xkcd griefing thread

[Xarpho's Return]

I'm sure everyone is already aware of stick-figure comic XKCD which ranges from stupid to pretentious to just awful (also a major vector of "SCIENCE!" type people, but that's another issue), but even as 2011 I remember how much was going downhill. Let's some of the greatest "hits" shall we?

This one in April 2014 is presumably in reference to Twitter banning conservative users (note pre-GG, pre-Trump).

There's lots of problems with the pseudo-libertarian policy "uh uh uh they're a private business they can do whatever they want chud" because they'll also cry about Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (for instance) and definitely won't defend the idea of early 1960s business owners refusing to serve non-whites.

At first glance, this COVID vaccine propaganda is a relic of a few years ago with the heavy pushes to get vaccinated. But it's from late July 2023.

If there was any more hypocrisy to modern science, the COVID vaccine would be it. 15 or so years ago and prior, they'd enthusiastically pump their fists at the idea that they should question everything, including society. They still worship Galileo at the way he defied the Church in favor of SCIENCE! and reality, yet today, any questioning of modern science (including climate change) or the current power structure is heresy and must be blacklisted.

From 2018. He is absolutely one of those anti-car bugmen.

There are of course many other examples which I did not bring up here.

The reason I bring all of this up is that I actually enjoyed the comic in high school, and looking back most of them are still amateurish and pretentious (yes I had poor taste) but not as awful as it is today (and I didn't even bring up election-year comics).

 

[Tekken Enjoyer]

I liked this blog back when it was updated. This one was good too.

 

[BigKant]

This one in April 2014 is presumably in reference to Twitter banning conservative users (note pre-GG, pre-Trump).

Now if we try to apply it to everyone, not just the "bad guys", what we are going to hear is cries of gatekeeping and whatnot.

 

[seed]

correct horse battery staple

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

I'm shocked this thread didn't exist already.

https://xkcd.com/1081/

 

[N Space]

Learn to drive dumbass.

 

[Tekken Enjoyer]

I found this one from pretty recently. Is there a joke in here? Is the joke that the comic is really confusing in that it doesn't have a joke anywhere, and somehow that makes a meta-joke of some kind? Or am I reading into it too much and it's actually just what it looks like: Randall vigorously deep-throating the clot shot?

 

[RACISM]

If only he could have kept politics out of his cartoons. When they were just nerd shit, which he does know a lot about, they were very engaging.

 

[Dambusters' Dog II]

I always hated xkcd. He's always been from the "make reference to a thing only I know about" school of non-comedy.

 

[I Do Not Post]

is it just me or is "being terrified of driving" turning into one of those common sperg lolcow indicators? i keep seeing it repeated with the "dude they're like GIANT RUBE GOLDBERG DEATHTRAPS THAT GO 300 MILES AN HOUR!!!" shit.

 

[McMitch]

xkcd was always “Far Side by someone less smart/funny than Gary Larson,” which is fucking telling because Monroe worked as an engineer for NASA for a while. The other issue is the format of webcomics, specifically the three-a-week release schedule, being tapped fry by 2010. For a comic that’s been running damn near two decades at this point, it’s done nothing to improve. It’s contemporaries that maintained any quality either slowed down releases to compensate for better jokes/storytelling/art, or outright ended.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Oh it’s userfriendly without the quality art, pleased to meet you again.

 

[rrtyui]

If only he could have kept politics out of his cartoons. When they were just nerd shit, which he does know a lot about, they were very engaging.

Nerds have been politicized, their spaces have been infiltrated by troons and they've been socially pressured into supporting The Current Thing

Come to think of it, when you look at xkcd's work as a gauge of the climate of internet/nerd culture, it's brilliant. Too bad that's not what he intended.

 

[Pissmaster]

I hate XKCD so much and check on it maybe yearly, only to get pissed off again. I've posted about it a couple of times in the Bad Webcomics thread, when COVID was brand new and Randall (and explainxkcd) treated it like a fucking... uh... well, explainxkcd had this line:

19 comics in a row were related to this pandemic, except the April fool's comic, 2288: Collector's Edition, which was probably already in the making when the first comic came out (and even if so its release was delayed until April 3rd). (So 19 out of 20, and all of the comics in March 2020 was about COVID-19. Many find pleasure in the fact that it was 19 comics on COVID-19!)

And we're the bad guys?

In that Bad Webcomics thread, I also posted a then-recent comic that's not a comic at all, because it's just words in his trademark handwriting font. Look at how fucking tasteless this is:

I hate Randall. Fuck that guy with a rusty rake.

 

[Matt Damon]

Is the purpose of this "comic" to demonstrate how pointless opinion polls are and how irrelevant their data is? Because that comes across much, much more strongly in this comparison than "I'm right because polls agree with me".

 

[Pissmaster]

Is the purpose of this "comic" to demonstrate how pointless opinion polls are and how irrelevant their data is? Because that comes across much, much more strongly in this comparison than "I'm right because polls agree with me".

Yeah, it comes off as a bunch of pointless stuff juxtaposed with a lot of extremely serious situations, as though they're not serious at all and can be compared to how many people like kittens and apple pie. Randall and everyone who likes this crap have to be autistic to broken levels in order to not see just how tasteless that comes off.

View attachment 5312864

Learn to drive dumbass.

You'd have to be autistic to broken levels to be afraid of driving, too. He was a NASA engineer, but he doesn't even consider just how much work goes into ensuring cars are as safe as they can possibly be?

 

[N Space]

You'd have to be autistic to broken levels to be afraid of driving, too. He was a NASA engineer, but he doesn't even consider just how much work goes into ensuring cars are as safe as they can possibly be?

It's ok to be afraid when you begin to learn, I know I was, but to then keep this fear for years on as a talking point against cars is a self own expressing radioactive levels of autism.

 

[Matt Damon]

You'd have to be autistic to broken levels to be afraid of driving, too. He was a NASA engineer, but he doesn't even consider just how much work goes into ensuring cars are as safe as they can possibly be?

In addition to basic bitch anti-car sentiment, it's all part of the gradual emasculation of western culture over the last century. "Haha fellow eunuchs, can you believe we knowingly engage in the risky behavior that makes modern life possible? That's craaaaaaaazy haha."

Yes, Randy. How observant and free-thinking of you.

 

[ZipDisk]

If he is afraid of driving, he should take the bus. Make the roads safer by not putting a panicking dipshit behind the wheel.

As to people being afraid of things, there are people afraid of the playstation startup sound.

That's lame as hell.

 

[Briananderson1138]

This is definitely one of those people who still wears a mask despite the pandemic being over for at least three years now.
Regarding fear of driving, I gathered that he either lives or lived in Boston, which is, according to my own experience, a frighteningly congested, disintegrating and deteriorating hive of a city; no wonder he fears driving.
The solution of this is, of course, to leave the city, but he would probably consider this to be destroying the environment.