Difference between revisions of "440: Road Rage"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Black hat and Danish get back at someone who is tailgating them by toying with his psychology. Danish hacks into the laptop in the backseat of the other car. She then "takes a shot in the psychological dark" by guessing that he had some loss in his life. She claims it was his fault to throw him off guard.
 
Black hat and Danish get back at someone who is tailgating them by toying with his psychology. Danish hacks into the laptop in the backseat of the other car. She then "takes a shot in the psychological dark" by guessing that he had some loss in his life. She claims it was his fault to throw him off guard.
  
The title text shows that are attempting to get him to crash.
+
The title text shows that they are attempting to get him to crash.
  
 
==Transcript==
 
==Transcript==

Revision as of 14:04, 10 August 2013

Road Rage
Okay, now just as the loss hits him, slam on the brakes.
Title text: Okay, now just as the loss hits him, slam on the brakes.

Explanation

Black hat and Danish get back at someone who is tailgating them by toying with his psychology. Danish hacks into the laptop in the backseat of the other car. She then "takes a shot in the psychological dark" by guessing that he had some loss in his life. She claims it was his fault to throw him off guard.

The title text shows that they are attempting to get him to crash.

Transcript

[Black Hat is driving and Danish is in the passenger's seat. They are closely followed by some other vehicle.]
Black Hat: That guy's tailgating me.
Danish: I'll take a look.
Danish: His laptop's running, probably in the back seat. And... yup, the WiFi autoconnects.
Danish: Now we just scan for remote exploits... install speech synth...
Danish: And take a shot in the psychological dark.
Laptop: Hello.
Cueball: What? Who's there?
Laptop: She'd be alive if it weren't for you.
Cueball: ...Oh God.


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Discussion

Incomplete (as of August 26, 2013)
  • At the title text Black Hat is avoiding a crash.
  • While many explains are monster explains, here is the WIFI missing, this explain is just more a transcript.--Dgbrt (talk) 21:44, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

The idea is that the tailgater (I'll name him Phil for ease of understanding) will be distracted while he contemplates his loss, so when Black Hat slams on the brakes, Phil hopefully won't have enough stopping distance to avoid a collision, slamming into Black Hat's car. The accident is always caused by the car behind, meaning Phil will be at fault.Lyusternik (talk) 15:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I've been bold, completely rewrote the explanation AND removed the incomplete banner. It now looks less like a transcript and (I think) everything is covered. 173.245.53.161 17:28, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Whew, I've been more offensive than Black Hat in the past and I'm still happy today that I did survive this. I did not slam the brake, no stoplight, just releasing my foot from the gas pedal at high speed and my car slowed down without any warning to the one behind me. There was happily no accident and NEVER TRY SOMETHING LIKE THIS. But after this incident the guy did slam his own brake and he never did try to overtake me again. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:36, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

In light of the last paragraph of the explanation, I wish Randall's drawing made it clear whether BH and Danish were wearing seatbelts. 173.245.54.52 19:45, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I think that Danish does not survive the accident that she provoked with her message to the tailgating guy. This is a very nice example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.--141.101.75.18 14:28, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

No one tried to guess at why the shot in the dark worked? I thought it might have something to do with the fact that tailgaters tend to be reckless drivers and he had caused someone to die before due to his reckless driving. flewk (talk) 17:56, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Revisiting this comic after watching 13 Reasons Why really gives you a new view on the whole thing. I wonder if the book, or indeed any specific work, was involved in Randall's creative process for this comic, or if he just pulled the idea for the guilt trip out of thin air. 162.158.255.64 06:53, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Why does the transcript include the phrase "who seems to be his equal" in reference to Danish? That seems like a weird thing to include. DownGoer (talk) 02:53, 30 August 2023 (UTC)