - Local News

Why would it be bad if the tinyurl.com domain name was stolen.

I think when Randy was writing this comic, he assumed people would be able to understand it because he knew what he meant. And I am not going to ask anyone to bring out the pitchforks for that, I think every writer falls into that particular hole a few times in their career. However, that hole is one reason why editors exist and I would like to posit that Randy's content would be improved by one.

For example, I might have been able to discussed this comic's joke since I might have understood it.

This one had to be explained to me, but I don't hate it. Once I looked up all the big confusing words, I realized that this pun is totally solid. 

(For those who don't know: "nonlocal" doesn't mean 'outside the immediate area', it's some kind of physics thing about time travel (I think))

I've turned this comic over in my head a few ways and I don't see any simple ways the definition of 'nonlocal' could be explained without the pun being spoiled, so I'm just going to give XKCD a freebie with this one. Pretend, for the sake of this review, that all the other comics are good. This can be the one comic I don't get because it makes a high level reference. 

That said, I do think there was an easy segue into a second punchline. Just one more panel, same talking head dealy, but it's another chick and she's saying "Good evening, topping off the nightcast, previous news presenter Allison Zhurnalistka died from a mysterious ray, meaning I finally got my promotion". Possibly there could be a panel of the first chick flickering out of existence in between the two panels. 

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1696 - AI Research & #1697 - Intervocalic Fortition

I appreciate that Randy at least holds the pretension of being able to make fun of himself. However, if he wants to make a joke about how immature and lowbrow he is, maybe he shouldn't have followed it up with a joke about 'intervocalic fortition'. One of those words even sets off spellcheck, that's how obscure it is!

But that's getting ahead of things. The concept of the joke is solid, continuity issues notwithstanding. The art leaves me a little cold. The AI is supposed to be as smart as an adult (or at least still in the process of becoming less smart) but it looks like one of those old computers from the sixties.

I also feel like the comic could have been presented through action, rather than narration. Picture it: Scientists sit at a table, they're wracking their brains trying to figure out how to simulate a six year old's brain. "God damn it, men!" the guy in the biggest labcoat says. "We need to make a robot that thinks like a six year old or we'll never be able to cure abuse trauma!" Suddenly, from the corner of the room, someone pipes up. "Well" they start "We have an adult brain simulated, right? What if we just took that and made it dumber?" The head guy gapes "Brilliant! But how could we possibly bring the greatest mind science can create to the level of a child?" Cut to Randy entering the room, telling his escort "...more like PEE-search!". Same joke, just presented in a way that's more enjoyable to read.

I know of one person that would enjoy this joke, and he's the guy who made this. And is that an ad hominem? Yes. Next paragraph.

Even if I knew about the ludicrously obscure premise that this joke runs on, I wouldn't find it funny. It's just a joke he's done a few times before. "My Hobby: Lying". Boring. Done. Trite. At least show us some kind of future reaction panel where people are really confused about what you lied about.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1695 - Code Quality 2

Is this supposed to be like a roast? I don't think Randy knows how roasts work. You can't riff on something that the audience has no knowledge of. I mean, you can, but it's really hard to be funny about it. Insulting something we don't see is like recording a diss track against someone that doesn't exist. You could say anything and it'd be perfectly valid, since you're making it up.

Roasts in fiction can work. It's been a while since I've watched anything Seth McFarlane related, but I vaguely remember enjoying the episode of American Dad where they roast the alien dude. But with that we had multiple seasons -worth of established character traits and personality.

But, beyond that, a roast needs to have actual funny insults. This comic could work if it wasn't for the fact that the insults suck. They're all the same structure "This is like if [High Class Smart Person Thing] was made out of [stupid thing]". Simile insults are fine, but if that's all there is, that just shows uncreativity. At least switch for a straight metaphor once in a while.

It's also way too wordy. It should just be "It's like a poem". The author isn't important. The specification of the type of username isn't either, at least not to that extent. It flows much better if the phrase was just "bad usernames".

