2016-02-28

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!)

No comments:

Post a Comment