490: Morning Routine

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Morning Routine
I had a really hard time not writing '...profit!'
Title text: I had a really hard time not writing '...profit!'

Explanation

Thanks to the portability of the modern computer, the availability of the internet and the advent of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, someone could conceivably use their laptop to catch up on the lives of everyone they care about from the comfort of their own bed; indeed, they could do it under the covers if they want to.

This is rather different than the pre-computer days in which catching up with friends required a great deal more effort. Hence, laptops are weird.

The title text refers to the South Park episode "Gnomes", in which a race of tiny gnomes steal people's underpants. Their business plan is finally explained as:

Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit

This became an internet meme, used in situations where a person's or group's planned course of action held little clear relevance to their stated or inferred objective. As such although the list bears superficial similarity to a list ending in "Profit" using this as a punchline would not be particularly effective or funny, hence Randall has decided not to include this.

Transcript

Morning Routine:
  1. Wake up
  2. Catch up on the lives of friends around the world
  3. Get out from under the covers
Laptops are weird.

Notes

As of January 2017, the xkcd website's page for this comic (xkcd.com/490) is showing the a different comic instead of the original comic displayed above. The comic displayed on the xkcd website's page is in fact 1518: Typical Morning Routine, and is most likely being incorrectly shown due to a technical error.

The original comic's alt-text, "I had a really hard time not writing '...profit!'", is still displayed upon mouseover. Thus the current situation is that xkcd.com/490 contains comic 1518, but with comic 490's alt-text, as shown in the comic box below.

As of February 2017, this error has been fixed and the original comic is displaying correctly again.

Comic 490 as displayed on the xkcd website in January 2017

Morning Routine
I had a really hard time not writing '...profit!'
Title text: I had a really hard time not writing '...profit!'


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Discussion

And by dint of being being far more convent to use in bed, tablets are weirder still. Compro01 (talk) 20:58, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Or smartphones... Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 10:28, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Guys, consider that this was posted in 2008... CsBlastoise (talk) 18:20, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

What's silly is that the whole premise is flawed. Long before laptops, some people would call a friend from bed, via land line, and get caught up on their circle. Not to mention those of us who had a BBS with the keyboard in reach of the bed in the early nineties. — Kazvorpal (talk) 18:58, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Nonsense, nobody ever did that. -- The Cat Lady (talk) 15:45, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

So, for a while there, another comic "fell down a vent" and landed here. Interesting. 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Comic 490 is displaying correctly now, but I don't have the self-confidence to edit the page. Can someone do that for me?

Yup! It's done!