Signs Point To XKCD's Time Ending 226
CaptSlaq writes "According to the current imagery, it looks like Randal Munroe has finished the story he was telling with the Time series. The long running series that has spanned over 3000 images and spawned multiple methods of viewing and comment appears to have come to an end."
Nooooooo!!!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nooooooo!!!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
XKCD's "Time" is ending?
You know what this means...
Only one thing!
RAGNAROK! [huffingtonpost.ca]
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no it means this
oblink (Score:4, Funny)
http://xkcd.com/1190/ [xkcd.com]
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Is it just me who thinks this is funny?
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Re:oblink (Score:5, Informative)
#1190 is ending, not XKCD is ending. #1190 is titled Time.
Re:oblink (Score:5, Informative)
1190 is a slow pseudo-animation, posted without any special announcements. It updated one frame roughly every hour since March. You can see the whole sequence (we think its the whole sequence) only on fan sites, such as this. [aubronwood.com]
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As I was watching the animation, this track [spotify.com] started playing. It worked surprisingly well as a soundtrack.
Well good (Score:5, Funny)
It's about time.
Re:Well good (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well good (Score:5, Insightful)
Misleading summary (Score:4, Informative)
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I know I'll be strung up for saying this, but XKCD is like The Onion. A thing that exists, which I don't ever remember exists until those couple times per year when someone randomly sends me a link and says "did you see this yet?" and I go look at it and think "huh... yep, that's The Onion/XKCD". It's kind of too cutesy for its own good. I usually kind of feel like I'm watching the comic-strip equivalent of seeing a young couple being overly cutesy and cuddly in public.
That isn't to say I don't think it's a
The concept of a geek card (Score:5, Insightful)
it just falls into the category of one of those things it seems like geeks spill way too much jizz over.
Like when people say "turn in your geek card" when someone fails to get an inside joke related to an uncited quotation from some science fiction movie like Blade Runner or WarGames.
Re:The concept of a geek card (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a geek cargo cult out there, and it's populated with people that desperately wished they finished that astro physics degree or didn't drop out of DeVry. They believe that by adorning themselves with tokens and fetishes of geekdom, that they will become smarter or work hard by osmosis. This typically happens later in life as an attempt to masquerade their way through technical interviews. I honestly don't care all that much about Dilithium crystals because the real world operates on fossil fuels and electricity, but that doesn't stop these charlatans from wishing it did.
Re:The concept of a geek card (Score:5, Interesting)
Either that, or it just happens to be another fashion phenomenon, and doesn't say anything at all about their inner lives or philosophy or willingness to look directly into reality's hard face, as you have apparently done. Maybe they just, you know, enjoy sci-fi and tech stuff and chicks in horned-rim glasses.
Like tattoos. People who don't have tattoos seem to want to create an entire psychodrama in their heads about the motivation and world-view of the person with the tattoo. But sometimes, it really is just because somebody wanted a fleur-de-lis on their calf because they like the way it looks.
Everybody is so anxious to diminish other people as this AC seems to want to do. I wonder what's made so many people so grumpy that they feel the need to try to minimize others with such ersatz psychological profiles based on data picked out of their underpants. Maybe it's the economy. Or maybe it's just that grumpy people seem more apt to complain loudly.
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Like tattoos. People who don't have tattoos seem to want to create an entire psychodrama in their heads about the motivation and world-view of the person with the tattoo. But sometimes, it really is just because somebody wanted a fleur-de-lis on their calf because they like the way it looks.
I think it's a little more complex than that. The way I see it (as a non-tattooed person who thinks they're kinda stupid), there's a big, big difference between someone with a smallish tattoo on their calf, or 2 or 3 ta
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Tattoos are not cheap, so having large amounts of skin covered with them adds up to a lot of money, and it says something about someone who wants to spend that much money on adorning themselves instead of making a house downpayment, investing, or saving for their kids' college tuition..
As a heavily tattooed geek, I have to disagree. Being a geek/nerd is about caring about something to the point of wierdness. That is what we are. I live so far into my own head about gastronomy that I am a freak amongst Chefs, the guys who make a living by cooking. My tattoos are less permanent than my nerd style, as long as my mind runs it will think about food. I have spent more on cooking books than on ink. A maniac with a potato peeler and an hour would get rid of my tatts. Being passionate about stuff
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> and it says something about someone who wants to spend that much money on adorning
> themselves instead of making a house downpayment, investing, or saving for their kids' college
> tuition.
