Editing 442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel

{{comic
| number    = 442
| date      = June 27, 2008
| title     = xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel
| image     = xkcd_loves_the_discovery_channel.png
| titletext = I love the title-text!
}}
==Explanation==
This comic is a parody of the {{w|Discovery Channel}} commercial showing various clips of people singing a song with the chorus line [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_f98qOGY0 'Boom De Yada']. The comic is divided into a grid of 4 panels by 6 panels, most depicting a character or situation from a previous xkcd strip. In each panel is written a part of a song similar to the song from the Discovery Channel commercial.

The campaign from the {{w|Discovery Channel}} was not called "Boom De Yada," but "{{w|I Love the World}}." The title "xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel" is in reference to this.

Most of the panels are references to previous xkcd strips, but a few are not.

;Panel 1 ''I love momentum.'' 
:A reference to comic [[162: Angular Momentum]], where [[Megan]] spins in a circle to "rob the planet of angular momentum."
;Panel 2 ''I love to engineer.'' 
:A reference to comic [[413: New Pet]], where Megan and [[Cueball]] turn an {{w|EEE PC}} into a household pet.
;Panel 3 ''I love this bakery!''  
:A reference to comic [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport]], where [[Beret Guy]] shows his liking for bakeries in first panel. His love of bakeries is a recurring gag in the comic.
;Panel 4 ''I love the blogosphere!'' 
:A reference to comic [[239: Blagofaire]], where someone from the far future believes that many people blogged from high-altitude balloons whilst wearing red capes and goggles. The flying character may be {{w|Cory Doctorow}}, who is mentioned in the comic as the only blogger to actually do this, and who also appeared in comic [[345: 1337: Part 5]] in this guise.
;Panel 5 ''I love the whole world.'' (Cueball running in a large hamster ball.) 
:Likely a reference to comic [[152: Hamster Ball]], though there are [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Hamster_Ball multiple comics] featuring human-sized {{w|Hamster ball|hamster balls}}.
;Panel 6 ''And all its messed-up folks.'' 
:A reference to the {{w|/b/}} ("Random") forum on {{w|4chan}}, which is in fact home to plenty of "messed-up folks." This on-line behavior is something [[Randall]] comments on in several comics both before and after this. For instance in [[202: YouTube]].
;Panel 7 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Cueball and Megan immersed in playpen balls.) 
:A reference to comic [[150: Grownups]], where Megan decides that she has the ability to, and wants to, turn her house into a giant ball pit.
;Panel 8 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (''I put on my robe and wizard hat'') 
:A reference to [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/bloodninja this roleplay chat transcript] (NSFW), which became an Internet meme. A user named bloodninja would roleplay as a wizard during {{w|cybersex}} (saying "I put on my robe and wizard hat" to signal this) and invariably infuriate his unwitting partners with demeaning actions. Other incidents involved him roleplaying as a rhinoceros. In the above mentioned comic [[150: Grownups]], the two characters also disappear, but in that case a big pink heart comes out of the playpen balls.  
;Panel 9 ''I love your suffering.'' 
:The recurring character [[Black Hat]] is being his usual self and causing suffering for his own amusement, as in comic [[72: Classhole]]. In this panel, he is seen giving a child a present, probably containing a bobcat as seen in comic [[325: A-Minus-Minus]]
;Panel 10 ''I love cryptography.'' 
:{{w|Cryptography}} is a subject that comes up often in the comic, notably, in comics [[153: Cryptography]] and [[177: Alice and Bob]] before this one (for a full list see [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Cryptography Category:Cryptography]). The panel shows a flowchart of the kind commonly used to show how a particular cryptosystem works and/or how it can be broken.
;Panel 11 ''I love entangled sheets.'' 
:Sexual reference. Sex and red sheets are also brought up in comic [[230: Hamiltonian]]. 
;Panel 12 ''And kite photography.''
:A reference to Randall's own hobby of [http://xkcd.com/kite/ kite photography], as well as comic [[235: Kite]].
;Panel 13 ''I love the whole world'' (Map of the internet.)
:A reference to comic [[256: Online Communities]], featuring online communities of the time visualized as a world map, with geographic areas representing their approximate membership size. There is, more directly, a pun on "internet," namely "outernet." 
;Panel 14 ''And all its mysteries.''
:A reference to a series of comics on "red spiders": [[8|8: Red Spiders]], [[43|43: Red Spiders 2]], [[47|47: Counter-Red Spiders]], [[126|126: Red Spiders Cometh]], and [[427|427: Bad Timing]]. 
;Panel 15 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Two people sword-fighting on rolling office chairs.)
:A reference to comic [[303: Compiling]], where two coders battle with fake swords at work, with the excuse that their code is compiling.
;Panel 16 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Classroom with two students and a teacher.)
:Nothing too special, but it does embrace the "everybody joins in" theme behind the commercials. The teacher is [[Miss Lenhart]], who was first properly introduced in comic [[263: Certainty]], but may have made an appearance in comic [[59: Graduation]].
;Panel 17 ''I love elections'' (''Barack me Obamadeus!'')
:A pun on the song {{w|Rock Me Amadeus}} and US president {{w|Barack Obama}}. At this point, Randall had not done any comics directly on elections, but he made this after the one in 2008: [[500: Election]] and has shown his love for this subject also around the 2012 election.
;Panel 18 ''I love transistors.'' 
:This panel has Cueball's crotch replaced with the (similar-looking) icon used for a {{w|transistor}} in a {{w|circuit diagram}}. Randall later showed how much he loves anything that can go in to such a diagram in [[730: Circuit Diagram]].
;Panel 19 ''I love weird pillow talk.'' (''There ''must'' be Taft slash fiction.'')
:"[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pillow+talk Pillow talk]" means intimate conversations between lovers, "{{w|slash fiction}}" is fanfiction with characters of the same sex, and "Taft" is {{w|William Howard Taft}}, a US President mostly remembered for his severe obesity. It appears that they are invoking {{w|Rule 34 (Internet meme)|rule 34 of the Internet}} as a reference to [[305: Rule 34]]. Weird pillow talk is also the subject of comic [[69: Pillow Talk]], while the Taft reference comes from comic [[214: The Problem with Wikipedia]].
;Panel 20 ''I love your sister.''
:A reference to xkcd's recurring joke of dating the female character's sister, which spans several comics including [[49: Want]], [[279: Pickup Lines]], [[317: That Lovin' Feelin']], and [[408: Overqualified]].
;Panel 21 ''I love the whole world'' (Roller coaster with Cueball holding a chess board)
:A reference to comic [[249: Chess Photo]], which inspired an internet meme.
;Panel 22 ''The future's pretty cool!'' (Beret Guy in a forest.)
:The picture of the forest is similar to that in [[269: TCMP]], though it may also be a reference to comic [[167: Nihilism]], where Cueball and Beret Guy make observations about the future while climbing a tree. Later, in comic [[1322: Winter]], the two are seen walking through a forest very similar to the one shown here.
;Panel 23 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Megan doing the MC Hammer slide towards Cueball.)
:A reference to comic [[108: M.C. Hammer Slide]], where Hairy falls in love with "a girl whose only mode of transportation is the M.C. Hammer Slide." 
;Panel 24 ''Boom de yada, Boom de yada'' (Cueball and Megan on an electric skateboard.)
:A reference to comic [[409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)]], where Megan and Cueball go on an electric skateboard ride, but he already introduced these back in [[139: I Have Owned Two Electric Skateboards]].

