144: Parody Week: A Softer World
| Parody Week: A Softer World |
 Title text: The robot is pregnant. It isn't mine. |
Explanation
This comic is a parody of Joey Comeau and Emily Horne's A Softer World webcomic. The first panel references the Kill command which would be used to turn off the robot every morning. This joke is a reference to the classic Science Fiction theme of robots taking over and killing humans.
The second and third panels then turn the comic to a more introspective thought per A Softer World's usual style. There are two possible meanings of these panels.
The first reference human's natural reaction to be afraid of love because it requires vulnerability and honesty, which is very difficult. In the comic, they are afraid to tell it to love, because then it would experience these same difficulties and fears.
The second meaning deals with Artifical Intelligence; specifically strong AI. The idea is that the AI agent would not only act as if it was intelligent, but truly BE intelligent and have emotions and feelings as well. There has been much debate over whether an AI agent could actually feel emotions in the same manner as humans, as well as much consternation over the ethical concerns and moral ramifications it would have. Thus the comic's "We're afraid to tell it to love."
The title text takes love to be an act of love-making instead of an emotional feeling, thus why the robot is pregnant.
This comic is a part of the Parody Week, just joking about other webcomics.
- 141: Parody Week: Achewood
- 142: Parody Week: Megatokyo
- 143: Parody Week: TFD and Natalie Dee
- 144: Parody Week: A Softer World
- 145: Parody Week: Dinosaur Comics
Transcript
- [Above the first frame:]
- x k c d
- [A red robot in a lab standing below a poster and next to a table with a computer screen with unreadable text. The text covers most of the poster but the first word can be read.]
- Poster: SAFETY
- [Two panels with text is superimposed on the image:]
- when we open the lab each morning, we tell the robot to kill
- it's our little joke
- [Zooming in on the center of the first frame between robot and table. Again two text panels:]
- but secretly
- we're just afraid
- [Zooming further in.]
- to tell it to love
- [Below the first frame:]
- r munroe
Add comment 
Create topic (use sparingly) 
Refresh Discussion
XKCD Volume 0 also has
UATAQANUUNG QSICHINGNKUCHAANG CHSICHINGSICHINGNG
SICHINGULUUNGUUNG CHASNGATAQANCHATAQANNG
above the strip. 172.69.214.108 (talk) 23:04, 11 January 2024 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Actually, this one's kinda cute. 172.68.2.84 18:32, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
What's up with the Android Series thing? It's mentioned in the desc as a series concerning having sex with robots but the page for it doesn't exist and I've never heard of it before. -- Giraffequeries (talk) 11:49, 9 April 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- The page still exists, currently, though it's marked for deletion. (Pages marked for deletion aren't often actually deleted all that quickly, without good reason.) Hence why it's not redlinked (right now, anyway).
- If you check its History (or, from here, follow this link, you can see what it had there, at least the prosaic description (handily with a summary of which com8cs it refers to). The autopopulating 'member of this category' list is of course going to be lacking any comic that has had the related membership-of-category markup removed. (With a bit of effort, one could check for comic pages edited around the same time/by the same person as with the category being 'blanked', to see what coinciding edits happened. But probably not necessary here.)
- Clearly, though, the person who 'removed' the category didn't realise that it was linked to by more that the Cat-tag. It took your curiosity to work that out.
- So... Maybe delete this paragraph, now. Or maybe rewrite it to not link to the (potentially To-Be-Deleted) page concerned. Maybe expand it to include the 'lost' information regarding related comics (now not summarised elsewhere). Or even decide that it's not a useless category and revert it back in (and re-Cat all potential members, too, plus any reorganisation necessary regarding associated Cats). All options are available, to whoever cares enough to know what the best approach is! :p 82.132.238.115 15:50, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Add comment
