1350: Lorenz

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Lorenz
Every choice, no matter how small, begins a new story
Title text: Every choice, no matter how small, begins a new story

NOTE: The above is the first panel of an interactive comic.


Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: All images has not been described under themes (and may never be if Randall creates new)
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

For a collection of images that appear in this comic, see 1350: Lorenz/Images. These will also be described below under themes.

Explanation

This is an interactive and dynamic comic with a possible first picture shown on top of this page. The picture is always the same but the order of the sentences A/B/C/D is done by random. The result of all the interactions by the people would lead to a crowd-sourced content. In honor of April Fools' Day the comic was posted a day early, on Tuesday instead of the usual Wednesday. This also means that if anyone feels this comic is too silly... Randall can call April fool.

The title 'Lorenz' is referring to Edward Norton Lorenz who among other subjects was famous for Chaos theory and the Butterfly effect.

The title text is a reference to that the story line of this comic does include all of the user submitted dialogue and updates over time based on statistics of users clicks and hence will in nature be chaotic. In this manner it is a reference to the butterfly effect, a phrase coined by Edward Lorenz to describe how a small initial change can lead to wide variations in outcome in a chaotic system.

This comic is an example of a Choose Your Own Adventure story as mentioned in the title text.

Functionality and bugs

The reader is initially presented with only one panel where Knit Cap Girl (Megan?) is sitting in front of her computer. The reader is given multiple choices concerning what exactly Knit Cap Girl (Megan?) is thinking. Upon choosing any option, a second panel appears, to give continuity to the story. Each new panel may have a new set of options or just the button "Continue" to see the next panel without making any choice in particular. Eventually, one may reach a dead end in which the story is interrupted and reader is presented with a text box to suggest how it should continue. Some of the suggestions given should eventually become available as new options.

It appears that new panels may be generated by Randall in near real time as user suggestions to dialog is submitted. The dialogue options are likely based on click-through rates and hence will change over day based on which choices are clicked most using A/B measurement techniques. This will mean that the most popular choices for dialogue line will prevail as the statistics build up. In some cases, dialogue line options do not depend on the continuity of the storyline followed, suggesting that some parts of the story are planned. For example, do several of the storylines involve one of the two main characters waking up and for instance telling the other character, “I had the strangest dream…” or even reliving the dream again. This may be due to common submissions across storylines as well.

Normally, there is a total of 4 options to make: a/b/c/d. Their order changes constantly. Sometimes, there are 3 or fewer options, with the text box to suggest an alternative option. Sometimes, a given panel actually has 5 or more available options, although even in this case only 4 options appear at a time. Refreshing the comic changes randomly which of the available options are visible and which are hidden. As of April 2nd 2014, the existence of 5 or more options seems to occur only in a few rare cases, including the first panel itself.

Each panel has a "permalink" button which generates a unique URL for all the choices made by the reader — so a reader can save the chosen choices to compare them to other ways going through the selections. On the final panel the reader can enter an own statement, which is shown on screen but can't be saved by a permalink. The reader has to do a screen shot by himself.

Cookies and Javascript are required to see this page properly. Without cookies, the next panel will not render; attempting to load the page in the UNIXKCD terminal or loading the page without Javascript will just get you the previous comic.

Buttons

Instead of clicking with the mouse you can move more quickly through the panels using the keyboard:

  • Up/Down - navigate options
  • Enter/Right - choose option after navigating with Up/Down
  • Left - go back one panel
  • a/b/c/d - choose any option directly

Bugs

Since this interactive comic relies on many servers in the background to provide the response to the reader's actions there are some problems reported here:

  • In the worst case the entire comic doesn't render at all as expected — it just shows the previous comic 1349: Shouldn't Be Hard.
  • When selecting a sentence A/B/C/D the server does not respond on that selection.
  • The servers responsible to provide the pictures are down.
  • In the first week after the comic was released, if a response lead to a panel where two characters speak at the same time, it was impossible to proceed past the first speech bubble. This was subsequently fixed.

As a consequence of these bugs many readers do not understand how this interactive comic works.


Themes

Computer

Political debate

Miscellaneous

Geography

Boomerang

Pokémon

Transcript

[The comic starts with a single panel presenting four options by random order among these below.]
  • These stupid tiles... I'll just play one more game.
  • Oh. Hey. There's some kind of political thing going on.
  • Refresh... No new email... Refresh... No new tweets... Refresh...
  • Let's see if BSD is any easier to install nowadays.
  • Hurry! We're in talks with Facebook.
  • Gravity. Lots of it.
[The reader can choose an option and the text appears at the panel.]
[The next panels are shown after each selection until it comes to an end where the reader can suggest the last line spoken.]

Trivia

  • Although impossible to finish it has been tried to make a complete interactive transcript.
  • The all time longest comics by panel - top three.
    • Please only include clearly different storylines:
    1. 77 panels - Space/dinosaur double dream, boomerang, and exploding rocket.
    2. 39 panels - Politics, dream and boomerang.
    3. 32 panels - Space travel to Little Prince.
    • There may be now upper boundary!
    • But this is then the list of the longest comics with most panels as found so far.
    • If you beat a record please post the permalink here.
    • Please note themes included in comic.
    • Please move beaten records down and delete the fourth.
  • Longest by themes - click to expand:
  • Include only more than one if the story is clearly different from from the record.
    1. Space:
      1. 77 panels - double dream etc.
      2. 30 panels - reaching the Little Prince:
    2. Multiple dreams:
      1. 77 panels - Two dreams one by each charachter,after space and dinosaur attack.
      2. 28 panels - One dream with hole that returns to starting point - does the dream continue?
      3. ? - Two dreams - same characters/same dream
      4. ? - More than two dreams
    3. Boomerang:
      1. 77 panels - double dream etc.
      2. 39 panels - Starting with politic debate in a dream.
    4. Dinosaur:
      1. 77 panels - double dream etc.
    5. Political debate:
      1. 39 panels but also dream and boomerang.
    6. Pokémon:
      1. 26 panels - blowtorch moving past pokémon twice
      2. 24 panels - really long fight
      3. 22 panels - moving past Pokémon.
    7. Sharks
      1. 13 panels - reaching beach
  • Longest by starting point - click to expand:
  • Only the longest:
    1. These stupid tiles... I'll just play one more game: 77 panels
    2. Oh. Hey. There's some kind of political thing going on: 39 panels
    3. Let's see if BSD is any easier to install nowadays: 28 panels
    4. Refresh... No new email... Refresh... No new tweets... Refresh...: 24 panels
    5. Hurry! We're in talks with Facebook: 13 panels
    6. Gravity. Lots of it: ? (This option do not seem to be featured anymore?)
  • In one panel Hairry is drawn in bed without his hair.

Where's the discussion block?

It was getting large, so the discussion block has been moved. You can still discuss this comic here: Talk:1350: Lorenz