Miss Cellania
Inspired by xkcd
by Miss Cellania - May 6, 2010 - 7:48 AM
bloghead_M.C.Files.gif

Who is the most influential person on the internet? That argument could go on for years. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs certainly get people to buy things. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the men behind the omnipresent Google. Moot, the founder of 4chan, topped TIME’s Most Influential Person poll. It could easily be argued that one guy with a pencil has the strange power to make things happen without a company, without a title, and without even asking. Randall Munroe has influence he never asked for. His creation xkcd is “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” The accompanying blog, which Munroe calls a “blag”, is where he posts everything outside of the thrice-weekly comic. Yeah, he’s published a book, too, but it’s the comic that makes things happen.

When Munroe posted this comic, Mike McHenry was inspired to install a ball pit in his home. Then Munroe was inspired to make it happen in his own home (shown). He later enlarged it. Then Last.fm put one in their office, although it wasn’t easy.

When Munroe posted this comic, it wasn’t long before Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman was mock-attacked by a band of ninjas as he spoke to the debating club at Yale University.

When Munroe posted this comic, it inspired Hourann Bosci to create an application to find the location of any IP address on the map.


When Munroe posted this comic, Noah Raby was inspired to animate it.

When Munroe posted this comic, Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing was just an average-looking guy you might not recognize on the street. A couple months later, he showed up at ETech 2007 looking like this. Image by Flickr user Scott Beale / Laughing Squid.

When Munroe posted this comic, a new “sport” was born. Andrew, Chris, Ryan, and Chance recreated the stunt in real life and sent Munroe a photo. More people sent in pictures, which end up in the Chesscoaster gallery. See more pictures here.

When Munroe posted this comic, (shown only in part here) he thought ahead and registered the domain wetriffs.com. Pictures were, of course, submitted. The NSFW gallery contains nudity.

When Munroe posted this comic, Dustin Spicuzza was inspired to create software that posted a love note at the startup, with a ominous “Missing operating system” appended. He also posted warnings about trying this at home.

When Munroe posted this comic, (shown only in part here) Raffael Mancini was inspired to develop the butterfly easter egg for Emacs.

When Munroe posted this comic (NSFW text), it inspired a poll that plots everyone’s opinions on fruit. A response comic was also posted to reflect disagreement the original graph.

When Munroe posted this comic, (which was inspired by this popular Discovery Channel promo), Noam Raby made an animated version, and then there was a live-action version of the comic, and then another featuring some folks you might recognize.

When Munroe posted this comic, the Wikipedia entry for “wood” immediately sprouted more pop cultural references for wood. The entry has since been edited, with the Pop Cultural References section removed.

When Munroe posted this comic, YouTube was paying attention and made it come true. The “audio preview” comment feature only lasted about a year.

When Munroe posted this comic, (shown only in part here) Vadim Ogievetsky was inspired to create a generator to plot narratives for other movies.

When Munroe posted this comic, it was only a few hours before someone had a working version of the game online. It is as frustrating as you’d think.

If you have any doubts about Munroe’s influence, bear in mind that there are at least two blogs dedicated to explaining what xkcd comics mean and another that explains how bad it is. THAT’s influence!

twitterbanner.jpg

« Previous Post   -   Next Post »
Click here to get a Risk-Free issue of mental_floss magazine
Comments (21)

  1. RE: the first article of this post – there’s only one thing to say about it…

    BAZINGA!!!!

    I just read through Monroe’s recent color survey (thanks for the link Miss Cellania) and it was AWESOME. i read the comic everyday.

    posted by Justin L on 5-6-2010 at 9:30 am

  2. LOVE THIS COMIC! ahhh, nerdiness to the max.

    posted by Meg on 5-6-2010 at 9:37 am

  3. Wow — this is weird. A co-worker just introduced me to this “blag” this week! And now there’s an article on mental_floss. The universe is kinda freakin’ me out.

    It’s a great site. I’m already hooked and look at it every day. Nice to see some intelligent humor in the Interweb.

    posted by Rachel on 5-6-2010 at 9:55 am

  4. I ran across this guy by mistake and made the wesite a fav right away!

    posted by Angie on 5-6-2010 at 10:16 am

  5. Wow, I just realized I’ve been reading XKCD since I lived in a dorm room, which means it’s been… years. I didn’t know he was so influential on the web! I mean, I knew he had fans, but not to this extent. How funny. and cool.

    posted by Elissa on 5-6-2010 at 10:23 am

  6. Awesome article Miss Cellania

    posted by Pattycakes on 5-6-2010 at 1:48 pm

  7. I love XKCD! I have the dinosaur rider at my desk and keep it there.

    posted by MetalRose on 5-6-2010 at 2:18 pm

  8. The custom-made wedding dice are still my favorite. Link in name.

    posted by Kate on 5-6-2010 at 2:31 pm

  9. LOVE XKCD-first learned of here on morning cup of links i think-i coped a few of comics to pass to my friends and some got it and others just gave me crickets, sigh, oh well….

    posted by Jennifer on 5-6-2010 at 2:33 pm

  10. I like how on the reponse to the fruit comic it indicates that the pineapple is more difficult than Hitler.

    posted by Jen on 5-6-2010 at 3:46 pm

  11. I love the comics, but have never once thought to recreate it in real life. Except maybe the wetriffs, that sounds alright. I find myself having to explain this comic quite frequently to co-workers. I, apparently, am the nerd in the room.

    I have the airplane choose your seat comic up near my computer, makes me smile everytime.

    posted by hockeyzombie on 5-6-2010 at 4:38 pm

  12. I remember preview audio comment!

    posted by Canadiana on 5-7-2010 at 12:16 am

  13. Another one:
    (Sorry my poor english :P)

    Just look when this comic come out:
    http://xkcd.com/667/

    And now look at Google Trends:
    http://www.google.com/trends?q=skifree

    It’s Awesome xD

    posted by Cradwel on 5-7-2010 at 2:04 am

  14. Oh god! I hope no one takes today’s comic to heart:
    http://xkcd.com/737/

    posted by Elsa on 5-7-2010 at 9:37 am

  15. All this is true. But what about geohashing? That invented a whole new geek sport (see http://xkcd.com/426/ and http://www.geohashing.org/ )

    posted by Stephen Turner on 5-8-2010 at 4:35 pm

  16. “eMacs”?!

    posted by Ricardo Bánffy on 5-8-2010 at 6:05 pm

  17. Oh, there are plenty more items I could’ve used, but the post was already rather long and we have deadlines. I’m glad to see more examples in the comments.

    posted by Miss Cellania on 5-8-2010 at 10:47 pm

  18. This is the guy that called Neal Stephenson couldn’t write and suggested that the more “made up words” in a book, the more rubbish it was likely to be. As though Dune, Lord of the Rings and most other books were trite rubbish. That’s when I realized he was a lightweight and that if he wasn’t smart enough to get Anathem, he was going to flame into irrelevance like the UserFriendly guy.

    posted by Narkor on 5-10-2010 at 12:04 pm

  19. How can you do that to Tetris? =)

    posted by Rick on 10-19-2010 at 2:05 pm

  20. Munroe can also do poignant and sensitive, as well as funny. Just a couple of examples:

    http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/found.jpg
    http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wasteland.png
    http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/mutual.png
    http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/angular_momentum.jpg

    -”BB”-

    posted by Bicycle Bill on 12-23-2010 at 1:53 pm

  21. Hell.

    Still can’t get a single dang row in that tetris game augh.

    Excellent article, long live XKCD.

    posted by ThatSnail on 9-26-2011 at 4:42 pm

Comment

commenting policy