655: Climbing

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Climbing
Where did you even get this wall? Return it there and stand it back up right now.
Title text: Where did you even get this wall? Return it there and stand it back up right now.

Explanation

This comic makes fun of a certain type of images very common on the internet. Those pictures are taken with a camera turned by 90° or rotated later by software, thus creating the illusion of people walking on walls or ceilings. While the original pictures depict the physical impossibility of a rotated gravitational force, Cueball uses the aforementioned technique to create pictures of himself on a climbing wall. Megan approaches him from above the wall, indicating that the climbing wall is in fact lying on the floor. It becomes clear that Cueball was not able to climb a real wall and therefore crawled on the floor with his camera adjusted accordingly.

Her comment is a sideswipe on the practise of self-display on Facebook, which is often done with the help of image manipulation.

The title text implies that Cueball has in fact stolen a real climbing wall, and that Megan wants him to return it.

Transcript

[Cueball is apparently ascending a climbing wall.]
[We see him again in profile, as well as the edge of another person standing at a ninety degree angle to him with her feet on the wall above him.]
[Cueball stops and looks up at Megan, who is standing on the "vertical" wall, looking at him.]
Megan: Your facebook rock climbing pictures just got a lot less impressive.


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Discussion

Apart from the fact that it could be obvious from the background, many of the portable versions of these walls are mounted on trailers and designed to lay horizontally for transportation (as opposed to having to be disassembled). With a bit of quicktalk or an attendant who has a sense of humor, this would be easy to do. Of course, the title text makes it seem like that was not what Cueball had done. Tryc (talk) 19:40, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

The "that's what she said" joke: just because it's possible doesn't mean it was intended. 108.162.212.196 23:46, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Unrelated to the comic, but I went on a school camping trip once and this comic appeared in the pamphlet they gave us about rock climbing. R3TRI8UTI0N (talk) 09:16, 21 March 2023 (UTC)