User:BlueRoll18

2014-05-06T23:56:22Z

BlueRoll18:

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802: Online Communities 2

2013-12-09T01:47:56Z

BlueRoll18: Added NationStates

{{comic
| number = 802
| date = October 6, 2010
| title = Online Communities 2
| image = online_communities_2.png
| titletext = Best trivia I learned while working on this: 'Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize it's the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD?' Then you wait for the listener to do a double-take.
}}
A larger version of this picture can be found here: [http://xkcd.com/802_large/ http://xkcd.com/802_large/].
==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Not all of the regions are fully explained.}}
This comic shows a map of internet communities where the size of each region roughly corresponds to its size, and its proximity to other regions indicates similarities.

This is the successor of [[256: Online Communities]]. It differs in that it is updated, and furthermore, instead of using the ''membership'' of whichever service to determine its size on the map, it uses its "daily social activity."

The map actually has two super−maps: the online community map is surrounded by the "countries" of E−Mail and SMS ("Instant Messaging"). These, in turn, are surrounded by the "Spoken Language" country (which is odd, considering that e−mail, SMS, and the Internet in general are based on ''written'' language) with its own sub−country, "cell phones" (which ''do'' involve e−mail and the Internet while being the mean medium of SMS's).

At the title text [[Randall]] explains that, using his definition of "most activity per day", Farmville is actually the ''second'' most popular "Facebook farming game". This will strike many as odd, because Farmville is by far the most famous, leading one to wonder how the most famous could not be the most played. The phrase "browser-based social-networking-centered farming game" is an example of [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverlyNarrowSuperlative an overly-narrow superlative].

==Facebook Region==
The Facebook region deals with social networks, that is, websites oriented towards having people meet.

{{w|Facebook}} is a social networking site that allows people to meet old real−life friends and make new friends that share similar interests. One of its most notable features is that a member can update a "status" or make normal posts about the happenings of the member's life, complete with pictures, other members "liking" these posts. The size of the Facebook region is not exaggerated; most websites seem to allow "liking" their content or allow/require logging in the website with a Facebook account. There even are cell phones with a "Facebook" button!

Farmville, Happy Farm, and Farm Town are all Facebook games. The "Unethical Bay" refers to how these games tend to addict players into constantly buying virtual items of questionable value.

The People You Can't Unfriend refer to people whom, due to real-life expectations and relationships, unfriending them is difficult, no matter how you really feel about them.

The Data Mines refer to the data mining that Facebook does with the interests of its members. This fuels the profitable advertising business at the expense of customer trust.

The Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions refer to how interactions with family members on Facebook suddenly become more awkward because everyone on Facebook (and sometimes ''off'' Facebook, given that you do not necessarily need to log in if you want to see someone's Facebook account) if you are discussing with your family through post comments.

While Facebook is the largest "country" of the Facebook Region, there are a lot of smaller "countries" that represent smaller social networks.

* Below Facebook (and "'Old Facebook' Resistance") is {{w|Diaspora (social network)|Diaspora}}, a fully open-source, decentralized, privacy-respecting-and-expecting alternative to Facebook. From what this map tells, Diaspora is little-known, even if Facebook is taken out of the context.
* {{w|Taringa!}} is a Spanish-speaking social network that is based on a forums. Copyrighted material is frequently found there.
* {{w|Classmates.com}} is a services in which the user can meet fellow classmates that came from the same high school. The website is probably best-known by its memetic advertisement that said [http://dudemanphat.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-am-i-supposed-to-care-about-nick.html "She married him??!! And they've got 7 kids??"] (Incidentally, [http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2003325519_adcouple27.html there is more to the coupled picture than what the advertisement says.])
* {{w|MySpace}} is a social networking website that is a kind of proto-Facebook: users could customize their one-page websites with whatever they wanted, make their interests and daily lives public, and interact with other users. Back in the 1990's and the beginning of the 2000's, MySpace was the largest social network, many people using the website; however, the surprisingly-less-customizable Facebook ended up taking the place of MySpace. The "bands" country of MySpace refers to how a lot of bands in the day advertised and interacted using the website. Indeed, the latest incarnation of MySpace (in terms of 2013) is more oriented towards band members.
* {{w|LinkedIn}} is a social network aimed towards people in the workplace.
* {{w|Orkut}} is one of Google's first social networks before Google made [https://plus.google.com/ Google+].
* {{w|Hi5}} is a social network that is very popular among people in Latin America.
* {{w|Renren}} (「人人」, "people" in Chinese) is "a Chinese copy of Facebook."

