Pharyngula

Posted by: Tulse | February 9, 2010 11:42 AM

xkcd rocks.

Posted by: Becca the Over Socialized | February 9, 2010 11:48 AM

Making Light has links to the original Discovery Channel ad, the original xkcd cartoon, and an animation of the original cartoon, too.

there's also a wonderful blog-centric pastiche at comment 96 that, with a few changes, could apply here, too.

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | February 9, 2010 11:48 AM

xkcd is awsome.

and the guy in the bed with the muppets is cute.

Posted by: drmccoy.de | February 9, 2010 11:59 AM

Eh. I used to love xkcd. But it's been quite mediocre to bad for some time now.

There are more people who feel like me, too: http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | February 9, 2010 12:03 PM

But it's been quite mediocre to bad for some time now.

If the one about the Range Rover didn't rip your heart out, you have no soul. Nyah.

I played this all day yesterday. It's such a stupid little song, yet makes me so inexplicably happy.

Posted by: cocker.splodie | February 9, 2010 12:07 PM

I have to admit to being another former xkcd fan. It hasn't done anything for me for a while.

Posted by: drmccoy.de | February 9, 2010 12:11 PM

@Carlie: Yeah, that one was one of the rare good ones (and there I disagree with the writers on xkcdsucks, who ripped it to shreds) :P

Still, comics where I'm not thinking either "Meh, not funny" or "Ewww, creepy" are few and far between.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | February 9, 2010 12:14 PM

Ok, I find "XKCD explained" hilarious.

Posted by: drmccoy.de | February 9, 2010 12:24 PM

@frog, Inc.: Humour critics have to be funny now? That's bullshit. O_o

Newsflash: To be able to criticise something, I do not have to be able to do better in the criticised field. I do not have to be able to do stand-up comedy to say someone sucks at doing stand-up comedy. I do not have to be able to write novels to say someone write at a 2nd grade level. I do not have to be able sing well for criticising someone who's completely tone-deaf.

Posted by: Free Lunch | February 9, 2010 12:25 PM

Thanks for the Making Light link, Becca.

I also note that Olga Nunes has the credits for all of her guest stars at http://www.olganunes.com/xkcd

Posted by: Sastra | February 9, 2010 12:35 PM

There were some people who looked familiar, but the only ones I recognized were Phil Plait of course, and -- I think -- scooter.

Nice, but it's no Narwhal Song.

Posted by: nejishiki | February 9, 2010 12:47 PM

It's good, but SMBC > xkcd .

Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy | February 9, 2010 1:01 PM

Xkcd. Dunno. I used to find it too smug and cute, then I read some strips that were actually pretty funny and clever. Just not quite enough to make me want to follow the comic.

So I don't "love" Xkcd. But I can't quite imagine starting a whole blog dedicated to ragging on it. I mean, it's nice to see that you're not alone sometimes, and that there's a place you can go if you don't like something that a lot of other people do like (crashing their party is kinda rude), but a whole blog updated daily? Too much negative energy, man. It shows when you read the post criticizing Xkcd for supposedly ripping off a punchline from a standup comedian. That's a stretch.

(And despite being a fan of Life In Hell and Dinosaur Comics, I think the web has resulted in too many comics with little-to-no effort expended on the art.)

Posted by: novocaine | February 9, 2010 1:27 PM

hwil hweaton?

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | February 9, 2010 1:38 PM

Whil Wheaton: AKA the leader of the Axis of Anarchy.

Posted by: jennyxyzzy | February 9, 2010 1:51 PM

Carlie,

Yes, I had the comic with Spirit as my Facebook status message last week - it made me cry every time I read it - poor lil rover, left alone up there on Mars, and he had tried so hard and so faithfully to do what his masters wanted. :-(

Posted by: Mak | February 9, 2010 2:02 PM

Unexpected Hank Green and Neil Gaiman! Epic!

Posted by: drmccoy.de | February 9, 2010 2:36 PM

@SaraJ, #30:

And what happens if the blog creator actually LIKES one of the comics one day

Is he going to make fun of it and hate on it simply because that's what his readers want him to do

Posted by: toth | February 9, 2010 2:55 PM

Was that MC Frontalot I spied?

Sidenote: One of my friends from high school's cousin is the author of XKCD, and she's roommates with the guy who runs the business side of the comic of something. True story.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | February 9, 2010 4:05 PM

xkcd is like many comics, it's usually funny, sometimes it's awesomely funny, sometimes it's unfunny.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | February 9, 2010 4:20 PM

For those of you who didn't care for the xkcd song, here's something you might appreciate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwqXuMPsoc

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | February 9, 2010 4:44 PM

I still don't know who (most of) those people are.

I recognised Richard Wiseman, but I don't think I'd have notice HWil Hweaton if Phil Plait hadn't told me to look out for him. And I only know of Corry Doctorow, because xkcd tells me he dresses in a cape - he wasn't floating in a balloon, though, so perhaps it was a cosplayer.

Posted by: Peter G. | February 9, 2010 5:36 PM

My favorite: http://xkcd.com/552/

Posted by: tariqata | February 9, 2010 9:51 PM

JJ@46: My mom manages a tech support team for a company whose software works in coordination with school databases. That was her introduction to xkcd - but I wasn't sure at first if she was going to laugh or cry.

Posted by: Andyo | February 9, 2010 11:38 PM

Here's a scientific question. I wonder if the "used to be better" assertions are just us remembering the hits and forgetting the misses.