So any "large" amount of money (what is large anyway? The amount it would cost to be covered head to toe in tatoos looks like a lot less compared to my salary now than it did, say, 10 years ago) that isn't spent on making a house downpayment or investing, or saving for their kids' college (assuming they have/wan
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With the people I see covered in tattoos, it's pretty obvious that they aren't making a lot of money in their careers, and probably don't get much above minimum wage. You don't see lower-income people traveling the world, but for some reason you do see a subset of them spending all their money on tattoos. If you have plenty of money, spending some on frivolous stuff is fine, but if you're barely hanging on, and you have kids, it's extremely irresponsible.
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You imply that people who like to cover their body with tattoos are somehow less valuable in the workforce, but you have it backwards. It is not tattoo lovers being unable to perform, but society who rejects tattoo lovers. I have three tattoos so far and I make just shy of six figures. The only thing stopping me from being "covered in tattoos"
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I work as a programmer at Ubisoft. I have sleeves on my forearms, and I know lots of guys that work here that have plenty of large tattoos (and/or piercings). My arms DID cost me a lot of money.
Sure, these are a bit frivolous and are 100% aesthetic choices for me, but so are clothes, and these tattoos will last longer. You've got a lot of weird pre-conceived notions of people that have tattoos. As it happens, I have a job and have chosen a field where people don't mind that I have tattoos. I have friends th
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http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/people-without-tattoos-labelled-freaks-and-attention-seekers-2013060771240 [thedailymash.co.uk]
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It is a way for them to feel special and unique, by coming up with a relatively amateurish back story, that probably hundreds of thousands of other people have came up with to make them feel creative.
Oh look a S/O name.
Oh look a Native American/Asian/Celtic symbols.
Oh look Goth stuff, the same goth stuff that every other goth person has.
Oh a cartoon character you liked as a kid.
Oh your favorite flower.
Why don't kids today go old school and get an anchors, and join the navy.
Darmok and Jihad at Viagra (Score:3)
Re:Darmok and Jihad at Viagra (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone noticed it is impossible to be "current" anymore, geekly or otherwise? There are too many information streams.
Damn you internet! Damn you all to hell!
Re:Darmok and Jihad at Viagra (Score:5, Funny)
It used to be possible but they killed Google Reader.
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You're getting older. That's all.
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You don't have any idea what is current and you don't particularly care to find out = You are old.
Re:Darmok and Jihad at Viagra (Score:5, Funny)
There are too many information streams.
Just don't cross them and you'll be fine.
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if I had a penny for every back to the future quote someone felt the need to dredge up..
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I will attempt the hopeless: a list of all content I remember being quoted here as meme-ish (not that I've seen/read/heard it all):
Additional movies: Spaceballs, Galaxy Quest, The Princess Bride, (This is) Spinal Tap, Fight Club, every Star Trek movie (no matter how good or bad), ... (on the more esoteric side: Buckaroo Bonzai, Logan's Run, Tron, ...)
TV : All of Dr. Who, every version of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Space 1999 (but usually only in reference to doing something to the Moon. not quotes), Battlestar G
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and any thing written by Asimov when the topic even tangentially involves robots or sentient AI.
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Only the first Matrix movie is quoted. Curiously, none of the other Alien movies seem to have made the cut. Even the first one...
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The usual Aliens quote is in reference to nuking something from orbit. "It's the only way." Or mostly coming at night.
Personally, I always like Hudson's "game over, man" line. And, the group I hung around with would invariably follow any "that's just game over" with "why don't we build a fire...sing some songs?" And then there's "they can bill me".
Curiously, none of the other Alien movies seem to have made the cut. Even the first one...
Likely because Alien was straight up horror with almost no comic relief, and long stretches of time with no dialog at all. Aliens was more of an action movie with the dry humor you see in that sort of film, plus it had a lot more dialog overall.
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Personally, I always like Hudson's "game over, man" line. And, the group I hung around with would invariably follow any "that's just game over" with "why don't we build a fire...sing some songs?" And then there's "they can bill me".
Yeah, I loved Hudson too. Years ago, "Game Over" was my Windows98 shutdown sound. Although, I always thought his best line was, "Why don't you put her in charge." I still crack up when I watch it.
I've been a Bill Paxton fan since Weird Science. My siblings still call me Chet.