This comic is proof that Randy wasn't bullied enough as a child. If he had been, maybe he'd have at least been able to steal some of their lines.

That was uncalled for, I'm sorry. I just wanted to do insult comedy like the cool kids.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1862 - Bun

I am not going to insult Randy by implying that he actually wrote this comic.

This is a really interesting experiment, having a comic ghostwritten, but only one comic in an extended sequence. It reminds me of those soda taste tests that happened right before Billy Joel wrote "We Didn't Start The Fire", or those science experiments I read about that one time where people tasted food differently when it was under different lights or colored wrong. It's always interesting to be reminded that the majority of our perceptions are affected by how they're framed and presented to us.

Oh! Oh! I thought of two more examples! That one time Gordon Ramsey pretended he'd made something another guy made and that one time that people pretended McNuggets had been organically grown!

It's like how if you heard this instrumental that was kinda crap but it was labeled as a lost Beatles song, you'd give it more of a chance then if you knew it was actually from some random jam band. In the same way, Randy is making people take a second look at this piece of garbage made by some twelve year old who gets all their humor from other twelve year olds on tumblr. Extra points go to Randy for just having the peripubescent write it, letting him do the drawing. If you didn't give Randy any credit at all, you would almost think that he was a miserable enough writer to make this himself.

However, I spotted it right away. While it's obvious I'm not Randall's biggest fan, he's made me laugh in the past, I expect him to do so again, and I know that he would never lower himself to such a level. Because if he did, he would be openly displaying that he doesn't just find it cute but actively funny when people say "bun" instead of "rabbit" or "birb" instead of "bird". Randy would be admitting to us all that he has not progressed as a writer since eighth grade.

So, since this comic wasn't written by Randall, I am not going to be doing my usual full analysis of the 'humor'. It's pretty obvious how empty and contentless this comic is, anyway. I have no doubt that any member of my audience can see for themselves that this comic is cutsy nothing bullshit.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1680 - Black Hole & #1681 - Laser Products

As a lame pun, I am actually okay with this one. Yeah, it's lame as hell and it'd get groans out of anyone who'd finished Kindergarten if said aloud, but that's what puns are supposed to do!

However, I do see a huuuge missed opportunity in not having the black hole suck them up as they're talking. Just imagine it, they're getting all spaghettification'd, and all their atoms are exploding one by one, but on top of it is that pun. It'd be so perfect.

If you stretch your mind a little, you can say that this comic has a similar problem. This should absolutely not be text-only. The opportunity to depict a hilarious hair printer was handed to Randy on a silver plate, and he threw it away like so much tupperware.

I was about to write that the reviews are super lazily written, but what if this is secretly a brilliant attack on the quality of online reviews - namely, mine!! As proof for this, I posit:

1. None of the reviews contain any real content. All the evidence is heavily opinionated, with the exception of the review for laser eye surgery. 
2. There is little to no supporting evidence given for any opinions.
3. The laser jet surgery reviewer didn't even use the product, even though it sounds awesome.
4. The review for laser eye removal gives a failing grade for user error. 
5. None of the ratings are five star, indicating that reviewers will never find anything perfect.

Now, Amazon and other websites of the sort may not be five stars themselves when it comes to the review sections, but even the worst of them have at least a few good reviewers on them. The negative depiction of reviewers is therefore intentional, just to take shots at me, a humble man that has never said or done anything against anyone else.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1674 - Adult

Props to Randy for trying to take his 'relatable' thing in a new direction, even if it doesn't quite work.

I actually think the last panel is pretty amusing on its own. The contrast between the (assumed) somber mood of the will-reading and the childish content of the will is a pretty good form of darkish humor.

The first three panels, on the other hand, are basically a waste of space. We've all seen the "I don't feel like an adult" tweets, we don't need them in comic form. It's just bait for people to type "Get Out Of My Head, Randy!" into the forums.

