xkcd now actively smartifying teh interwebs

Dan (the_technocrat) Randall Munroe, the author behind the webcomic xkcd, has developed a bot in the official xkcd IRC channel that automatically kicks people if they don't say something original.

January 20, 2008 3:44 AM ET in News, ,

Randall Munroe, the author behind the webcomic xkcd, has developed a bot in the official xkcd IRC channel that automatically kicks people if they don’t say something original.

‘Are there any girls in here?’ Kick.
‘a/s/l?’ Kick.
‘:)’ Kick.

In 2008, where the standard intellectualism can pass for a Mad Lib (Think: “The top [number] tips that [insert task of dubious value]“, “ZOMGBBQWTFSS#”, or “[copy BoingBoing], [paste into blog]“) it’s great so see someone placing value on valuable personal expression.

That, and how many times can you hear “I’m in ur ________, _______ing ur ________”.

via ebiquity

5 Comments:

  1. shwaip
    20 Jan '08, 9:24 am

    after reading the xkcd forums, i get the feeling that a lot of the readers are people who are halfway through an engineering/computer science degree that feel that they are significantly superior to everyone, only because they know that e^(I pi) = -1.

  2. primesuspect
    20 Jan '08, 7:21 pm

    xkcd of 2008 is the slashdot of 1999.

    That's not to say I don't love the comic. I love the comic. But I don't like the attitude that you have to be smart and exactly like them in order to be funny. We're funny and smart, but we'd probably get into a fistfight with a group of guys like that.

  3. Thrax
    20 Jan '08, 7:35 pm

    We would crush them.

  4. primesuspect
    20 Jan '08, 8:17 pm

    I think the xkcd life and The Icrontic Life are horrendously different animals

  5. shwaip
    20 Jan '08, 8:44 pm
    Quoting primesuspect

    xkcd of 2008 is the slashdot of 1999.

    That's not to say I don't love the comic. I love the comic. But I don't like the attitude that you have to be smart and exactly like them in order to be funny. We're funny and smart, but we'd probably get into a fistfight with a group of guys like that.

    it's not even that they're especially smart. They've taken a few classes in [whatever] and now they feel like they're significantly smarter than the world in everything, but really it's trivial stuff in the big picture, either as far as their life will go, or compared to the scope of what someone else knows.

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