Information about Xkcd

xkcd
Panel from "Philosophy" (#220) with tooltip text
Author(s)	Randall Munroe
Website	[1] RSS
Current status / schedule	Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
Launch date	September 2005
Genre(s)	Nerd/Romance Humor

xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe,^[1] a Christopher Newport University graduate who worked as a contractor for NASA.^[2] It calls itself "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language."^[3][4]

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,^[5][1] 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.^[6][7]

The comic is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.^[8] New comics are added at midnight North American Eastern time on Monday,^[1] Wednesday, and Friday, although so far they have been updated every weekday on two occasions, parody week and the five-part 'Choices' series.

History

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."^[4]

In May 2007, the comic caught the attention of many by drawing the Web in geographic form.^[10] Various websites were drawn as continents, each sized according to their relative popularity and located according to their general subject matter.^[10] This put xkcd at number two on The Post-Standard's "The new hotness" list.^[11]

xkcd is not an acronym, and Munroe attaches no meaning to the name, except in a joking manner within the comic.^[12] 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.<ref name="aboutxkcd" />^[13]

On Sunday, September 23, 2007, hundreds of people gathered at GPS coordinates listed in a strip: 42.39561 -71.13051. Fans converged on a park in North Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the strip's author stated, "Maybe wanting something does make it real," a reference to a frame in the strip.^[14][15]

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. ^{[16] [17] [18]}

Recurring themes

While there is no specific storyline to the comic, there are some recurring themes. 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,^{[19][20][21][22][23]} the game Guitar Hero,^[24][25] Vanilla Ice, characters making out with themselves,^[26][27] various bizarre "hobbies", and many "your mom" jokes. There have also been several strips featuring "Red Spiders", zeppelins, Joss Whedon's short-lived series Firefly, or Mussolini. Each comic also has a tooltip, specified using the title attribute in HTML. The text usually contains an afterthought or annotation related to that day's comic.^[28]

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). He is particularly intolerant of smart-assery and 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. For example, he once cut off another character's hand for posing the original "-gry" puzzle,^[29], which relies on specific wording rather than logic, and once inflicted a multi-spectral "Care Bear stare" on a person who wanted him to join MySpace.^[30] He is closely based on the character Aram from the Men In Hats webcomic.^[31]

A boy in a barrel is another recurring character, who 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 the many doodles in the older comics, but as of September, 2007, has not been seen for over a year, since comic #31.^[32][33][34]

Another set of recurring characters is the nihilist and the existentialist, recognisable by their hats; the nihilist wears a white top hat and the existentialist wears a beret. So far, they have only been seen together, never separately. They can first be seen in the "Nihilism" comic^[35] where their conversation and actions romantically explain the similarities and differences between the two philosophies. They appear again in "Dignified."^[36]

"Life Imitates xkcd"

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 being sent a katana^[37] and being confronted by students dressed as ninjas during a lecture at Yale^[38] after "Open Source" (#225)
• xkcd readers sneaking chess boards onto roller coasters^[39] after "Chess Photo" (#249)
• The University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois class of 2007's senior prank(last 35 seconds of film) was to fill their lounge up with balloons. This was inspired by comic "Grownups" (#150) after it was determined that playpen balls would be too expensive.
• When Cory Doctorow won the 2007 EFF Pioneer Award the presenters gave him a red cape, goggles and a balloon^[40] - inspired by "Blagofaire" (#239)
• A reader was inspired by Dating Pools to put up a personal on Craigslist which mathematically "proved" why someone should go out with him.^[41] (#314)
• Shortly after the comic "A-Minus-Minus" was posted, an eBay listing for an office chair "guaranteed to make the world a weirder place" was posted. Within hours, it was bought, and the seller's feedback for the item included the phrase "INSTEAD OF OFFICE CHAIR, PACKAGE CONTAINED BOBCAT. WOULD BUY AGAIN. A--".

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

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