Putting the first three panels next to the last panel with no transition also creates a slight jarring effect. There's no "the next day" or any other transition, suddenly he's just dead. It made me do a double take, like I'd misread the comic and he was killed by something he'd done earlier. This comic should just be the last panel on its own. You'd have to rewrite it slightly but it wouldn't be too much of a change. Maybe there could even be a second punchline, like one of the people sitting says to another "Jesus, this kid was an idiot, no wonder he died from a sugar overdose" or something like that.

This comic also comes off as rather inauthentic, at least to me. Randall is, at the time of writing, thirty-one. He's married. I think he's past the "wow, I can't believe I'm doing all these things" phase. And grocery shopping? I did that when I was in grade school, c'mon.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1671 - Arcane Bullshit

So, before we start, you all remember that old "orange you glad I didn't say banana?" knock-knock joke, right? It was really popular in my school around first grade and I just realized now, twelve years later, that it doesn't really make sense. Why are we supposed to be glad that they didn't say banana? Is there a famous 'banana' knock-knock joke that just never made it to Lippett Elementary? Or is it supposed to be sarcastic, that we're intended to be frustrated that they didn't say 'banana'? That just leads us to the same problem! I'd say it could be a dick joke but then why did children who didn't even know that 'dick' is a slang term for the male genitalia enjoy the joke?

Maybe I was just raised on jokes that were too good, and now everything else feels like a letdown. When I was a kid, my dad would sit me across the campfire so as to lure the mosquitoes away from him and he'd tell jokes like "three men are at the top of the Eiffel Tower"* and other such good jokes for developing minds. And then I grow up and all the world has to offer me is this garbage!? What the hell, world?

I think this comic would have demonstrated from added visuals for more reasons than usual. SMBC does a thing sometimes where there'll be a story broken up into short captions, each caption getting a panel. It's a good system that would work well with this joke so that the visuals could kindof explain what the joke of each level is to us normies. In addition, it'd make the comic more visually appealing. The lone stick figure just makes it look more barren, like a desert with a single cactus in the distance.

This comic reminds me of those really niche meme pages (or, if you're over thirty, magazines). It actually becomes funnier if you step back, forget about the context, and just pretend its an intentionally obscure joke. Live for a moment in a better world where XKCD has self awareness and is poking fun at it's tendency to make jokes most people won't get.


In other news, the latest Questionable Content mini-arc actively annoyed me a little with how quickly it got resolved. I was so hyped for conflict and drama, even if it is kinda high schoolish in nature. And then it just... resolves, they text each other and everything is okay again. That's not an arc! That's barely a story! What lessons has anyone learned from this?

It's especially annoying since Clinton totally had the righteous anger thing going on and then Claire sends him "I'm sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me. <3". That is not how you text-apologize, if it is ever appropriate to text-apologize. You send a "Hey" and then "Can we talk?". That's like basic text etiquette shit right there. If you're gonna do the full apology in the opening, you at least type four lines, put some effort into it.

This does, however, further my theory that Claire is a psychopath. Like Clinton says, she brought him to the coffee shop under false pretenses (or at least deliberately misleading pretenses: he didn't expect to see Emily there and has to make a quick mental adjustment because he wasn't prepared), without talking to Emily first to see if it was a good idea, and then demands support from Martin when things don't go as planned. It's probably not what Jeph Jacques was actually going for (UNLESS MAYBE I CRACKED THE CODE THATS THE REAL REASON HE BLOCKED ME ON TWITTER SO I WOULDNT SPOIL EVERYTHING) but it's a fun alternate reading! Like how you can read Martin as being emotionally repressed by his mom and that's why he's staying in a relationship with a trans woman even though he's not comfortable with it. It's kinda like how you can perform Hamlet so that Horatio is just a figment of Hamlet's imagination if you do the staging and stuff right.