20Jan/1214
Sloppier Than Fiction
by Jeff
Image text: Roger Ebert once called you directionless and unwatchable.
This comic is basically about a terrible person that Cueball is somehow talking to, possibly at a bar or party as Goatee Guy is carrying a drink.
The title of this comic is a play on the phrase "Stranger than Fiction", which means that sometimes real life can lead to some unexpected ups and downs that would not even make sense in a fictional representation in a book or a movie. Goatee Guy unfortunately for him, is "Sloppier than Fiction".
In the image text, Roger Ebert is a well-known US-based movie critic.
Oh and FYI, if anyone ever says "It wasn't technically cheating"... it was cheating.
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January 20th, 2012
Wow, wonderfully complete and concise explanation. You might have made a snarky comment on the direction of goatee guy’s life and Ebert’s movie analysis. But it was not a subtlety, and blatant needn’t be over analyzed.
January 20th, 2012
Was that… sarcasm? I honestly can’t tell.
January 24th, 2012
I honestly don’t think it was, but then again, I am likely to take people at face value which can be a problem in a situation like this.
January 20th, 2012
Could the “poorly-written dialogue” be a reference to Goatee Guy’s realistic overuse of the word “like” and a critique of the the often theatrical or artificial dialogues used in movies?
January 20th, 2012
The crux of the joke is that Goatee guy thinks that “if they made my life into a movie, no one would believe it” because the story he tells (and presumably other stories he’s told before) seem very unlikely and an audience would think it was way too unbelievable to have really happened (and when that happens, the audience often considered the film or show to be poorly written). The general idea of Goatee’s comment is one that does come up from time to time in popular culture.
However, Cueball, as an insult, twists the meaning to reference not the “plot” of the potential movie (i.e. that Goatee has crazy things happen to him) but that it would be unbelievable for them to make a movie about Goatee because he’s so unlikable, and unbelievabel for them to write such bad dialogue (indicating that Goatee doesn’t speak well).
It is not entirely clear if the fact that (as Jeff points out) he “didn’t cheat” (i.e. he pretty much did) is what causes Cueball to dislike Goatee, or if there were other factors prior to what the comic shows.
The image text continues Cueballs insult by taking Ebert’s criticisms which are usually reserve for films and applying them to Goatee himself in a way that seems far more insulting than when applied to a film.
Sidenote: Since comic 998, there have been no transcripts in the HTML source for xkcd comics (which I found annoying when I wanted to copy text from the comic :-p)
January 20th, 2012
Cueball may disapprove of Goatee because Goatee’s story about the *amazing* coincidence of two different men having dated the same girl is not that remarkable. Or even interesting.
In agreement with TH, Cueball then uses Goatee’s ambiguous grammar to make a joke at Goatee’s expense. Goatee says no one would believe “it,” using “it” to refer to the events in the movie, believing that his life is so exceptional that no one could believe the events happened in real life.
Cueball twists “it” to refer to the making of Goatee’s life into a movie. Truly, no one would believe that a studio had spent money turning the mundane existence of an unlikeable character into a movie.
January 20th, 2012
With respect, I would have to disagree and say that two friends (I’m going to assume Bret is a friend) dating the same girl without either of them knowing it is somewhat unusual, given that you would usually either show your friend a photo of the person you’re dating or at least mention her name.
Also unclear from the comic, which makes it far more “unbelievable” or ironic (and perhaps remarkable or amazing) is whether said girl was dating both Goatee and Bret at the SAME time (i.e. she left them both for “kinda” cheating on her while she may have been doing the same thing to each of them. That’s how I read it the first time anyway, although now I see it could be that she was really innocent and just dated these two “semi-cheating” guys at different times.
January 20th, 2012
“The general idea of Goatee’s comment is one that does come up from time to time in popular culture.”
Not only there. I think we all know a case or two like this from our personal realtions. Whether one knows or not.
While the single case is highly unlikely, which often results some kind of fascination among those individuals involved, these cases probabely happen on a daily basis. Somewhere. I also met people I knew from the past in what non-natives mostly describe as “the middle of nowhere” – the more people one remembers (and vice versa), and the longer one lives, the more likely such an encounter becomes during life time. Automatically.
Which makes most cases boring to any outsider.
January 20th, 2012
I actually just mean the general idea of someone thinking that a) their life should be made into a movie and b) stuff happens that is crazier than any screenwriter would dare write are both ideas that I have heard many times before (and it’s not just a unique concept Randall invented). I’m sure the comment has been made many times by people in the news, in newspaper stories, and probably even in movies and tv shows BY fictional characters (ironically).
January 20th, 2012
What Goatee Guy tell looks like what a teenager girl tell about her evening to a friend : “He was like [word expressed into her face], and I was like [word expressed into her face], and bla bla bla…”.
So, “If they made my life into a movie” seems to reference a reality show (for teenagers) and then, the “poorly-written dialogue and unlikeable main characters” makes sense a lot.
January 20th, 2012
“Sloppier” might be a reference to the phrase “sloppy seconds.”
January 21st, 2012
It reminded me of this old one from Bash.org. (edited slightly to protect the children)
man, my girlfriend left me for some flower named robert
you don’t live in Hope mills do you?
ya, why man?
lol, just wondering, was her namne alisson?
you mother flower
January 24th, 2012
Am I the only one who interpreted “technically wasn’t cheating” to mean that Goatee and Bret were having an affair with each other, while they both unknowingly dated the same girl at the same time. And the girl decided to break up with both of them for cheating, although “technically” she was cheating as much as the guys. Then it doesn’t seem as too farfetched to assume that a movie audience might feel that the script is a bit convoluted. I guess this is not what Randall had in mind, but it was the first thing that popped into my mind when reading the comic.
January 24th, 2012
Actually Hubert I can easily envision someone trying use interpretation as the basis for pitching a movie idea, or at least a clever scene in a movie. Watch for it. It’ll show up eventually (if it hasn’t already).