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As a geek, you only watch Star Trek:Enterprise to complain about:
1. How Scott Bakula killed the franchise (untrue, so people really think Trek will stay dead?).
2. How under-rated it was (wrong, it was rated exactly where it should be, just your opinion is different).
3. How tired Star Trek is now (possibly true)
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Enterprise becomes much more tolerable if you skip the intro credits.
I wouldn't say it was greatly underrated. I wouldn't even say it was good, but it was still better than Voyager.
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There is no Matrix?
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Actually, there is no spoon.
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Or maybe it's shot AT the 3D printer for giving weird and vague error messages. PC Load Letter? What does that mean?!
Knocking the expected investment (Score:2)
Dude are you knocking Blade Runner?
No, I'm just knocking the amount of time that one is expected to have invested in tracking down science fiction DVDs at a public library in order to participate in discussions without being ridiculed, if Mathinker's post [slashdot.org] is anything to go by.
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Couple times per year?
You must not read many threads here on Slashdot, because there seems to be an obligatory link in every story.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
Couple times per year?
You must not read many threads here on Slashdot, because there seems to be an obligatory link in every story.
Citation Needed! http://xkcd.com/285/ [xkcd.com]
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Well played sir!
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Couple times per year?
You must not read many threads here on Slashdot, because there seems to be an obligatory link in every story.
Obligatory XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/262/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed! How dare people enjoy something!
(Oh, I think Kevin Bacon may be teaching your daughter how to dance. You should probably check into that)
Re: Misleading summary (Score:3)
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Not just you. XKCD is the thing somebody occasionally prints out and leaves on my desk, or forwards as a link. I don't recall ever seeing it of my own initiative, and such is my unfamiliarity with it that the name brings to some some sort of OS version and I have to spend a moment sorting out what distro is involved before eventually realizing it's not an OS at all.
I'm sure it's perfectly fine. But I don't spend any time looking at comics these days, be they Dilbert, XKCD, whatever. Lost interest when
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Apropriate Babylon 5 quote: (Score:4, Insightful)
Londo Molari: "My shoes are too tight, but it doesn 't matter, because I have forgotten how to dance."
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FTFY.
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e.g. The Money comic/poster:
http://xkcd.com/980/ [xkcd.com]
It's not a strict comic. It might embody the xkcd spirit, but it's not the same old thing. And it's interesting even outside the context of it being related to a web comic.
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CORRECTION (Score:2)
You mean misleading title
I realized that about two minutes after I had submitted. Unlike xkcd forums, Slashdot lacks editing, and at the time, I didn't feel like posting a CORRECTION reply to my own post. Even preview is unavailable in the mobile version.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Funny)
Everything stopped being funny YEARS ago
Welcome to being old.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything stopped being funny YEARS ago
Welcome to being old.
Actually, as someone who turned 50 in May, I find many things/people getting funnier/stupider as I get older. Probably as I gain perspective and realize how ridiculous and unimportant most things really are, especially in contrast to how serious and important people think those things are. Losing my wife of 20 years to brain cancer in 2006 (just 7 weeks after diagnosis) probably helps with that perspective -- Remember Sue... [tumblr.com]
All life's little problems are just a distraction from the one big problem - that there's no fucking point to anything. (Just my 2 cents.)
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Dude...
I just read this:
http://remembersue.tumblr.com/remember [tumblr.com]
Wow. :( Made me cry a little.
I won't say I'm sorry, as I don't know you, but thanks for sharing; There's so much shit on the Internet not worth reading these days, it's nice sometimes to find something so real and emotive.
-Jar
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Dude...
I just read this: http://remembersue.tumblr.com/remember [tumblr.com]
Wow. :( Made me cry a little.
I won't say I'm sorry, as I don't know you, but thanks for sharing; There's so much shit on the Internet not worth reading these days, it's nice sometimes to find something so real and emotive.
Thank you. You're the first person to have mentioned reading it. I don't know if it's any good from an objective/writing point of view, but it says what I needed it to say. Sue was a special person and the world is simply less without her.
I still don't know why she left that poem for me, all those years ago...
obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
so....it has come to this...
Sequel (Score:5, Informative)
I'm waiting for the sequel: More time.
(before anybody flames, I follow it every couple of days via http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/ [geekwagon.net]).
