SirMustapha wrote:In other words, I meant that I have no idea what's supposed to be funny here. The positive thing is that Randall did not fall into the common pitfall of "telling instead of showing", which he does VERY often. But the situation itself here is just not funny. Randomness for randomness' sake usually does not work, and passing randomness off as "Dadaism" is very dumb.
And this is not a "Dadaist cartoon". It's a cartoon that references Dadaism.
Yeah, but you're still making some assumptions about what Randall ought to be trying to do here that you already know he's not doing. I mean, your criticism of every XKCD strip ever is essentially the same. A hell of a lot of this comic has to do with simply presenting an absurd scenario, usually an unlikely variation on a familiar one, and just playing out what that might look like. Sometimes that takes a slightly speculative form, but usually it's just a chance to pile on silly things. XKCD is doing silly things with big words that make people feel special for recognizing them, or make people look them up and appreciate the gag in retrospect (and, on occasion, sharing life observations that that audience might appreciate.)
Part of it is simply Randall's persona, too. The strip has to look sloppy and inconsistent even beyond the normal limits of being a normal human being in the real world, because it's supposed to look like shit off the top of his head. That's why it has the art style it does - it's meant to be notebook sketches of an essentially fictional person whom Randall has constructed. For that matter, 99% of the time, that's who we're talking about when we say
Randall. So the concepts thrown out are easily as important as the execution, because they're contributing to that character; what's going on in this person's head, and how does that jive with what we already know about him?
Some of the criticisms you make are actually valid, but you have a very reductionist view of humor, so you miss some seriously important details, and I still haven't come close to understanding what you hope to accomplish. Of course, I generally get the sense you're pretty aware of your "character," too....
So much depends upon a red wheel barrow (>= XXII) but it is not going to be installed.
she / her / her