Entry tags:

srs bizness, webcomics

tell me where did you sleep last night
fuck it, it's xkcd-hatin' time. and by hatin', i mean, if you have any love for the latest xkcd comic at all and you don't want it to feel like i'm attacking you personally for thinking it's funny, i'd scroll on by. i'm not attacking you, because everyone has their own sense of humour and everyone finds different things funny, i'm attacking this fucking comic for not being funny enough for me. and by 'not funny enough for me', i mean... well, trust me, i have strong feelings on this comic.



okay, seriously, what the fucking fuck.

this shit, it's just...

firstly: i can think of at least one specific example that this comic could apply to. that would be the open-source boob project, an extremely ill-fated plan by a bunch of socially-inept people to try and create an opt-in system whereby women at cons could wear stickers that would communicate that anyone could come up and grab some tit. no, i'm not fucking kidding, here:

At Penguicon, we had buttons to give away. There were two small buttons, one for each camp: A green button that said, "YES, you may" and a red button that said "NO, you may not." And anyone who had those buttons on, whether you knew them or not, was someone you could approach and ask:

"Excuse me, but may I touch your breasts?"

And if you weren't a total lout - the women retained their right to say no, of course - they would push their chests out, and you would be allowed into the sanctity of it. That exchange of happiness where one person are told with gropes and touches that they are desirable and the other is someone who's allowed to desire.

For a moment, everything that was awkward about high school would fade away and you could just say what was on your mind. It was as though parts of me were being healed whenever I did it, and I touched at least fifteen sets of boobs at Penguicon.

i just... trust me, if you ever feel like a nerd, go to that entry and read it, and be happy you've never been a guy trying to organise a 'project' whereby you get to grab all the titty you want and try to play it off as some sort of platonic adoration of the female form. it's a sweet concept, but it's just not gd honest, and I HATE DISINGENUOUS PEOPLE

so i understand the concept, here. i know the situation. i know the drama that can occur in this sort of shit. i get the fundamental idea of this comic

anyway. back to the point, which is hating the comic.

it's shit.

it is dull, it is boring, there is nothing in this comic worth even a chuckle or faint traces of a smile. if this comic were a joke, it would be one that goes along the lines of, "a man walks into a bar and he asks for his favourite drink. he can't get it."

seriously, break this fucker down, and what's the joke? "geeks try to reorganise social attitudes towards sex. they can't, because they don't understand how society works." what the fuck is that? THEY'RE FUCKING GEEKS. IT'S WHAT THEY DO. (for anyone who didn't visit the website, the alt-text explicitly says "geek circles", by the way.)

it is possible to get humour out of the social ineptness of geeks. the IT crowd is a perfect example. if you boil down something like "the haunting of bill crouse", the joke is distilled into "moss tries to tell a lie, but fails, because he's socially awkward". but the episode works, because it takes that joke places. it escalates the joke and it creates a comic farce and it becomes something truly ridiculous. but this comic is bullshit, because it doesn't take the joke anywhere.

the most elaborate, sympathetic summary of this comic's joke is this: "geeks try to reorganise social attitudes towards sex to avoid drama. they can't, because they don't understand that society doesn't conform to strict rules like geeks think that it should." that's fucking it. there's no "they can't, and then they create a massive social shitstorm". there's no "geeks have sex but there are hilarious consequences, so they try to reorganise social attitudes". there is no bare-bones, stripped down version of this joke, because THE JOKE IS THE FUCKING BARE-BONES VERSION.

we don't even see what the drama is. we get a graph telling us that the drama level increases. that is one goddamn step up from a narrative box saying "but unfortunately, drama increased after they changed the rules".

what's the first panel? the set-up. good. that makes sense. i don't know why there's a third person there if they just say "okay!", i don't know who the fuck would ever say "let's agree to change them, and make sex simple!", i don't exactly know why randall drew a girl saying sex has all these crazy social rules but if i felt like being critical i could make a guess. and guess what? i'm feeling critical. so fuck you, xkcd man, for making sure it's a girl geek who complains about how complicated sex is. you can't make a joke about how socially-inept geeks are while at the same time making sure you use a girl to complain about how dramatic sex is so you can avoid drawing a comic with a socially-inept male geek, which would just make it seem like he was bitching about not being able to get any. shit don't work that way. go the whole hog bagging the stereotypical image of geeks

second panel. "hooray, we've solved the problem of drama! i'll go tell everyone!" good for you little buddy. hey, how did you solve "the problem of drama"? what's that, it's not mentioned because randy skipped that trifling bit of the FUCKING BASIS OF THE GODDAMN JOKE? this guy can make comics as big or as long as he wants. we've seen it before (shit, go ONE BACK) and we'll see it again. he's not fucking limited to four panels here.

but no, he doesn't explain what the "crazy social rules" about sex are, or how they "create drama", or explain how they "solved the problem of drama", or what sort of drama happened after the increase, or why the rules failed, or how people are complicated, or how the guy told everyone, or ANYTHING AT GODDAMN ALL. fuck, if the guy at the end even walked back in wearing an unusual hat or covered in tar and feathers or carrying a fucking spork, it would be better, because we'd get some sense of the aftermath. that's right, this comic could be IMPROVED by a spork. that's how fucking bad i hate this, i'm willing to admit a "LOL SO RANDOM" object would improve it

this is what i meant when i compared it to the joke above. it can be funny! i'm sure it can! if it's explained who the man was, what bar he went into, what drink he asked for, why he couldn't get a drink, when he went in, any bit of elaboration at all, we could be apples. if the man was a sandwich, and he asked for his favourite type of food/drink and couldn't get it because the bar "doesn't serve food", that's a joke right there. you see?

"someone walks into a bar and asks for food. the barman doesn't give it to them and explains the reason."
"a sandwich walks into a bar and asks for a pie. the barman says 'sorry, we don't serve food here'."

this comic could be funny - could be funny - if it was anything more than a vague narrative outline of events. but it's not, and it sucks, so go to hell