Xkcd

xkcd
Panel from "Philosophy", with title text "It\'s like the squirt bottle we use with the cat."
Author(s)	Randall Munroe
Website	http://www.xkcd.com/ RSS web feed Atom web feed
Current status / schedule	Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
Launch date	September 2005
Genre(s)	Geek humor Men\'s romance

xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe,Guzman, Monica. (May 11, 2007) Seattle Post-Intelligencer What\'s online. Section: Life and Arts; Page D7. a Christopher Newport University graduate who worked as a contractor for NASA.Fernandez, Rebecca (2006-11-25). xkcd: A comic strip for the computer geek. Red Hat Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-03-06. It calls itself "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language."The Times (June 6, 2007) xkcd.com; The click; Wednesday. Section: Features; Page 2. (writing, "Web comics have thrived and one of the best is xkcd.com. The comic strip of "romance, sarcasm, math and language" is brilliant on the stupidity of people who comment on YouTube videos and, oddly, how we take dreaming in our stride: "I\'m gonna go comatose for a few hours, hallucinate vividly, then maybe suffer amnesia about the whole experience."")About xkcd. xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06. There is no particular meaning to the name, which is simply a "treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings."Best available explanation of the title. Retrieved on 2007-01-10.

The subjects of the comics themselves vary. Some are statements on life and love, and some are mathematical or scientific in-jokes. Some strips feature simple humor or pop-culture references. Although known for its crudely drawn cast of oddball stick figures,Kalamazoo Gazette (August 17, 2006) Ad lib. Section: Ticket. the comic occasionally features landscapes, intricate mathematical patterns such as fractals, or imitations of the style of other cartoonists (as during "parody week"). Occasionally, realism is featured.The Cure (#56). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-09-10.Girl sleeping (Sketch -- 11th grade Spanish class) (#7). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-09-10.

The comic is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.License. xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-06-25. New comics are added three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at midnighthttp://blag.xkcd.com/2007/12/31/ghost/ although so far they have been updated every weekday on three occasions: parody week, the five-part \'Choices\' series and the 1337 series.

History

Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd

The comic began in September 2005 when Munroe decided to scan doodles from his school notebooks and put them on his webpage. Eventually the comic was changed into a standalone website, where Munroe started selling t-shirts based on the comic. He currently "works on the comic full time," making xkcd a self-sufficient webcomic.

In May 2007, the comic caught the attention of many by depicting online communities in geographic form.Tossell, Ivor. (May 18, 2007) Globe and Mail We\'re looking at each other, and it\'s not a pretty sight. Section: The Globe Review 7; Page R24 Various websites were drawn as continents, each sized according to their relative popularity and located according to their general subject matter. This put xkcd at number two on The Post-Standard\'s "The new hotness" list.Cubbison, Brian; Thompson, Keith. (May 6, 2007) The Post-Standard. Get each of these links at the news tracker blog at blog.syracuse.com/Newstracker and remember, our blogs don\'t need www. our blogs start with blog. Section: News; Page A2.(Compiled from news services and online research by the authors)

xkcd is not an acronym, and Munroe attaches no meaning to the name, except in a joking manner within the comic.What xkcd Means (#207). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06. He claims that the name was originally a screen name, which he selected as a combination of letters that would be meaningless, as well as phonetically unpronounceable.

On September 23, 2007, hundreds of people gathered at coordinates mentioned in a strip: 42.39561 -71.13051. Fans converged on a park in North Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the strip\'s author appeared; among his comments: "Maybe wanting something does make it real," a reference to a frame in the same strip.Dream Girl (#240)Cohen, Georgiana (September 26, 2007). The wisdom of crowds. The Phoenix. Retrieved on 2007-09-27.

In October of 2007, a group of researchers at University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute conducted a census of the internet and said that their data presentation was inspired by an xkcd comic. Paul McNamara (October 9, 2007). Researchers ping through first full \'Internet census\' in 25 years. Buzzblog. Networkworld.com. Retrieved on 2007-10-10. 62 Days + Almost 3 Billion Pings + New Visualization Scheme = the First Internet Census Since 1982. Information Science Institute (October 8, 2007 (Last modified October 9, 2007)). Retrieved on 2007-10-10. Map of the Internet (#195). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.

Recurring themes

"Wikipedian Protester", with title text, "SEMI-PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION"

While there is no specific storyline to the comic, there are some recurring themes. Andrew Moses (November 21, 2007). Former NASA staffer creates comics for geeks. The Gazette (University of Western Ontario). Retrieved on 2007-11-22. A large number of the strips are mathematics or computer science jokes. These jokes often feature university-level subjects, although many are written in such a way that a clear understanding of the subject is not usually required to get the punchline. Romance is another subject often visited in the comic, with many strips not intended to be humorous. xkcd frequently makes reference to Munroe\'s "obsession" with potential raptor attacks, O\'Kane, Erin (2007-04-05). Geek humor: Nothing to be ashamed of. The Whit Online. Retrieved on 2007-04-23.Velociraptors (#87). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.Substitute (#135). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.Search History (#155). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.Goto (#292). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-09-26. the game Guitar Hero,Guitar Hero (#70). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.Music Knowledge (#132). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06. characters making out with themselves,Parallel Universe (#105). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-07-20.Choices: Part 4(#267). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-07-20. and many "your mom" jokes. There have also been several strips featuring "Red Spiders", zeppelins, Joss Whedon\'s short-lived series Firefly, Ender\'s Game and Wikipedia.Wikipedian Protester (#285). xkcd. Retrieved on 2008-01-16.Getting Out of Hand (#333). xkcd. Retrieved on 2008-01-16. Each comic has a tooltip, specified using the title attribute in HTML. The text usually contains an afterthought or annotation related to that day\'s comic. Peter Trinh (2007-09-14). A comic you can’t pronounce. Imprint Online. Retrieved on 2007-09-16. There are also many strips depicting "My Hobby", usually depicting the non-descript narrator character describing some type of humorous or quirky behavior often involving language games.Hyphen(#37). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-13.Hobby(#53). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.Super Bowl(#60). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.Curse Levels(#75). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.Mispronouncing(#148). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.Reverse Euphemisms(#168). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.That\'s What SHE Said(#174). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.Collecting Double-Takes(#236). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.Clichéd Exchanges(#259). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.Keeping Time(#389). xkcd. Retrieved on 2008-03-07.