Other areas of note are the Niche Market Mountains, where social networks aimed towards more niche markets are located. Similar to how mountains tend to be isolated from mainland, niche social networks tend to be just that: niche, without much interaction with the general populace. Above the Niche Market Mountains are the Charred Wasteland of Abandoned Social Networks. Given the popularity of MySpace and Facebook, there would be no doubt tons of websites wanting to take advantage of the success of these websites or even wanting to compete or even overpower with them. Even so, these websites tend to not have the userbase or even the expertise towards the long-term, hence they become wastelands: environments devoid of life, except the few life forms that are from these wastelands (in this case, the ones who are loyal to the website or which are sadly few).

==MMO Isle==
MMO's (short form of "MMORPG", short form of "Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Player Game") are websites that host online games where multiple people take the role of a character and play in a setting hosted by the website. These types of games tend to be fantastical in setting. Frequently, missions are added to the game, giving current player more incentive towards playing more.

* [https://www.habbo.com/ Habbo Hotel] is a website where someone creates a human avatar an interacts in a virtual world that is not that different from the one in real life.
* [http://www.clubpenguin.com/ Club Penguin] is [http://disney.com/ Disney's] MMO where someone creates a penguin avatar and interacts with other in a more polar, cartoony setting. Club Penguin is aimed towards children.
* [http://maplestory.nexon.net/ Maple Story] is an MMO that has a more natural setting. The most distinguishing feature of Maple Story is its cartoony pixel art.
* [http://www.gamefaqs.com/ GameFAQs], while not an MMO, is a website that has the largest repository of walkthoughs, that is, guides that help someone beat a game. GameFAQs is notable for not only its large repository of walkthroughs of games that are across an extreme variety of consoles, handhelds, and even computers (not all of them MMOs), but also the drama that is rumoured to happen in the GameFAQs forums.
* [http://www.ign.com/ IGN] (full: Imagine Games Network), while also not an MMO, is the largest website that gives news on video games in general, not just MMOs. Each of the games mentioned in the site have pages that have summaries, reviews, screenshots, other art, videos, and links to news related to its games.
* [http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml FFXI] (full: Final Fantasy XI) is an MMO from SquareEnix, being the first MMO of the popular ''Final Fantasy'' series.
* [http://www.runescape.com/community Runescape] is an older MMO.
* [http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/ Starcraft II] is an MMO with a science fiction setting that heavily involves space travel.
* [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ WOW] (full: World of Warcraft) is the definitive MMO, being not only the most popular and one of the longest-running but also the most expansive (having its own spinoff games, comic books, novels, and even figurines), WOW giving the idea of how an MMO should be. A player can choose from a variety of races, each with its own heavy history.
* [http://secondlife.com/ Second Life] is similar to Habbo, albeit with a bigger suspension of disbelief (one example being that the player does not need to be a human) and in a 3D setting.
* [http://www.nationstates.net/ NationStates] is a text-based political simulation game.
* [http://www.eveonline.com/ Eve Online] is a science fiction MMO which is notable because of its virtual economy.
* [http://www.gaiaonline.com/ Gaia] (full: Gaia Online), while not an MMO, is a forums oriented towards pop culture, including video games and Japanese media. Its most notable feature is the heavy customization possible of a member's pixel-art avatar. Its members tend to roleplay a lot, albeit in a more written, story-based form. Gaia has gained a revaination of its members stealing art and causing drama.

