Main Page
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 1910 xkcd comics,
and only 35
(2%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
Latest comic
| Defensive Profile |
 Title text: NO DRAMA ZONE -> If I've made you sad, you'd better not tell me, because I am TERRIFIED of that situation and have NO IDEA how to handle it. |
Explanation
|
This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Please add links to the mentioned comics. |
This comic demonstrates a theoretical feature which provides more honest interpretations of social media profiles. We see a profile for a person who says they have "no filters" and has no qualms about offending or upsetting anybody with their seemingly radical views. But the "translation" of the description reveals that it is a vastly insecure person who seems to have the problem of saying the wrong thing every time and so their profile description is a way for them to justify their comments.
The title text continues, with the aggressive "NO DRAMA ZONE" turning out to mean that the user is merely trying to keep any offended or genuinely upset comments away from their page because they simply have no idea how to emotionally handle hurting someone's feelings.
Randall previously demonstrated another theoretical feature to address passive-aggressive behavior in 1085: ContextBot.
The comic's feature may be based on the context menu option of the Google Chrome web browser to have a foreign language webpage translated to the user's selected native language. However, in Google Chrome, the user may only translate the entire page, while in this comic the user may also select some text and have only the selected part translated. Also, Google Chrome uses Google Translate for translation by default, which cannot read minds like in the comic.[citation needed] However, if one uses the official Google Translate extension for Google Chrome, one may actually translate only the selected text. It is possible then that it is instead the extension which inspired the comic's feature.
This comic not only illustrates such a feature, but implies that the "translated" thoughts are what's actually going on behind posts of these types on social media, as if Randall can actually read those people's minds somehow. If this implication is the intent of the comic, then Randall thinks that people who have "no filter" are actually insecure and that people who want "NO DRAMA" are actually afraid of upset comments. Alternatively, Randall hates people who post such things in their profiles, and therefore wants to belittle them in this comic as actually being insecure, rather than being as confident as their aggressive behavior implies. This explanation is corroborated by notable news near the comic's publishing time (see below).
The style of the profile showcased in the comic resembles the profiles of the popular social media website Twitter, which while the user is logged in, shows the user's own profile on the left side of the page in a similar style to the comic, with their picture on the left side of their name, their Twitter handle under their name (which explains the extra line of text under what is presumably the name) and their "bio" right below those. The Twitter "bio" is a space usually used for the user to explain who they are. Common details about a person which are included in their "bio" are their profession, their personal interests and the products they have for sale. Some people also write about their personality, such as the one in the comic, which is quite outspoken and frank about her opinions.
One notable news item regarding Twitter, near the comic's publishing time, is that a rogue employee of the Twitter company, on the last day of his job, banned the personal Twitter profile of U.S. President Donald Trump (it was undone 11 minutes later). While Donald Trump never wrote something similar to what the comic portrays on his Twitter profile, he is known to post "politically incorrect" statements there. Donald Trump does not seem to care about who those statements offend, just like the person in the comic. Randall is known to have supported the opposing candidate before he was elected, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly sad comics following his election. These events may have inspired the comic.
The title of this comic is "Defensive Profile". "Defensive" is the opposite of "offensive", which is a word that might be used to describe the contents of profiles which display such a warning as in the comic. However, the feature reveals the warnings to actually be defenses against behaviors that deeply bother the profile owner. The profile is thus proved to actually be "defensive" instead of "offensive", at least regarding the warning text.
Transcript
- [A profile on an unknown social media site is displayed. The profile picture is a close-up image of Megan. The profile reads:]
- I speak my mind and don't care who I offend. No filter.
- [In the next panel, the text is highlighted, and a context menu has appeared. There is a mouse pointer on the option "View translation".]
- Copy
- Select all
- View translation [selected]
- [In the last panel, the profile text is updated:]
- I don't understand why people keep getting mad at me and I'm using this pep talk to convince myself that's okay.
Is this out of date? .
New here?
Last 7 days (Top 10) |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.
- If you're new to wiki editing, see how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.
- Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.
- You can browse the comics from List of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
- There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!
- We sell advertising space to pay for our server costs. To learn more, go here.
Rules
Don't be a jerk.
There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.
If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.
Please only submit material directly related to (and helping everyone better understand) xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited). Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.
If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.