Posted by: jrsutter | February 10, 2010 4:19 AM

On the xkcdsucks blog.

That person is obviously seething with jealousy. I don't know their story, but to target a particular comic and just rail against every update says more about the author of the blog than it does about XKCD.

Also
@17

No, if you want to critique something, you don't need to be an expert. However, if you are going to target a specific comic/musician/web artist/whatever and devote your time to constant criticism of just them in a public format such as a blog, you should be funnier. What is the value in reading something that updates 3x a week how much something sucks if its A. not funny and B. certainly less funny than the object it attacks. I read through it and it was all just a bunch of nerdrage. Its embarrasing for the author that it exists.

XKCD is more popular than he could ever hope to be, and he knows it (I assume it was a dude from the tone and style). That is a point you can't argue.

Anyway, you can not like XKCD. Im sure lots don't, but lots of us enjoy it. You not liking it doesn't make it any less enjoyable to us. If you are going to express an opinion it should contribute in some way to something. Just railing against something that irritates you because it achieved a level of popularity you couldn't ever hope to (or whatever comic/thing you are a fanboy of hasn't achieved) is only going to hurt you. Its a waste of time and energy.

That guy needs to get over it.

Posted by: Cerberus, unnatural product of en-OMnomnom-ification | February 10, 2010 10:00 AM

Holy shit, that xkcdsucks thing is like a doctorate level thesis on petulance and pathetic devotion to investing oneself in hatred.

Honestly, I don't get the attraction of investing oneself in hatred. The author darts between various justifications of why it sucks owing to the vast diversity of offerings on hand, resists any attempt to notice positive things in order to fulfill a dark world where each new posting is somehow a new level of affront to himself personally. And his postings on the aspects "he used to enjoy" kind of reveal himself to be a complete idiot on the aspect he's decided to pin his nascent self-esteem on making himself god-king, that is to say humour.

See, if you're going to deride someone for being an insult to comedy or having lost comedic appeal, one does not need to be say personally humorous or satirical. One can be openly pedantic, prone to over-analyzation, or adopting a wholly formal critical voice.

However, one does need to understand comedy at some aspect, the literary theories of comedic creation, why things can be funny, etc... Or at the very least, if they are devoting an entire blog to a premise that is: This used to be good, now it isn't, one must have a reasoned understanding and a compelling consistent narrative defending this case.

See the things this author thinks he's trying to be. The one-off criticisms of newspaper comics for instance such as the brilliant takedowns of why Garfield has lost the edge and surrealism that made him initially much more intriguing to read. They take a premise and defend it, consistently, and have a full and deep understanding of the comedic arts to draw on.

This guy, owing to the diversity of the source material, ends up schizophrenic. He has to deride vast varieties of comedy and when he tries to defend "the good ol days" his tastes reveal him to be, well, humorless. I mean this in regards to his open fetish for graphs and recursion as wholly being of his subset. He disdains any form of surrealism or pattern breaking, despite the fact that two things to set a pattern, one to break it is the baseline of almost all humor in humanity. Furthermore, he makes it clear that he probably wasn't ever really the right audience (because he has no sense of humor first of all, by which I mean he's a serious minded geek which isn't really a crime, but it does mean that one would take his opinions on comedy about as seriously as Ben Stein on anything).

Frankly, we see the real reason for the emotional investment in stark unfortunate terms.

Flip through the archives briefly stopping on the latest emotional breakup one, then stop at his list of "ten good xkcd strips" (his pathetic attempt at defending his grudge). Note its commentary about women on both aspects. Despite the one he chose in the good strips being a genuine masterpiece (wow, girls suck at math), his reason is hollow (it shows, doesn't tell) and in order to note that this is a feminist cartoon masterpiece, he goes on a paragraph rant about feminists forcing things on him. The last emotional breakup one is even more revealing. He goes on a rant about how emasculated the man is and how he's now a woman and that makes them children and how it doesn't make sense, but the man in the comic is a fag, grrr.

Yeah, gee, wonder why when Randall Munroe started including some genuine defenses of the fairer sex, this blog author suddenly decided that he needed to take his perturbed shallow enjoyment of xkcd and devote large sections of his life to pre-hating everything he ever did.

Sure, it doesn't make since in a sane world, but speaking as a member of the fairer sex, it makes an unfortunate amount of sense. Thanks to how masculinity is defined in our society by our society (as a toxic masculinity at odds with the positive aspects masculinity can provide, often defined by its violent opposition to anything deemed feminine to ward off potential loss of it), men see it as crucial to their being to defend their masculinity above and beyond the call of duty. Basically, to devote huge swaths of time and effort in distancing oneself from the feminine or trying to savage it in order to raise one's profile in the ranks of other men who are scared that not playing the game will mean someone will talk away their masculinity and they too will be women.

In short, the blog seems to exist as a giant extension of fragile geek masculinity of a shallow fan trying desperately to strike back at the poisoning of his bodily fluids by the newly "feminine-dominated" Randall Munroe.

Which is kinda sick, but also fails at its purpose, because like with most things born out of illogical animus, it doesn't have enough consistency or depth to be either illuminating or entertaining.

It is in even shorter, sad, just sad.

Posted by: Diane G. | February 10, 2010 3:46 PM

I guess what I'm saying is analysis of whys is more interesting than whatever catharsis can come about by just deciding to hate something and that's why I'm a scientist rather than a sad sack of shit.

Bravo, Cerberus. For both comments.