Has anyone wrote software that automatically surfaces the relevant XKCD comic for every article this happens under?
I’d like a feature in my HN reader that sticks a red button at the bottom anytime XKCD has already made the points I’m reading.
I’d like a feature in my HN reader that sticks a red button at the bottom anytime XKCD has already made the points I’m reading.
I’m not kidding at all, that my guess is he was doing drugs and stopped.
Specifically it was at this point in 2016: https://xkcd.com/1756/
> I’m not kidding at all, that my guess is he was doing drugs and stopped.
I don’t know if he stopped or started, but something changed.
In the USA, 2016 and onwards wasn't "just an election". It was something between a mildly harmful establishment candidate or a useless new face on one side, and "holy fucking shit are we actually letting this deranged wannabe monarch run for office?!?" on the other.
Give the man a break, it was (the start of) a crazy time, I'm actually surprised more creators didn't do something like this. If anything, it was barely even a political statement, more of a "hey fellow dems, go vote!" type thing.
His traffic and hot takes dropped and his influence declined to almost nothing… maybe those things aren’t unrelated?
(Bonus points for the alt-text argument being isomorphic to nothing-to-hide.)
It's fine to like the comics before around 2016, and dislike the ones afterwards, but there's nothing objective about that. Various people have put forward various thresholds for when xkcd "stopped being good", but ultimately it boils down to a combination of what TV Tropes would call "Tone Shift" and "They Changed It, Now It Sucks!".
Must be an interesting place, that originates these "arguments".
I’m not saying I agree or that I even think his takes have gotten worse, just clarifying what the other poster said.