A few nights ago I watched a video wherein Randall Munroe, author of The Webcomic That Offends Liberal Arts Majors (better known as xkcd, “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”), and Wil Wheaton, the kid from Star Trek TNG who no one really liked but who’s actually a pretty cool guy and now kind of a spokesperson for geek culture, talked at length – the length of a feature-length film, to be more precise – about the many quirks of the man behind the world’s most referenced webcomic [1]. If you read all that in one breath, well done.
One of the many random things they discussed was the unlikelihood of the indicator lights of two consecutive cars waiting to turn at the same intersection both flashing in unison for the duration of their wait (165: Turn Signals). “Usually they’re at least a little off. But I’ve been watching like 30 seconds and haven’t seen any beat frequency!”
This particular xkcd comic, explained Randall, was for a long time the comic that he would receive the most mail about. Why? “I thought I was the only one who noticed that!” and “I feel like there’s someone else who looks at the world like me.”
That sends a powerful message to me: on one hand it’s really sweet to see such a connection being made, but on the other hand it speaks volumes about the way we interact with each other that many us believe we’re the only weird ones out there. Of course, my use of the word “weird” here is contradictory. “Weird” implies something that differs from the norm, but I don’t believe that’s actually the case. When we socialise with people on a day-to-day basis we have a tendency to act in a way we deem socially acceptable. We seek to conform to the perceived norm of how a person should act. We want to be ordinary, even boring, for the sake of fitting in.
Yet this is completely off the mark. Having unique qualities in our character is what makes us interesting as an individual, and those unique qualities should be celebrated and exercised rather than exorcised. Sure, we might not get along with some people, but we’ll bond much closer with others. Still, it’s undeniably hard to live that way, knowing there will be haters and choosing to wear our individuality regardless. Our fallback option is to conform once more to the norm, and then we’re back to square one.
So how can we encourage ourselves to embrace our quirks, and encourage others to embrace theirs? I think the internet, and xkcd, are part of the answer. Xkcd has become a vastly popular webcomic because it embraces such quirks. The comics don’t always resonate with me, but when they do, they really hit home and encourage me to emerge a little from the shell of conformity that I too often hide inside. We need these sorts of reminders, whether they’re from friends, the internet, books, or some other source, to remind us to spurn conformity and embrace our individuality. Conforming perfectly to the norm is an impossible goal, and an empty one at that; embracing our unique minds and thoughts and personalities is endlessly more fulfilling. After all, if we’re living for everyone else, we’re not living for ourselves.
If any of this resounds with you, I encourage you to have a listen to the aforementioned video. I wasn’t kidding about it being long – over one and a half hours – but start watching and you may just find yourself sitting through the whole discussion. They talk about such things like…
- Just how much your brain is trolling you when you awake one minute before your alarm is to go off
- Whether Lego should be spelt with the first or all letters capitalised (guess you know my preference now) and how it should be pluralised (Lego™? Lego™s? Legos™? Legoes?)
- How to identify where in the world you are from an unknown location in Google street view
- Why physics is more fun than engineering (not really, but the contrast is mentioned)
- The logistics of how you would drop a steak from the outer edge of the atmosphere and record the fall with a GoPro camera
And that’s just the first 20 minutes.
Now, finally, for regular followers of this blog, I apologise for the lack of updates recently (you’ll find this highly amusing if you’ve watched the video), but I do have a genuine excuse! I’ve had to write a weekly design blog for a uni project, and keeping that up to date on top of work and studies has kept my hands full. But I’m on holidays for a little while now, so I plan to make it up to you guys by posting each week until the next semester starts.
Thanks for reading my ramblings.
[1] Memes started by xkcd: “Little Bobby Tables“, “Sudo make me a sandwich“, the classic “Someone is WRONG on the internet” comic, and many other comics that lead to the commonly-shared sentiment, “Get out of my head, Randall.” There’s even a comic showing which of Earth’s memes other planets are likely repeating right now.
- Python (the popular scripting language) added a built-in module called antigravity that simply opens this comic
- You can ask Siri or Google Now to “sudo make me a sandwich“
- If you enter “correcthorsebatterystaple” as your new password on Dropbox, it will warn you not to take webcomics too seriously.
- The Wikipedia page lists dozens of other such influences that xkcd has had
I’ve also seen my university lecturers use xkcd comics to illustrate concepts in lectures on numerous occasions. So, obviously that anecdotal evidence means it must be pretty big!
Observations 