Other notable regions include:
* The Mountains of Steam, referring to the game distribution service [http://store.steampowered.com/ Steam] where people could buy and download video games in general, not just MMOs.
* River Grind refers to "grinding." In most MMOs, the character is a fighter of some sorts, yet starts at a level 1, signifying the character's aptitude level in combat. The character can level up and gain more aptitude levels through earning experience, of which the most reliable and otherwise common way is the process of "grinding," that is, repeatedly fighting opposing monsters (sometimes of a level notably lower that your character's), gaining experience points from winning these battles until your character gains a level, that is, "levels up". While a practical necessity in strengthening the character, this process can be tiresome, hence the expression "grinding."
* Spawn Camp refers to "spawn points", the places in combat-oriented MMO's tend to produce ("spawn") random AI-powered creatures, and the act of "spawn camping", in which the player character simply stands behind or around the spawn points to fight the enemy creatures as soon as they appear.
* Gulf of Lag refers to how the MMO can be slowed down a considerable amount doe to the large amount of players simultaneously using the same server, this congestion bogging down the server and frustrating the users.

==YouTube Region==
The YouTube region refers to websites that are based on user-created content.

[https://www.youtube.com/ YouTube] is the definitive video website where people can upload videos with the purpose of public viewing, ranging from home movies through official music videos through Let's Plays of people playing video games to questionably-legal uploads of cartoons and films. Google had purchased YouTube.

Many of the sites on the map are just references to {{w|Viral Video}}s at {{w|YouTube}}:
* "Viral Shores" refers to how viral videos (whether they be viral marketing or simply memes) tend to proliferate on YouTube.
* "Britney" likely refers to pop singer {{w|Britney Spears}} and the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc‎ "Leave Britney Alone" guy].
* "Maru Gulf" refers to Maru the Cat, a YouTube celebrity [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/676:_Abstraction also mentioned in xkcd].
* "Prairie Dog Habitat" likely refers to the viral video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw Dramatic Chipmunk] (which is actually a Prairie Dog).
* "Rick Rolling Hills" references, well, {{w|Rickrolling}}. More information [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ here]. The "deserted" note likely refers to how Rick Astley himself is tired of the meme, or again, how people tend to leave the video upon getting "Rick Roll'd," never actually going to the video with the express purpose of viewing the video.
* "Lunar Landing Soundstage" is, of course, a reference to the {{w|Moon landing conspiracy theories}}, which Randall has railed on before.

The HTML5 swamp refers to the spotty support of HTML 5 (an update on HTML that is frequently touting its media capabilities, making HTML 5 a viable alternative to Flash) YouTube has. (Of course, by the time the comic was written, HTML 5 was still in its infancy.)
The Music Video Bay refers to the amount of music videos (official or otherwise) are present in YouTube.

Other counties of the YouTube region include:
* [https://secure.flickr.com/ flickr], a website where people can upload and share photographs they took.
* [https://vimeo.com/ vimeo], a website where people tend to showcase artistic content that they made on their own, notably independent studios.
* [http://www.last.fm/ Last.fm], a music website that is notable of its "scrobbling" feature.
* [https://www.newgrounds.com/ Newsgrounds], a website that hosts art, (Flash-based) videos, audio, and (Flash-based) games to which other users can comment and rate. Even so, content from Newsgrounds tends to be obscene, though there is a filtering system if a viewer does not wish to see obscene content.
* [http://www.deviantart.com/ deviantArt], the largest art website, where people can upload, sell, and buy not only art itself, but also video, audio, Flash-work, and even skins (the original purpose of deviantArt). While many big-name/professional people and organizations have their works in deviantArt, the site is more infamous for the large amount of people who upload low-quality fan-art and fan-characters, most notably of media from Japan. Another point of infamy is the large amount of drama that can happen in the website.
*[http://www.chatroulette.com/ Chatroulette] is a website where people are randomly paired up with each other and video/text chat.
*[https://tumblr.com/ Tumblr], where people could make a blog and post text, pictures, video, audio, quotes, and links. The most distinguishing feature is the ability to "reblog" these posts from other's people's blogs into the user's own blog. Notable features of Tumblr include sketchblogs (where people upload their sketches), Ask blogs (where people answer questions other users ask, the moderators of these blogs usually pretending to be a character from a form of media), and the large amount of "social justice" (where people fight against racism, sexism, and other forms of negative discrimination).