Signs Point to XKCD's Time Ending ... (Score:4, Informative)
There's a Wiki and a replay site (Score:5, Informative)
Wiki [wikia.com]
Replay [geekwagon.net]
Re:There's a Wiki and a replay site (Score:5, Interesting)
I know about a second replay site [aubronwood.com]. It's not as good as the one on geekwagon.net, but it has sound :-)
And don't forget the forum thread [xkcd.com], which currently has 51583 posts. In this thread a new religion that worships the One True Comic was started. Also a few new standard units were introduced, based on the NewPix (half an hour), which was later replaced with the LongPix (one hour) when the update interval of the comic changed. People in the thread did extensive analysis of the comic, and later on some started analyzing the forum thread itself. The thread was also the starting point of the replay web sites.
Re:There's a Wiki and a replay site (Score:4, Insightful)
And I for one say "Thank God" (Score:2, Interesting)
Geez, what a manipulative waste of time. Randal is a smart guy; maybe that was the point of the exercise: To see just how many morons out there (including myself) followed this banal story to its bitter and anticlimactic end.
For those just dying to poke sharp sticks in their eyes, I recommend this link [aubronwood.com] instead.
Re:And I for one say "Thank God" (Score:4, Interesting)
I enjoyed it. But then, over time I got to see Munroe as generous and friendly rather than cynical and manipulative. So no, to me that was definitely not the point of the exercise.
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Forget the Mayans ... (Score:2)
title plus the comic is full message (Score:2)
Time Waste.
Randall wasted it; while no individual viewer wasted as much in sum even more time was wasted
Re:title plus the comic is full message (Score:5, Funny)
And then we find out it was a nine line Python script that wrote, drew and uploaded the entire 1190 comic.
What the chirp is wrong with people? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a comic, guys. I don't read Cathy, but I don't feel obliged to mustard all over Cathy Guisewite because her comic doesn't amuse me. Why do people dump so hard on xkcd and Randall Munroe? If you don't like the comic, don't read it, and don't read Slashdot articles about it—and shut the chirp up and let the rest of us enjoy it in peace.
I found it fun. That's all. It was fun. It was original, and intriguing, and a little challenging, and a nice change of mood when I got home from work (or when I needed a break at work).
And it was something I don't believe any webcomic had ever done before. When I submitted the original Slashdot story about "Time", I thought that aspect might interest people. Instead, the story got the same sort of molpy-chirping geek-elitist hate posts that this one is gathering.
For the record: "Time" was followed by college students and septuagenarians (I'm in my 50s, and xkcd regularly makes me laugh). Musicians, math teachers, writers, and astronomers contributed to the forum thread. The last figure we saw was that over 2 million words of original material had been posted to the thread. We weren't doing it for geek cred; we were doing it because we enjoyed ourselves.
Grow up a little, guys, OK?
Re:What the chirp is wrong with people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly!
Sure, not every XKCD comic is brilliant, but plenty are funny, appealing to a tough demographic for subject material.
I think his various infographics are fantastic (money, radiation) and a handful of info comics are similarly amazing (gravity wells, ocean depths, movie plots). His "What If?" series is also extremely interesting.
Sites that feed off the "XKCD is overrated" vibe come across as pathetic calls for attention from people too lame and stupid to produce their own work. Basically some members of the geek community have this bizarre calling to drop their pants and publicly poop all over whatever they think is overrated. The fact is their sum total contribution to the world is being a shit stain on the fabric of the web.
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I don't feel obliged to mustard all over Cathy Guisewite because her comic doesn't amuse me. Why do people dump so hard on xkcd and Randall Munroe?
My guess? Cathy Guisewite isn't a pretentious ass that panders to the bottom 1% of self-described "rationalists".
The constant flow of links on forums like this along with the wasteful printouts that find their way inexplicably to my desk makes xkcd difficult to ignore. Cathy, in contrast, is happily confined to the back of the local paper and rarely (if ever) brought to my attention.
I'll admit that I used to be a regular xkcd reader. I checked out this article as "Time" seemed like it could be interestin
Re:What the chirp is wrong with people? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll admit that I used to be a regular xkcd reader. I checked out this article as "Time" seemed like it could be interesting. I was wrong. It's the same nonsense that I and others outgrew years ago.
People's interests change over time. They get bored with some things and move on. But trolls like to use the word "outgrew" to try to offend current fans, and particularly immature people view these sorts of continuous, inevitable shifts in interests over time as signs of increasing maturity on their own part, not so much to offend anyone, but as a way of making themselves feel superior. Often then aren't smart enough to realize that's what they're doing.
(Yes, in case it wasn't obvious, the irony is intentional...)
