XKCD, the webcomic of romance, math, language and sarcasm has become over the past few years one of the true icons of Internet geekdom along with lolcats [icanhascheezburger.com] and 4chan. Randall Munroe's minimalist cartoon with stick figures spouting hyper referencing comedy is slowly seeping into the mainstream world as well. In a world which has started to acknowledge nerdiness and geekiness as cool, XKCD is one of the true standard bearers. And the best thing about XKCD is : It is completely free !! It's released under a creative commons attribution licence. And that gets it a 10/10 from me. It's fans include programmers, scientists, guys who play dungeons & dragons and people with an concerned about Velociraptor attacks [or maybe it is only Munroe]. It is often due to the fact that it's NASA contractor turned cartoon creator peppers his comics with inside jokes and internet memes. The cartoon strip's cultish followers have ensured that the general public too get a taste of XKCD humor even if it usually leaves the "unwired" kind scratching their heads. With Youtube being the latest to acknowledge the power & reach of XKCD in the internet, here is a list of my more favorite instances of life imitating xkcd :
[1] Starting off with my favorite, this incident happened after Randall's cartoon [which I had included in my last post] had ninjas attacking Richard Stallman [founder of the free software movement]. And when Stallman went to Yale to talk about DRM, he was really attacked by a bunch of student ninjas!! And in another homage to the cartoon, Stallman was mailed a Katana, a Japanese sword that Stallman uses in the cartoon to defend himself. Stallman apparently e-mailed his benefactors back telling them he keeps it beside him when he goes to sleep. So, Bill Gates, your plans ain't gonna work.
[2] This cartoon refers to Wikipedia's stringent citation requirements. The man on the dais is obviously a politician. The point is clear.
And who took this to the real world? Apparently this crazy fat guy in Cambridge, Massachusetts did. He screamed around the college streets screaming "No allegations without citations". Maybe our politicians can take a lesson or two from Wikipedia.
[3] In another instance, Youtube included an idea that was illustrated in this XKCD strip : "Listen To Yourself" into its comments feature wherein a user can hear his/her comment read out aloud [optional] before posting. This apparently helped in reducing strong and negative comments. There are tons of more examples of life imitating XKCD that I have heard of. But I would advice you to just go and read this awesome comic.
[1] Starting off with my favorite, this incident happened after Randall's cartoon [which I had included in my last post] had ninjas attacking Richard Stallman [founder of the free software movement]. And when Stallman went to Yale to talk about DRM, he was really attacked by a bunch of student ninjas!! And in another homage to the cartoon, Stallman was mailed a Katana, a Japanese sword that Stallman uses in the cartoon to defend himself. Stallman apparently e-mailed his benefactors back telling them he keeps it beside him when he goes to sleep. So, Bill Gates, your plans ain't gonna work.
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