The title text continues the song, self-referentially. Self-reference is a reoccurring theme in {{w|Douglas Hofstadter|Douglas Hofstadter's}} books, notably ''{{w|Gödel, Escher, Bach}}'', which Randall refers to directly in [[24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey]]. Later, Hofstadter has been referenced in other comics, such as in the title text of [[555: Two Mirrors]] and [[608: Form]], plus, of course, in [[917: Hofstadter]]. Self-reference as a form of humor was also [[:Category:Self-reference|explored before]], but most famously in the later [[688: Self-Description]].

==Transcript==
:[The comic is in parody of the Discovery Channel commercial showing various clips of people singing a song with the chorus line "Boom De Yada."]
:[The comic is divided into a grid of 4 panels by 6 panels, each depicting a character or situation often from a previous xkcd strip.]
:[In each panel is written a part of a song similar to the song from the Discovery Channel commercial.]

:Panel 1:
:[Megan spinning around.]
:I love momentum.

:Panel 2:
:[Megan laying on floor tinkering with an EEE PC hamster ball robot.]
:I love to engineer.

:Panel 3:
:[Beret Guy standing in bakery holding a loaf of bread in each hand, a sign with "PIE!" in background.]
:I love this bakery!

:Panel 4:
:[Cory Doctorow in goggles and a red cape flying superman-style.]
:I love the blogosphere!

:Panel 5:
:[Cueball running in a large hamster ball.]
:I love the whole world

:Panel 6:
:[Depiction of internet sludge (4chan b-Random)]
:And all its messed-up folks.

:Panel 7:
:[Cueball and Megan immersed in playpen balls.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 8:
:[Mass of playpen balls with speech "I put on my robe and wizard hat" originating from it.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 9:
:[Black Hat taking a present from a kid with a party hat.]
:I love your suffering.

:Panel 10:
:[Diagram showing RSA fingerprint authentication between two people.]
:I love cryptography.

:Panel 11:
:[Cueball and Megan in bed covered by a red sheet.]
:I love entangled sheets.

:Panel 12:
:[Cueball hanging from a kite string holding a camera.]
:And kite photography.

:Panel 13:
:[Map of the internet.]
:I love the whole world

:Panel 14:
:[Cube with a red spider on top.]
:And all its mysteries.

:Panel 15:
:[Two people sword-fighting on rolling office chairs.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 16:
:[Classroom with two students and Miss Lenhart.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 17:
:[Cueball saying "Barack me Obamadeus!" to another man speaking energetically at a podium.]
:I love elections.

:Panel 18:
:[Cueball holding a schematic diagram of a transistor in front of his crotch.]
:I love transistors.

:Panel 19:
:[Cueball and Megan in bed, Cueball saying "There ''must'' be taft slash fiction."]
:I love weird pillow talk.

:Panel 20:
:[Cueball speaking to Megan.]
:I love your sister.

:Panel 21:
:[Roller coaster with Cueball in the front car holding a chess board and thinking about a move.]
:I love the whole world.

:Panel 22:
:[Beret Guy standing in the midst of leafless trees.]
:The future's pretty cool!

:Panel 23:
:[Megan doing the MC Hammer slide towards Cueball.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

:Panel 24:
:[Cueball and Megan on an electric skateboard.]
:Boom De Yada
:Boom De Yada

==Trivia==
* This comic was enacted by Olga Nunes and various famous people as [http://www.olganunes.com/xkcd ''We Love xkcd''].
* Noam Raby and Olga Nunes also produced an animation based upon this comic, named [https://vimeo.com/7151435 ''I Love xkcd''].
*This comic is available as a signed print in the [https://store.xkcd.com/products/signed-prints xkcd store].

{{comic discussion}}
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