The "Snob Sound" could refer to the large amount of people who look down on others in the surrounding websites (one example being an original artist looking down on people who draw mainly fan-art).

==Twitter Region==

==Skype Region==

==Blogosphere==

==Blogosphere (Core Region)==

==QQ Region==
{{w|Tencent QQ}} is a Chinese instant messaging program.

Incidentally, in English-speaking communities "QQ" has several more common definitions:
* An {{w|emiticon}}, representing a face with two large, crying eyes.
* A synonym for "rage quit", in which a video game player quits the game out of sheer frustration. It originated in ''World of Warcraft'', where pressing the Q key twice would quit the game.
** These definitions are commonly combined, usually to mock the "rage quitter".

==Forums Islands==
* First and foremost we have [https://www.4chan.org/ 4chan.org], an imageboard in wwhich people can upload pictures while others comment on them. The website is infamous for its loose/often non-existent rules, incredibly vulgar userbase, source of new memes, and spawning of trolls. 4chan's random board, known internally as "/b/", is almost constantly flooded with porn and image macros. This is why Randall's incarnation of 4chan is shaped like a penis.
** The gulf labelled [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group) "Anonymous"] is a reference to the trolls that label themselves "Anonymous" who recently had gained national acknowledgement because of the group's real-life tirades, including cracking attacks against the Church of Scientology and the founding of WikiLeaks (a website that leaks confidential material related to governments).
** "{{w|Catbus}} Route" is likely a reference to {{w|Lolcat}}s in general.
** "Tunnel to Habbo" is a reference to [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pools-closed the 2006 Habbo Hotel Raids], in which hundreds of 4chan Anons simultaneously logged onto Habbo Hotel and proceeded to be as obnoxious as possible, standing in formations of swastikas and penises or body-blocking the swimming pools.

==Transcript==
:'''Map of Online Communities'''
:Size on map represents volume of Daily Social activity (posts, chat, etc). Based on data gathered over the Spring and Summer of 2010.

:[Two insets on the upper left-hand corner shows that this map is a tiny portion of the huge continent of Spoken Language, encompassing portions of the Internet, Email, and Cell Phones (SMS).]

:[The largest landmass on the map by far, which takes up nearly the entire northern half of the map is "Facebook" - with large states in the south-east of the country labeled 'Farmville' and 'Happy Farm'. There is a much smaller state to the west of these called 'Farm Town'. To the north of these states is a large swath of unremarkable land entitled 'Northern Wasteland of Unread Updates.' This is directly north of the large Dopamine Sea.

:A peninsula on the south-west, just below the Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions, houses many tiny states, such as MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, Bebo, & Hi5. It is bordered on the south by Buzzword Bay, which contains several islands of varying sizes. Among these are YouTube and Twitter (the largest), which are separated by the Social Media Consultant Channel. To the south-east of Twitter, across the Sea of Protocol Confusion, is another, equally large island. Most of it is Skype, with the north having two largish states called AIM and Windows Live Messenger. On the south-west part of the island are two smaller states called GG and Yahoo Messenger.

:The Island of Skype is extremely close to, but separated by the Great Firewall (a dashed line), the large landmass of QQ. It's north shore is the Gulf of China and Grass Mud Horse Bay. Outside of these bays, over the Great Firewall are two islands called Craigslist and 2Channel.

