1043: “Ablogalypse”

[Scars Unseen]

Alt text: ...I still can't believe we got them to say "blogosphere."

It really isn't that hard to make yabbering TV heads say anything. I challenge whoever comes up with the next social media craze to find a stupider verb than "tweeting" so we can watch anchors attempt to make it just as newsworthy.

It gets interesting when people combine it with other odd catchphrases, such as:

[neoliminal]

He spelled Blag wrong.

[BAReFOOt]

And I still don’t know what a “Tumblr” is, apart from a bad typo.
Not a single time when I heard from it, have I heard what it’s for,of what its point is.
It hasn’t even sparked enough interest to go look it up.

Edit: But now I know why it’s searched so much. Because nobody knows what it is! And what its point is! And even after millions of searches, still nobody knows. ^^
That means that this is actually a positive sign. Since it shows that Dumblr can not even exist, when it’s forced like a Goatse dildo into a ant’s anus.

[enumerated powers]

All that Myan calendar end-of-times stuff is bogus.

Spoiler:

[BAReFOOt]

All that Myan …

What the hell is a “Myan”? Is that like a Mayan wrapped in mylar?

[FlySoftiii]

Its called a "blag". And "Blagosphere".

Why is he spelling it wrong?

[dhokarena56]

Myancat!

[Kit.]

Ыоg

[severach]

So the Mayans were two and a fraction of a month off.

I think not. Making this comic will increase both searches. "blog" has the upper hand so increasing each by a percentage should extend out the date at which they cross.

Randall was worried that the Mayans would miss and is applying a course correction.

(I'm expecting mathers to correct me!)

[pet_peeve]

A rather dumb strip for many reasons:

• The decline in "blog" in mentions is noise, and even if it wasn't, it has nothing to do with the decline in blogs, more like the decline of considering them anything different than any other media.
  
• Tumblr is a blogging service.
  
• Tumblr is growing mostly because it's the hot place for 14 year old blowhards (i.e., all of them) to post in. i.e., it's the 2012 equivalent of livejournal in the 90s.
  
• Tumblr SUCKS, both as a name, and as a site.

[Ophiucha]

It's a sad day when I feel the need to defend tumblr, but...

1) Tumblr has an active community of people who do a lot more than reblog pictures of cats and post images of Homestuck. Plenty of people do long-form blogging on tumblr, or a mixture of the two. Discussion is rather key to the tumblr experience, as well, although the quality of that discussion is... well, it's the internet, you know how that is. Still, with a good group of followers, you can keep your experience nicely isolated to the people whose thoughts and ideas you appreciate or respect.
2) Who cares how they spell it? It's obviously not how any English word would be spelled, and you'd have to be stupid to think 'blr' is correct. Besides which, how often do you use the word 'tumbler' anyway?

Honestly, it's almost just Reddit as a blog. I really don't get why people hate on it.

[JudeMorrigan]

It's a sad day when I feel the need to defend tumblr, but...

1) Tumblr has an active community of people who do a lot more than reblog pictures of cats and post images of Homestuck. Plenty of people do long-form blogging on tumblr, or a mixture of the two. Discussion is rather key to the tumblr experience, as well, although the quality of that discussion is... well, it's the internet, you know how that is. Still, with a good group of followers, you can keep your experience nicely isolated to the people whose thoughts and ideas you appreciate or respect.
2) Who cares how they spell it? It's obviously not how any English word would be spelled, and you'd have to be stupid to think 'blr' is correct. Besides which, how often do you use the word 'tumbler' anyway?

Honestly, it's almost just Reddit as a blog. I really don't get why people hate on it.

I do believe that you pre-answered your own question.

[martinp23]

I might be missing something, but it looks like the "ablogalypse" is a long way off...

The graph in the comic is the same as that shown at http://www.google.com/trends/?q=blog,+tumblr&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 (for the important bits)... but what it misses is that there's a scaling factor applied. The scale for blog is 1.00, for tumblr, is 0.08... so the magnitude of the tumblr search volume is 8% of what the graph seems to show . So, the number of searches for "tumblr" is a long way from surpassing that for "blog" according to Google's metrics..

But tumblrverse would be pretty nice to hear...

[poof312]

I dislike that the projected date is near my birthday...

[perakojot]

http://www.google.com/trends/?q=water,+ ... all&sort=0
water, tumblr, blog

oh noes!

[BrianB]

So the Mayans were two and a fraction of a month off.

Actually, it is my understanding that the Mayans had no concept of leap years and that if you subtract out all the leap days since that time, we are already past the end of the Mayan calendar.

And yet the world is still here......

Does anyone remember The Prophet of Yonwood?

[toadpipe]

news, blog

http://www.google.com/trends/?q=blog,+n ... all&sort=0

Funny, they don't seem to be talking about news...

[Ephemeron]

The 'xkcd sucks' blog has been getting worse and worse for the last year, but I'll admit I smiled when I saw their parody of a tumblr notes page in the latest comment thread. I'll admit I don't like tumblr much myself.