Recurring characters

• A man in a hat who looks like a normal stick-figure xkcd character, except for the addition of his trademark black hat (possibly in reference to black hat hackers). Referring to himself as a "Classhole", he is intolerant of internet newbishness. He does not shy from pointing out the foibles in others and has at times used extreme violence in order to emphasize a point. Words that End in GRY (#169). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06. Join Myspace (#146). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06. He is closely based on the character Aram from the Men In Hats webcomic.Hitler (#29). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-03-06. In the January 30, 2008 comic, his hat was taken by a woman, who is, to date, the only person ever to foil one of his schemes. It is unknown if he will get the hat back.Journal 2 (#377). xkcd. Retrieved on 2008-01-29.
• A boy in a barrel has appeared in 5 strips. Unlike most other characters, he is not a stick figure. He was repeatedly seen inside a barrel, floating in a large body of water. The boy in the barrel was one of many doodles in the older comics, but as of February 2008, has not been seen since comic #31.Barrel - Part 1 (#1). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-04-10.Barrel - Part 2 (#11). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-04-10.Barrel - Part 3 (#22). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-04-10.
• Another set of recurring characters is the nihilist and the existentialist, recognizable by their hats; the existentialist wears a beret and the nihilist wears a white top hat (or no hat at all). So far, they have only been seen together, never separately. They can first be seen in the "Nihilism" comic, Nihilism (#167). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-10-04. and again in "Kayak",Kayak (#209). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-01. "Hypotheticals"Hypotheticals (#248). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-10-23. and "Dignified."Dignified (#291). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-10-04.
• Munroe is often a character himself, either identified explicitly as such onscreenSnacktime Rules (#183). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-10-25. or narrating scenes occupied by unnamed charactersEngineering Hubris (#319). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-10-25. or no on-screen characters at all.YouTube (#202). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-10-25.
• Fictionalised versions of well known real-life figures in the computing community sometimes appear, such as Richard Stallman Open Source (#225). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-17. 1337 Part 5 (#345). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-17. and Cory Doctorow.Blagofaire (#239). xkcd. Retrieved on 2007-11-17. Stallman and Doctorow are both free software advocates.
• Mrs. Roberts was a main character in the "1337" series, and has appeared in other comics along with her children, "Robert\'); DROP TABLE Students;--" aka "Little Bobby Tables," (a reference to SQL injection) Exploits of a Mom. Retrieved on 2008-01-10. and Help I\'m Trapped In A Driver\'s License Factory Elaine Roberts, the protagonist of the "1337" series. Elaine\'s first name is a reference to "Pi Equals."Pi Equals. Retrieved on 2008-01-10.

Life imitates xkcd

"Wikipedian Protester" in Cambridge, 23 September 2007

On several occasions, fans have been motivated by Munroe\'s comics to carry out, in real life, the subject of a particular drawing or sketch. Some notable examples include:

• Richard Stallman was sent a katanaLife Imitates xkcd, Part II: Richard Stallman. xkcd (2007-04-19). Retrieved on 2007-08-20. and was confronted by students dressed as ninjas during a lecture at the Yale Political Union"Stallman trumpets free software", The Yale Daily News. Retrieved on 2007-10-19. Richard Stallman Debate. Blog of the YPU (2007-10-18). Retrieved on 2007-10-21. – inspired by "Open Source"
• When Cory Doctorow won the 2007 EFF Pioneer Award, the presenters gave him a red cape, goggles and a balloonCory Doctorow, Part II. xkcd (2007-03-28). Retrieved on 2007-09-05. – inspired by "Blagofaire"
• xkcd readers sneaking chess boards onto roller coastersChun Yu. "The man [hiding] behind the raptor", The Tartan, Nov 12, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-11-12. People Playing Chess on Roller Coasters. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. – inspired by "Chess Photo"
• An xkcd reader created a "MBR Love Note" installation programSpicuzza, Dustin (2007-11-11). Inspired by XKCD: MBR Love Note. Random thoughts along the roadside…. Retrieved on 2007-12-24. – inspired by "Fight"
• Munroe himself solicited contributions from his readers of people playing electric guitars while in the shower on wetriffs.comwetriffs.com. Retrieved on 2008-01-10. after posting the comic "Rule 34,""Rule 34". Retrieved on 2008-01-10. in which a character registers that domain.

References

General

• Munroe, Randall (February 2007) Physics World. Once a physicist: Randall Munroe. Page 43.
• Erg. (March 26, 2007) ComixTalk Talking xkcd With Randall Munroe.
• Tar7arus (June 16, 2007) kinkendo.org. Interview with Randall Munroe. Obtained July 5, 2007.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Xkcd

• Official site
• RSS-Feed
• XKCD IRC channel quote database

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