1018: Good Cop, Dadaist Cop

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Good Cop, Dadaist Cop
NOW INVENT AN IMPOSSIBLE-TO-TRANSLATE LANGUAGE AND USE IT TO TELL US WHERE THE MONEY IS.
Title text: NOW INVENT AN IMPOSSIBLE-TO-TRANSLATE LANGUAGE AND USE IT TO TELL US WHERE THE MONEY IS.

Explanation

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Language, layout, and the title text is missing.
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This is a play on the police interrogation strategy of "Good cop/bad cop", in which two officers take on contrary roles to get the suspect to give the required information. One interrogator establishes a sympathetic relationship with the subject while the other interrogator is antagonistic and threatening. The goal of this is to make the subject trust the “good cop” and to reveal the desired information.

In this comic, the interrogators (Cueball and Ponytail) use the "good cop, Dadaist cop" strategy to get information from Hairy. The overview of the Dadaists given by Wikipedia says they used “artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality”. As such, it is not an effective interrogation technique.

The incongruities of two of Ponytail’s questions are clear: “WHY ARE MY BONES SO SMALL?” and “What's wrong with ART?” are non sequiturs. The first question has two levels to its absurdity. Mark Zuckerberg (the co-founder of Facebook) was reported in 2011 to be living in a house he rented, so he would not have a mortgage. Nor would any mortgage be written in a liturgical language like Church Latin.

The title text adds one more absurdity: the whereabouts of the money cannot be conveyed to Ponytail if the information were expressed in a newly-invented language that cannot be translated.

Transcript

[Two cops look through a window into an interrogation chamber holding a handcuffed suspect.]
Good Cop: All right, let's try good cop, dadaist cop
[Good Cop is seated in front of the suspect.]
Good Cop: Look, you're a good guy. We can work this out. Hey, lemme get us some coffee.
[CHANGE PLACES.]
[Dadaist Cop holds up a document of indeterminate contents and threatens the suspect with it.]
Dadaist Cop: See this? It's Mark Zuckerberg's Mortgage. So why is it written in CHURCH LATIN?
[Dadaist cop physically rattles the suspect.]
Dadaist Cop: WHY ARE MY BONES SO SMALL?
Suspect: What's WRONG with you!?
Dadaist Cop: What's wrong with ART?
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Discussion

A comment from the blog that is quite on and off (you'll get the joke) the topic:

I took a class in college, in French, and we studied (insofar as one can) dadaism, surrealism, and existentialism.
One day, the girl next to me raised her hand and started out, “This is off the subject, but..”… Professor La Charité interrupted immediately, with, “It’s *never* off the subject. Continue.”
We all felt we learned something that day. Giraffe. - E

Hope that explains some things. lcarsos (talk) 17:40, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Explanation

I think the above explanation is lacking. What's bones got to do with it? How about the language stuff? AND A Mexican bandit robbed a bank. The sheriff and his bilingual deputy captured him, and the sheriff, who couldn't speak Spanish, asked him where he'd hidden the money. "No se nada," said the bandit. The sheriff put a gun to the bandit's head and said to his deputy: "Tell him, if he doesn't tell us where the money is, I'll blow his brains out." Upon receiving the translation, the bandit became very animated. "Ya me acuerdo! Tienen que caminar tres cuadradas hasta ese gran arbol. Debajo del arbol, alli esta el dinero." The sheriff leaned forward. "Yeah? Well..?" The deputy replied: "He says he wants to die like a man." 122.61.61.161 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

It's Dadaism. It means unrelated random stuff. AND nice story =) 108.162.212.206 19:26, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

What's incomplete about this? 0100011101100001011011010110010101011010011011110110111001100101 (talk page) 05:37, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

If you twisted my arm, I'd have to guess that my phone is ringing off the salmon. That's all I can remember at this indication, though. -- Brettpeirce (talk) 11:48, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
This is why we can't have giraffes. 172.68.10.83 09:40, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Has Mark Zuckerberg ever HAD a mortgage?108.162.219.164, 27 Dec 1014


Well interesting fact about ponytail then, her bones are small! --Dalonacueball (talk) 12:48, 24 March 2015 (UTC) 13:35 3/24/2015

The implication, in the explanation text, that wealthy individuals, such as Zukerberg, wouldn't take a mortgage is flawed. Wealthy individuals usually do take out mortgages because they have the ability to generate a higher rate of return from the freed capital than the cost of the interest on the mortgage. Mountain Hikes (talk) 22:17, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Would the gibberish produced in response to the title text actually count as a valid confession? Even assuming the suspect was trying to do what was asked, which I don’t think is a legally valid assumption, they could be saying “I don’t know; I didn’t take it!”. --162.158.255.142 18:59, 30 December 2018 (UTC)