Frankly your opinion seems to indicate ignorance. The vast majority of XKCDs are not political in any sense. It is nerd orientated humor which only seldom strays into humor for the benefit of nerd politics. Call it bad art if you don’t appreciate the jokes or insights contained therein but just doesn’t fit in the category awful political art at all.
I think MileyCyrus meant it in the sense of the linked Yudkowsky
essay, in which he gives
atheistic hymns as an example. In other words, people like xkcd because of the
applause lights and in-group signalling, not because of the quality. For what
it’s worth, I disagree, though I might describe some of the lower-quality xkcd
strips this way.
Political doesn’t necessarily mean “Republican vs Democrats”.
That is true, trivially true and it surprises me that I have to repeat that yes, it is what I assumed when I initially rejected your accusation. I thought “not political in any sense” was about as explicit as I could be without just sounding awkwardly verbose.
In XKCD’s case, it’s “STEM majors vs liberal arts majors.”
I cannot imagine how anyone who read a significant sample of XKCD comics would claim this. It is about in jokes—witty (or intended to be witty) references to ideas that are funny if you happen to either know about the technical factoid or are interested enough in that kind of thing to google it. If anything it is far too well, self absorbed in it’s own STEMiness for it to bother being political much along the STEM/arts axis. It doesn’t even seem to bother to try to score points along the nerds/copyright axis. It takes its cheap shots at the expense of nerds almost exclusively.
Take a look at 863, or the alt text of 764. Liberal arts majors are identified as an outgroup in XKCD’s “warning” at the bottom of each page. It’s as transparent as Dr Pepper 10 saying “It’s not for women!!”
The warning at the bottom says, “This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).”
Or, of course, http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1542#comic
Most people link to XKCD, but I think SMBC has tons of pictures relevant to LW topics. (Some random choices.)
Frankly, XKCD strikes me as awful political art.
Frankly your opinion seems to indicate ignorance. The vast majority of XKCDs are not political in any sense. It is nerd orientated humor which only seldom strays into humor for the benefit of nerd politics. Call it bad art if you don’t appreciate the jokes or insights contained therein but just doesn’t fit in the category awful political art at all.
I think MileyCyrus meant it in the sense of the linked Yudkowsky essay, in which he gives atheistic hymns as an example. In other words, people like xkcd because of the applause lights and in-group signalling, not because of the quality. For what it’s worth, I disagree, though I might describe some of the lower-quality xkcd strips this way.
I used the same sense. It does not apply.
Political doesn’t necessarily mean “Republican vs Democrats”. In XKCD’s case, it’s “STEM majors vs liberal arts majors.”
That is true, trivially true and it surprises me that I have to repeat that yes, it is what I assumed when I initially rejected your accusation. I thought “not political in any sense” was about as explicit as I could be without just sounding awkwardly verbose.
I cannot imagine how anyone who read a significant sample of XKCD comics would claim this. It is about in jokes—witty (or intended to be witty) references to ideas that are funny if you happen to either know about the technical factoid or are interested enough in that kind of thing to google it. If anything it is far too well, self absorbed in it’s own STEMiness for it to bother being political much along the STEM/arts axis. It doesn’t even seem to bother to try to score points along the nerds/copyright axis. It takes its cheap shots at the expense of nerds almost exclusively.
Take a look at 863, or the alt text of 764. Liberal arts majors are identified as an outgroup in XKCD’s “warning” at the bottom of each page. It’s as transparent as Dr Pepper 10 saying “It’s not for women!!”
If you only have 2 examples out of 1002 that even debatably support your point, your overall characterization is an absurd overgeneralization at best.
How is 863 against liberal arts majors? It seems to be about lazy naive undecided students, vs people seriously interested in their major.
The warning at the bottom says, “This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).”
So yeah, hardly transparent.