:In the Dopamine Sea, off the southern shores of Farmville and Happy Farm, is MMO Isle. Its largest state is WoW, with Runescape, Lineage, Maple Story, Habbo, and the Mountains of Steam among its notable landmarks. To the southeast of the island is the Gulf of Lag, in which sits the CDC Games island, with Eve Online.

:To the east of Twitter is Troll Bay, with such islands as Reddit and Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicio.us, and Wikipedia Talk Pages. To their south are the IRC isles, of which one is the tiny island of #xkcd.

:East of these islands, and north of Skype island, is the Sea of Memes. In this sea, to the north of Craigslist and 2Channel, is an archipelago of tiny islands. There is an inset, labeled 'Forums.' (See below.)

:To the southwest if Twitter island, in the Sea of Opinions, are the blog islands. These lie south of the islands in Buzzword Bay, as well. The northernmost islands in this group are centered around the Bay of Drama, on which can be found Diary Blogs, Gossip Blogs, and Livejournal. Gossip Blogs share an island with Political, Music, and Tech Blogs. To the north of this island is a smaller island called Photo Blogs. South of Diary Blogs, and off the southwest coast of Music blogs is a smaller island called Fandom Blogs. South of Tech Blogs, off of which sprouts the small peninsula of Business Blogs, is the Spamblog Straits. On the other side of the straits is a large island made up of Miscellaneous Blogs, with two states demarcated as Religious Blogs and Blog Blogs. Southwest of the Blog Islands is the Sea of Zero (0) Comments.]

:[An inset of a group of islands in the sea of memes located on the lower right corner of the map, labeled 'Forums'. The largest by far is 4chan and /b/. Also found here are D2JSP, JLA Frums, Fan Forum, Something Awful, and many smaller ones, too numerous to list here.]

:[The northeastern third of Gossip/Political/Tech Blogs island is another inset labeled 'Blogosphere (Core)'. This can be found on the lower left corner of the map. Two peninsulas in Political Blogs bookend the Bay of Flame -- these are Liberal Blogs and Conservative Blogs. Between them lie several tiny islands such as Politics Daily, CNN Politcal Ticker, and Mediaite. Off the coast of Liberal Blogs lies the island of NYTimes, off the coast of Conservative Blogs is Libertarian Isle. Between the two lies The Talk. The northern peninsula of Tech Blogs contains places such as Gizmodo, Engadget, Joystiq, and Kotaku.]

:[Text found between the two insets, which are directly below the main map.]
:ABOUT THIS MAP
:Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community's current size and health. This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community -- that is, how much talking, playing sharing, or other socializing happens there. This meant some comparing of apples and oranges, but I did my best and tried to be consistent.

:Estimates are based on the numbers I could find, but involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random sampling, non random sampling, a 20,000-cell spreadsheet, emailing, cajoling, tea-leafing reading, goat sacrifices, and gut instinct (i.e. making things up).

:Sources of data include Google and Bing, Wikipedia, Alexa, Big-Boards.com, StumbleUpon, Wordpress, Akismet, every website statistics page I could find, press releases, news articles, and individual site employees. Thanks in particular to folks at Last.fm, LiveJournal, Reddit, and the New York Times, as well as sysadmins at a number of sites who shared statistics on condition of anonymity.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Internet]]

Talk:168: Reverse Euphemisms

2013-06-16T01:52:06Z

BlueRoll18:

It should probably be noted that 'dysphemism' is a real word. Though it usually applies to using derogatory terms as opposed to politically correct ones. [[Special:Contributions/130.160.145.185|130.160.145.185]] 20:03, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
<p></p>
I bet people who make Swiss cheese enjoy saying 'this year's batch of cannabis was below par'. [[User:BlueRoll18|BlueRoll18]] ([[User talk:BlueRoll18|talk]]) 01:52, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

User:BlueRoll18

802: Online Communities 2

Talk:227: Color Codes

Talk:168: Reverse Euphemisms

Talk:1017: Backward in Time

Talk:1017: Backward in Time

Talk:993: Brand Identity

User:BlueRoll18