1034: Share Buttons

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 23:09, 12 January 2013 by St.nerol (talk | contribs) (lonley-->loneley-->lonely. heh, finally right? sigh, english orthography... 1069)
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Share Buttons
The only post to achieve perfect balance between the four was a hilarious joke about Mark Zuckerberg getting caught using a pseudonym to sneak past the TSA.
Title text: The only post to achieve perfect balance between the four was a hilarious joke about Mark Zuckerberg getting caught using a pseudonym to sneak past the TSA.

Explanation

This comic is a commentary on what sort of articles work best on different social networking services. From left to right the share buttons are: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Google Plus.

  • The comedy article is shared most on Twitter because everyone on Twitter considers themselves some sort of 140-character comedian. (140 characters is the limit of a single tweet.)
  • Conspiracy theory articles play well on Reddit, especially if they are against the Christian Right and for Wikipedia; as there is a loud and large atheist community there.
  • Boycott Facebook articles (or other Facebook "is changing their terms of services to...") are very popular on Facebook, which is always obviously ironic. Also, this is the highest number of shares on Google plus, Google's fledgling social network. One of the punchlines, of course, is that Google Plus is struggling and not popular overall.
  • And the last article gets very few shares, because few wants to admit they are reading an article about a Realdoll. (Also referenced in in the title texts of Game AIs and Flying Cars.) It's a sex doll. The only sharers are from Google+. Could it be that the few people at Google+ easily can feel quite lonely there?

Title text breakdown

Transcript

[A series of article titles with four share buttons underneath each: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Google+]
Breaking Into Stand-up Comedy
FB: 3, Twitter: 1,781, Reddit: 2, G+: 0
How the Christian Right Threatens Wikipedia
FB: 1, Twitter: 0, Reddit: 2,241, G+: 3
Boycott Facebook Today!
FB: 248k, Twitter: 0, Reddit: 0, G+: 74
DIY: Installing a Custom ROM on a Realdoll
FB: 0, Twitter: 0, Reddit: 0, G+: 2


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Discussion

What, Wikipedia users and Facebook users don't overlap? I beg to differ. Davidy²²[talk] 09:01, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Where do you read that they don't overlap? If you mean the Reddit thing; to me it seems that it says that Reddit users like Wikipedia, and that Reddit users don't overlap with Facebook users. –St.nerol (talk) 23:41, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the joke is also that nobody actually uses Google Plus. 108.162.238.117 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Isn't there a joke on the FB boycott about... Well, boycotting it to get a buncha likes? 141.101.99.52 11:03, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

This comic also highlights that all social networks are very similar in terms of provided functionality. Indeed, when someone asked me what is the difference between facebook and twitter i had a very hard time explaining the "fundamental differences" between the two platforms. The truth is that people who use those social networks are actually shaping them according to their interests and their sterotyped beliefs. This point is brilliantly conveyed in this comic stripe 141.101.105.121 07:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Why is the "Custom ROM" limited to the Android OS? 162.158.89.9 07:59, 7 December 2016 (UTC)