3116: Echo Chamber

2025-07-17T05:39:01Z

2A02:8071:5C20:4820:AC33:77FD:5A86:E38C: partisan has more than just one meaning, now using the three most likely

{{comic
| number = 3116
| date = July 16, 2025
| title = Echo Chamber
| image = echo_chamber_2x.png
| imagesize = 383x296px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = This is almost as bad as the time I signed up for a purely partisan fishing expedition.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by an echoing cat video. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

An {{w|echo chamber}} is a structure designed to maximise acoustic reverberation, in which echos occur excessively well. However, in social media, a ''metaphorical'' {{w|Echo chamber (media)|echo chamber}} reverberates the opinions of a group of individuals so that those individuals perceive those opinions as being the social norm. This has resulted in disastrous situations such as {{w|Pizzagate conspiracy theory|Pizzagate}}, the {{w|The dress|war over the gold dress}}, and the election of possibly at least one US President.

The audio playing on the phone possibly references the common occurance of cat videos on social media, as "Mittens" is often associated with a cat name. However, it is unknown whether the intended spelling is "mittens" with bad grammar, or "Mittens" the name. If the spelling was "mittens", it would imply that there are mittens (for wearing on hands) falling into the laundry hamper, which would generally be considered poor content, especially with the grammar, which would be annoying for Cueball indeed.

The title text references a "partisan fishing expedition". In general, a "fishing expedition" is an investigation begun on flimsy or no evidence to try to find unsavory or incriminating behavior. When such an investigation is motivated by political considerations in favor of one particular political party, it may be referred to as a "partisan fishing expedition". The joke here is similar to the joke about the "echo chamber": he is going on an actual "purely partisan fishing expedition" - a trip to catch actual fish where all the people on the fishing trip are either {{w|partisan (politics)|committed members of just one political party}}, or are all {{w|partisan (military)|members of domestic irregular military forces}}. Quite possibly, it could also refer to fishing poles fashioned out of {{w|partisan (weapon)|polearms}}. Like the joke about the echo chamber, this is the literal realization of something that is usually a mere figure of speech.

There's also a chance that {{w|Partisan (weapon)|"partisan"}} might refer to a polearm, which is a type of spear weapon. Thus there could be a very subtle additional "spearfishing" pun here.

In this comic, Cueball builds an actual echo chamber (the acoustic structure), and discovers that it's very annoying when amplifying the noise of social media (as played on his phone). Of course, this is not the echo chamber complained about in the media, which often reports on the dangers of figurative echo chambers which amplify extreme views.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
[Cueball is sitting on a chair with his hands covering his ears. He is in a circular room with a phone on a stand. All words coming out of the phone are repeated everywhere, getting larger and less opaque]

Here's Mittens falling into the laundry hamper for the <u>third</u> time today!

Now that I've built one, I finally get why people complain about social media echo chambers.
{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

3116: Echo Chamber

2025-07-16T23:06:14Z

2A02:8071:5C20:4820:AC33:77FD:5A86:E38C: underline

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3116: Echo Chamber

3116: Echo Chamber