XKCD Isn't Funny - #1646 - Twitter Bot

This is kinda just a more boring version of #349. To be fair to Randy, it has been more than a thousand strips since then, but

I don't actually have anything to follow that up with. It's been more than six years, it's hard to blame him for maybe forgetting he made a comic like this before.

Comparing and contrasting the two, though, #349 just has better presentation. Look at how the guy changes position. He's sitting, then he's on his stomach, then he's standing. It helps bring across his frustration and keeps the comic visually interesting. In this one, he puts his laptop in his lap and then puts it back on the desk. The fourth panel even keeps the same framing, with his head at the same level as the previous panels.

Now, it is not awful to have a repeated framing system in a humor strip. If Garfield had dramatic zoom-ins and crane shots every other panel it'd just be distracting. But the punchline of this specific comic is based on a sudden shift into dramatics, there should be a more obvious tonal shift. Two offscreen explosions do not a doombot make.

Also, why is he searching that while he's being shot at? That's just stupid. Hide behind cover, man! If you can run you're not in shock probably, so go outside and then look up what to do.

Actually, how is he searching that while he's being shot at? He's running and presumably having to avoid shrapnel and gunfire, he should not have the fine hand coordination to tap the little digital screen keys the way he'd need to.

(This next thing is even more petty than the last two so brace yourself) What search engine is he using? If he's searching on his iPhone in the last panel, it should have a different layout than the ones in the first three. And even discounting that, it still doesn't match up to any search engine layout that I'm aware of. Google would have the 'i'm feeling lucky' button, Bing and DuckDuckGo have magnifying glass symbols instead of a box saying 'search', and Yahoo! has the search button next to the search bar, not under it.

Assuming this was based off of his actual attempts at starting a twitter bot, I'm really curious what he was trying to do, since he doesn't use his regular twitter account. (I use mine, though, follow me!)

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1568 - Synonym Movies 2

There's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said.
I'm just repeating myself repeating someone else
equally incapable of uttering a single new thought.
Yet you are ever worthy of adoration,
so how can I for a moment cease to lift my heart in praise?

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1563 - Synonym Movies

This was such a good joke that I did it almost exactly the same except nine months ago and better.

And it's not like this is new material for XKCD either, really it's the same joke as #444, #547, #722, #1133, and #1436. And of those, only the first two took it beyond just "using simpler words". Furthermore, #1133 was an entire poster of the joke, essentially doing the most with it at one time as can be done.

I can see the appeal to this joke, really, I can. But I can't think of any one-part jokes that wouldn't get old after five executions (at least when one of them was as big as #1133). It's not even a running gag, it's just doing the same bit again and again, and it's just boring at this point.

And way to spoil the ending of The Empire Strikes Back, Randy.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1549 - XKCD Phone 3

Today someone told me I was prettier than Bailey Jay and I was all like "Fuck yeha, my day has been made!" and then I see this comic and snakes started physically manifesting in my home.

I've already talked about this comic twice! Why does a third one exist! Of all the XKCDs that could have been tripled, why couldn't it have been one of the good ones? I legitimately wouldn't have minded if #1533 had been repeated, since it has a deadpan, almost hypnotic quality that holds up well in the face of repetition, much like a Spiritualized song.

Imagine if instead of this, we'd gotten four more panels of Beret just sitting there. It'd be a good callback, suddenly we'd all realize he's still sitting there from before! And then maybe in the third appearance of the antique factory we could get all existential or whatever and show him quietly crying that he's stuck with such a boring, thankless job.

Instead we get the third appearance of The XKCD Phone. "We made another one!" proclaims the comic. "Yes, but why?" the reviewer begs, "Why, oh why, oh why?".

I had my friend Gillian take a look at this one. She calls it "lame and kinda like try hard" and adds "it feels like one of those tumblr posts that ends in like 'potter heads get your wants' like that sort of vibe". If you don't know what she's talking about, you're a lucky person. Never get a tumblr, it's hell.

Possibly the worst part (aside from the fact that Hitler existed) is that every one of these lines could have been a genuinely amusing aside in some larger joke. Like it's kind of a funny idea that something like part of a phone was foretold by prophecy, but combined with all the other 'punchlines' (scare quotes!) we just end up with a confusing, unfocused lump. We still have not truly moved the overall punchline past "What if a phone was just really shitty?".

This is the type of comic that really makes me want to stop, more than people being MEAN :'( to me in the comments could ever even dream. It really makes me realize how repetitive and pointless this is, and how really I might as well be Beret at his antique factory.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1446 - LANDING

Much like yesterday's episode, this comic is derivative of two better comics, but this time the scale's been stepped up. If you go to the off-site player (which for some reason doesn't seem to work on Internet Explorer), you'll see that this is none other than a mini-TIME, filtered through a #695 lens.

I'm not that great at HARDCORE ANALYSIS of big things, so forgive me if I don't get too in-depth here.

Now, TIME won a Hugo award and has a big thread and a religion, it's Randy's magnum opus, and with good reason. Also people who probably think lifetime movies are emotional and dramatic are still banging on about #695 from time to time. It really isn't suprising that Randy would attempt to follow up on his best work and that other one.

However, I feel, philosophically, that this is a step backwards. Like an underground artist that suddenly had a top forty hit, Randy was faced with two (main) choices: Continue to grow, expand, and be awesome, a la Chumbawamba and Semisonic; or do exactly the same thing over again and hope the same success comes along, a la a bunch of bands no one cares about because they kept doing the same thing over again and over again and over again (over and over and over and over again).

To quote my beloved Bomb the Music Industry: "There's nothing new about the old sound regardless of what you say. The world is looking on like 'Really, again? Okay, okay..'". And while there have been the inevitable gifs on tumblr and there is a sizable thousand replies currently on the thread post, this comic is missing some key factors that made TIME so big and new and cool. The image upload time was changed from a half hour to five minutes and the total story length was shortened from 3,099 pages to 142. It also, obviously, isn't the first time he's done this. TIME was really neat because it was something that had simply never been done before. Thus it was impossible for this comic to work up the suspense that TIME had that caused all the theorizing and stuff that (I am told) went on in the TIME thread.

The actual story? It's alright, I guess. Not much of an attempt at being funny other than that the comet lander talks like Beret Guy sometimes and there's a bit with the president that doesn't really work. I don't like the 'Worry' bits toward the end, just because it seems to me that people at NASA (kNown for lAunching Stuff into spAce) would have a pretty good idea of what they're doing. But then, Randy would know better than me on that one. ;)

That winky face was completely unnecessary and I apologize.

I'm probably being harsher than I should be on this, it had some interesting visuals and it obviously took some work, but I really can't help feeling like this is just Randy's best work... but smaller, less impressive, and not surprising anymore.