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translation: I hate this and you should too because I have passed judgement on it
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Cathy Guisewite isn't a pretentious ass that
Really, how is he pretentious. I think you have a much more solid claim to that title, viz:
panders to the bottom 1% of self-described "rationalists".
OK, well you don't have to be a rationalist. Go read some webcomic that panders to the top 1% of irrationalists then and be happy about it.
I and others outgrew years ago.
In other words you got old and boring and relly grouchy. That's not something which has to happen when you get older. You chose it.
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Re:The Oracle (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, though some of them were harder to read than others. The key takeaway from them was that a big sea (what we later realize is the Atlantic) was about to flood into the smaller one where our protagonists built their sand castle (a version of the Mediterranean that the Oracle explained had been cut off from the Atlantic, dried up, but was now reconnecting with the Atlantic which was eager to flood into the lowlands of the dried up Mediterranean). If you looked at the maps indicating where the new shore would be, you'd see quite clearly that the places where the new shoreline stretches on the map go from what we know as the Iberian peninsula to Italy and Sicily.
Apparently, the protagonists lived somewhere south of France in the middle of the Mediterranean, but their territory was swept away by the flood. The castle where the Oracle was located, which was supposed to be just above the new waterline, roughly corresponds to the location of Marseilles.
Though I haven't seen it said elsewhere, this may be a new fiction for the creation of the Atlantis myth.
Re:The Oracle (Score:5, Informative)
Antares (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget Antares was missing from the night sky; I cling to my theory that it going supernova damaged to ozone layer sufficiently to precipitate an ice-age that dropped the ocean levels, closing Gibraltar.
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Thank you so much for sharing!
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Interested folk might want to dig up the archaeologists' writings on several events that are precedents for this story. The best documented case is the flooding of the Mediterranean basin, but that was about 5 million years ago, before humans exist. A similar event occurred about 8000 years ago, when rising sea waters broke through the Straight of Bosporus, and flooded the Black sea, which was lower due to lack of water sources during the earlier ice age. There is also some evidence for an ice-age dryin
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Well, I've already been corrected in other responses. Turns out that rather being set in the past, the story is apparently set 11,000 years in the future, based on the arrangement of stars visible for an extended period at one point during the series.
Re:XKCD "experimental comics" (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, and the author has expressed any of that... where, exactly?
All he did was make a comic. Other people turned it into a thing, and that somehow makes him a diva?
Re:XKCD "experimental comics" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:XKCD "experimental comics" (Score:5, Insightful)
... and Tolstoy wrote fiction books. The medium has changed, the audience has changed, but it's still art, and I think it's quite insightful for the most part. Look at the number of times it's referenced here on SlashDot. Randall has vision, a good understanding of math and science and a great sense of humour. Personally, I wish a lot more people were like him, rather than bitter critics.
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Aka Geek Hubris.
It's a frigging web comic, not Tolstoy. Who, other than obsessive-compulsive fanboys would bother to check it for updates more than once a week or so?
It just goes to show; too much success can turn just about anyone into a diva who thinks that the world hangs on their every word (even a supposedly down-to-earth science guy).
Kinda reminds me of megatokyo or penny arcade - good web comics in their own right, but suddenly the author(s) get to thinking they're some kind of genius / saint / high-artiste.
They're not poseurs, they're at the forefront of the medium and the success they've achieved is as a result of their talents.
xkcd isn't always the funniest (though it has some real classics), but it's definitely the most innovative. The Time comic is a weird intersection of comic and animation, it's probably not going to become a new style but he did something original AND good, and that's a rare talent.
Re:Time + 53? (Score:4, Informative)
Time is what's ending, not XKCD. Time is a single comic (one of the current 1,243) which itself has over 3000 frames. What makes it unique is that they were released one at a time (originally on the half hour, which later changed to hourly). The story itself isn't overtly interesting, but the way it was released one frame at a time kept people guessing. The official XKCD thread for 1190 is massive, mostly full of speculation and even odder than normal people.
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The real fans of Time are nice people. Assholes (and I include myself here) just don't have the patience. So unlike many other nerd/clique/cult obsessions, it's managed to select out the anti-social jerks, rather than become centred around them.
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As a lurker of Time, I agree.
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Well, you could avoid having to admit you're a huge closeted fan with a portrait of Munroe in every room of your house, for one.
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...
I don't click on stories that don't interest me. That'd be an utterly stupid waste of time. Moreso to take the time to comment on them.