This comic may have singlehandedly done terrible damage to technology standards, by spreading the meme that trying to create a unified standard never works and nobody should try.
Anyone put off by a comic is clearly not suited to the hard slog that is required to get standards written, agreed, and implemented. So i think xkcd may be doing us all a favour by discouraging those who haven't got the stamina.
It should be the test: "Could someone reasonably tease you with this comic? If yes, your standard is doomed."
The lack of understanding of this comic has done more damage. Every person suggesting a new specification should have at least some idea of why people using the existing specifications would be interested in migrating, and how.
I think ActivityPub has that to some extent, and the group reached out to existing fedsocnet implementations as part of their work. Time will tell if it was enough, or if we now indeed have yet another specification next to all the others.