598: Porn

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 06:06, 9 June 2017 by 162.158.69.9 (talk) (Transcript)
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Porn
I have a thing for corrupt women.
Title text: I have a thing for corrupt women.

Explanation

Cueball's mention of how porn did not scar him is a reference to a lot of testimony on how porn has negatively affected people's lives. Of course, the porn really did affect the way he looked at women. Due to dial-up being of such a slow speed, videos that needed to be transmitted via dial-up had to be compressed using a lossy format, which reduces file sizes substantially but also causes heavy data losses; the result being that the new decompressed file would not be of the same quality of the original uncompressed file. In this case, the lossy format eats away at the detail of the picture, which, during decompression, results in blocky artifacts in an attempt to "reconstruct" the lost data. Since he associated blocky pictures with arousal, he seems to have trouble enjoying "the friendship of the thighs" with his comparatively hi-fi girlfriend. In other words, the porn really did scar him after all.

The title text expands on this, referencing file corruption. It is also a pun on female "corruption," or a woman's awareness of her sexuality.

Transcript

[Cueball is hunched up at a computer. A circle surrounds him; the rest of the panel is black. The text is written in a square panel above the white circle.]
I shouldn't have watched all that porn as a teenager.
[The text is above the picture in a square frame. A computer screen is shown. It displays an on-line video player, with what appears to be a Cueball-like guy performing cunnilingus on a Megan-like girl. Five other windows (maybe ads) are also visible, though what they depict is not clear. One of them has readable text above a picture (of what appear to be a fleshlight). The rest of the text, including a heading at the top, is unreadable. There is picture with a lady with "big" hair holding her arms out. She has two black blotches on each side of her body. Maybe representing her breast, perhaps in a bra.]
It's not that it scarred me.
Ad text: X 10
[A modem is shown between the two text parts. The text is in two square frames.]
It's just that we had dial-up.
Modem: 14.4 kbps
And now I'm stuck with a fetish.
[Cueball and Megan are in bed together. The text above the picture is in a square frame.]
For video compression.
Cueball: Can you try to look... blockier?


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Discussion

I also remember the days where "Interlaced" wasn't a description of what they were (almost) wearing... 178.105.100.250 19:22, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Waiting for an image that took over 10 seconds to load, when your mom could wake up at any minute....yeesh, those were terrible times. 162.158.214.58 04:17, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

I wish that the x10 was X11, just for the Unix. --162.158.74.157 00:05, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Why is fleshlights a category for this comic?--Arlo (talk) 04:05, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Mentioned (as 'possible') in the Transcript of the image. It's a stretch bit more speculative than I'm comfortable with happy to believe, before specifically looking at the high quality image to check, but it could be that. 172.71.178.69 11:00, 15 September 2023 (UTC)