[Eternal Density]

All that Myan …

What the hell is a “Myan”? Is that like a Mayan wrapped in mylar?

You know, Myan Cat, who will return to destroy the world in a massive conflagration of poptarts and rainbows.

[communisopinio]

Hey you guys... I hate to break it to you, but Randall actually made a mistake with this one. The Google Trends graph is clearly labelled as having been adjusted for the two to even appear prettily in the same range. (right above the graph, you get: blog 1.00 to tumblr .08). "Blog" is in no danger of being overtaken by "tumblr" as a search term... for now anyway. (And I totally admit to posting about this on my tumblr earlier today)


...come on, haven't any of you played with Google Trends enough to notice this before? (I am disappoint)

Edit: accidentally used the wrong word. Figures

[SHISHKABOB]

this graph really sucks, doesn't even have the y-axis labeled

[enumerated powers]

All that Myan …

What the hell is a “Myan”? Is that like a Mayan wrapped in mylar?

Is that the essential point? I misspelled "Mayan"?

Are there any Mayans on here who are offended?

Sorry.

[whateveries]

All that Myan …

What the hell is a “Myan”? Is that like a Mayan wrapped in mylar?

Is that the essential point? I misspelled "Mayan"?

Are there any Mayans on here who are offended?

Sorry.

I wonder if they had pictograph nazis.

[myoilu]

http://i.imgur.com/KAwf3.gif

I really do not want this to happen, for some reason, I absolutely hate tumblr. Maybe it's because i dont have one.. *tries it* ... *never comes back*

Edit: forgot the words... what has reddit done to me?

[communisopinio]

I might be missing something, but it looks like the "ablogalypse" is a long way off...

The graph in the comic is the same as that shown at http://www.google.com/trends/?q=blog,+tumblr&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 (for the important bits)... but what it misses is that there's a scaling factor applied. The scale for blog is 1.00, for tumblr, is 0.08... so the magnitude of the tumblr search volume is 8% of what the graph seems to show . So, the number of searches for "tumblr" is a long way from surpassing that for "blog" according to Google's metrics..

But tumblrverse would be pretty nice to hear...

THIS. How did I miss this earlier? Whatever. I feel invisible. Truthiness and all, everyone else seems to just have grabbed it and ran.

[linforcer]

Looks like I'll have to start saying "tamblr" instead of "blag" eventually

[Pfhorrest]

All that Myan …

What the hell is a “Myan”? Is that like a Mayan wrapped in mylar?

Is that the essential point? I misspelled "Mayan"?

Are there any Mayans on here who are offended?

You know there are still Maya(ns) around, right?

I guess whether any of them would have internet access and speak English and read this comic and its forums AND still be offended may be a slim possibility.

And if there were, they'd probably be more upset about the "n(s)" than the missing "a".

[TrueNarnian]

If you narrow the region to the USA, it's already happened: http://www.google.com/trends/?q=blog,+tumblr,+wordpress,+livejournal&ctab=0&geo=us&date=all&sort=0

[FlySoftiii]

Wait, WHAT? Randall missed the scale of a chart?

Well... Now I can tell HOW MUCH his girlfriend is worse: Not a single bit.

(alt-text): http://xkcd.com/833

[webgiant]

I believe the ancient Mesoamerican culture of the "Mayanalytics" prophesied this very event hundreds of years ago.

Nonsense, they could barely predict a lunar eclipse, let alone anything as world-changing as the end of the blog.

Plus they scheduled a big party for what on our calendar would be 4700 C.E. Terribly bad form to schedule parties after what everyone but the Mayans describes as "the end of the world". There are people in Guatemala still using the Mayan Long Count calendar who are rather amused at all the Westerners thinking their calendar predicts the end of the world.

So the Mayans were two and a fraction of a month off.

Actually, it is my understanding that the Mayans had no concept of leap years and that if you subtract out all the leap days since that time, we are already past the end of the Mayan calendar.

No such luck. The calculation that puts December 2012 as the location of what on the Mayan Long Count Calendar would be the end of the 13th b'ak'tun allows for the fact that they had no concept of leap year days, as in December 2012 is what you get when you add leap year days back in.

Its still not the "end of the world" and the Mayans never thought of it like that. They thought of it the same way we think of New Year's Eve: a big party that might end some people but not the whole world.

[Pfhorrest]

Its still not the "end of the world" and the Mayans never thought of it like that. They thought of it the same way we think of New Year's Eve: a big party that might end some people but not the whole world.

It's more like the Y1K fiasco, if I understand correctly.

Everybody panics that it's the end of the world.

Then we add an extra digit to the date and move on.

[Red Hal]

isn't that just a made up swear word from judge dredd comics?

I think you'll find that's "Drokk", "Grud" (as in "Grudd on a greenie") and "Stomm"; "Krog", "Sneck" and "Frunt" get a look-in if you expand the universe into 2000AD.

