More reasons to love XKCD

[prog]

* The ambiguity of this comic:

Slashdorks will read it and be like "rofl i deal with idiots like this at work every damn day, but they'd fire me if I hung up on them for real", even though I'm fairly confident that's not the joke. Something for everyone!

* The comic is hand-lettered. I have probably already mentioned this as a reason I like the comic, but I'll say it again. Hand-lettering makes any comic look about ten times better to me. (And you could make a "zero times ten" wisecrack here, but I would retort that there is a basic charm to the art. Very basic, sure, but still.)

* There are no comments or ratings or anything attached to the comic. Everyone likes getting comments, and I'd understand if he wanted to have comments so that every comic would have an ever-growing beard of public "LOL ^^;" messages attached, but I wouldn't like it.

* The cartoonist invites and even encourages direct linking to the cartoon images, even printing the necessary HTML code beside each one. That's great.

Comments

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

I wonder if xkcd's encouragement of direct links acts as a kind of selection mechanism for positive comments. Since it's fairly easy (especially for a smart chap like Mr Xkcd) to check what's linking to his comic, he can see at a glance what people are saying about it...

Also, he does have a blog (or "blag") that's one click back from the main page. It's a great mechanism for avoiding stupid comments while fostering a sense of community etc: it filters out the drive-by "FIRST COMMENT"s and so on, while giving the fans a place to chatter.

Or something.

Anyway, yes, I agree with you. Especially about YouTube, where anything remotely creative is FAKE!!