[whateveries]

isn't that just a made up swear word from judge dredd comics?

I think you'll find that's "Drokk", "Grud" (as in "Grudd on a greenie") and "Stomm"; "Krog", "Sneck" and "Frunt" get a look-in if you expand the universe into 2000AD.

Well yes, Bog was the word I was alluding to, which I think is a corruption of God, perhaps only used in the badlands though I am not sure if I remembers rightly
.
It's just you know, 'blog' kind of has that mono-sylabilic gutteral sound that each of the examples you provided seems to share, and certainly would not be out of place.

[FCN]

Julian Sanchez argues that the trend is based on the fact that "tumblr" is a useful search filter, and "blog" increasingly is not. Tumblr is a specific domain and hosts a specific type of content, so if you're searching for something that you saw on tumblr, you're likely to associate it with "tumblr" and it's useful to include "tumblr" as a search term. Blogging has become increasingly widespread and generic, with blogs often included within larger media sites, so if you're searching for a blog post it won't help as much to include "blog" as a search term, and you may not even realize that it was a blog post rather than an article.

[FCN]

Hey you guys... I hate to break it to you, but Randall actually made a mistake with this one. The Google Trends graph is clearly labelled as having been adjusted for the two to even appear prettily in the same range. (right above the graph, you get: blog 1.00 to tumblr .08). "Blog" is in no danger of being overtaken by "tumblr" as a search term... for now anyway. (And I totally admit to posting about this on my tumblr earlier today)


...come on, haven't any of you played with Google Trends enough to notice this before? (I am disappoint)

Edit: accidentally used the wrong word. Figures

That's not a scaling factor on the graph, it's just comparing the areas under the curves. Over the entire time period graphed, search volume for "blog" was larger than the volume for "tumblr" by a ratio of 1.00 to .08. If you search for two terms that have very different frequency, you'll see that they don't adjust the scale to make them appear more similar.

[eran_rathan]

isn't that just a made up swear word from judge dredd comics?

I think you'll find that's "Drokk", "Grud" (as in "Grudd on a greenie") and "Stomm"; "Krog", "Sneck" and "Frunt" get a look-in if you expand the universe into 2000AD.

Well yes, Bog was the word I was alluding to, which I think is a corruption of God, perhaps only used in the badlands though I am not sure if I remembers rightly
.
It's just you know, 'blog' kind of has that mono-sylabilic gutteral sound that each of the examples you provided seems to share, and certainly would not be out of place.

бог (pronounced 'bog') is Russian for 'God'.

[whateveries]

isn't that just a made up swear word from judge dredd comics?

I think you'll find that's "Drokk", "Grud" (as in "Grudd on a greenie") and "Stomm"; "Krog", "Sneck" and "Frunt" get a look-in if you expand the universe into 2000AD.

Well yes, Bog was the word I was alluding to, which I think is a corruption of God, perhaps only used in the badlands though I am not sure if I remembers rightly
.
It's just you know, 'blog' kind of has that mono-sylabilic gutteral sound that each of the examples you provided seems to share, and certainly would not be out of place.

бог (pronounced 'bog') is Russian for 'God'.

! thanks eran_rathan, consider that added to the list of things I used to not know.

I have been searching around on google looking for a back up to my memory of bog's usage in 2000AD, and so far have come up empty handed, perhaps I have misremembered it. unfortunately i am notinterested enough to actually dig out, open up and read through six cartons of dusty old 2000AD's and various other publications just to solve the riddle. oh well.

[Dougal666]

Oh, Randall, you disappoint me.
Is that what came of your education? Am I seeing a linear extrapolation for the Tumblr blog?
Do you also moonlight as Horace Dediu, perchance?
I am reminded of this:
http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/29/when-will-android-reach-one-billion-users/

[philip1201]

Oh, Randall, you disappoint me.
Is that what came of your education? Am I seeing a linear extrapolation for the Tumblr blog?
Do you also moonlight as Horace Dediu, perchance?
I am reminded of this:
http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/29/when-w ... ion-users/

Linear approximation is not inherently invalid, it's just inaccurate. Would you happen to know the relevant parameters (effective population size, higher order derivatives, etc.) with high enough accuracy to decrease the margin of error? Better to just use a first order approximation and make it clear you're being inaccurate. The text below it actually says "in about six months", where "about" in this context means that there is a 95% probability that it takes place within 30 days of the declared time. Linear approximation appears to be sufficient to achieve such a degree of accuracy.

In other words, learn to use statistics before you start complaining about others using statistics wrong. Linear approximation is a valid method of estimation as long as you know how to handle it, which Randall does.

[Dougal666]

In other words, learn to use statistics before you start complaining about others using statistics wrong. Linear approximation is a valid method of estimation as long as you know how to handle it, which Randall does.

Oh my, the negativity.
A first order approximation of one third (one year out of three) of a clearly non-linear graph, and extrapolated to half that distance (six months)?