Every subculture has its representative or identifying ideas, items or works of art. Sometimes these subcultures are simply created within the fanbase around these works, such was the case
with the hipster subculture created around terrible indie rock bands. The fans started wearing vintage clothing and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon or RC Cola, and boom: instant subculture. Other times, an existing subculture, built around a number of existing things, begets its very own, brand new representative works of art.
The second case is the one of interest here, and it is the case of a specific example of a specific work that has managed, in my mind, to describe and represent an entire subculture I still struggle to effectively name: the bad kind of nerd -- the annoying, half-informed know-it-all with "smart person" interests in everything but no notable proficiency in anything.
In fact, "smart people" (with the quotes stressed as hard as you can stress them) describes them both succinctly and accurately. You know these people -- they're the guys who think ICANHASCHEEZBURGER is funny and talk about how people who play Guitar Hero would be better off learning to play the real guitar, but they suck at Guitar Hero and they don't know how to play the real guitar, either. They like to talk about Internet memes and why Apple products aren't as cool as everyone thinks they are. In fact, there tends to be a lot of population overlap between this subculture and the hipsters I mentioned before...
But I digress. The particular body work of which I speak is the web comic xkcd -- and one comic in particular, in fact, that sums up everything I hate about the people that read it:
#676 - Abstraction. This comic is a steaming pile of horse shit on a number of excruciatingly idiotic levels. I will attempt to enumerate the ways in which it fucking sucks. While it's not a new thing to hate on xkcd and the people that read it, I felt like I had to express my own brand of frustration.
The comic's copy is a fantastically varied shit soup of simple factual inaccuracies, oversimplifications and gross displays of its author's lack of real understanding of the concepts mentioned. Clearly, though the person
who wrote this maintains a webcomic and blog ("BLAG" LOL) about "science" and technology, he must not actually know anything about computers. There is no "x64 processor;" though the "x64" moniker is a generic term for
Intel x86-compatible CPUs with the EMT64 or AMD64 extensions, it does not refer to any real processor (or even a brand of processors), and the author's misuse of the term only serves to make him look like
a retard. He mentions the processor "screaming along at billions of cycles," which, while not incorrect, simply acts as a whiz-bang "big number" to pronounce the ridiculousness of the punchline. For some reason
he describes the "xnu kernel" doing something he calls "frantically working through all the POSIX-specified abstraction to create the Darwin system underlying OS X." What exactly is "frantic" about the kernel,
and why is the joke funnier because of it? Is he saying the kernel's agitated or doesn't know what it's doing? Since when do operating system kernels "work through abstractions" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) or "create systems?"
Kernels don't "create" systems... that's like saying your car's engine "creates" your car. Why is OS X "straining itself" to run Firefox? Nevermind. I can understand that one; Firefox is a slow piece of shit.
It sounds like I'm nitpicking, but with so many nits to pick, how can I resist?
To be fair, none of these things are really so bad on their own. I can understand wanting to generalize and oversimplify for the sake of comedic effect, but the simplification is one of the worst (and most confusing)
parts. I thought his audience was supposed to be a bunch of smart people? Shouldn't the audience know enough about computers to know the name of a real CPU? Is the audience supposed to know just enough about computers
to know that all of these terms are technical, but not be smart enough to know the terms are meaningless? Why would the author think using a bogus name for the CPU would be better than using a real one (like "Athlon64"), or even a more accurate generalization (such as "quad-core CPU")?
If you don't have a good grasp of the concepts underlying your joke (or you don't think your readers do), why not just make a different joke? Why not use less retarded terminology and make the same joke (but better)? "I am a god?" How lame is this guy? Ugh.
The stupid joke itself isn't even funny. Obviously, the idea is this: the subject is using an incredibly complex piece of equipment to achieve an inane goal. Watching a video of a cat in a box is an unworthy
use of his powerful computer and disgraces the names of the countless brilliant engineers who put their hearts and souls into its hardware and software. Funny, right? No. It's almost as if the entire point of
the joke is to acknowledge that both the author and all of its readers have reached the same conclusion. Good work, guys. Not exactly what I would call comedy gold.
This is the essence of xkcd:
Douchebag A: "Hey, did you see today's xkcd comic? They mentioned wormholes, Anime, the Fibonacci sequence, and sexual intercourse!"
Douchebag B: "Indeed I did see it, and like you, I do know what all of those things are."
(And no, that wasn't supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be a perfect example of a boring conversation about a boring web comic between two people who read xkcd, which means they're boring too.)
Nothing on xkcd is comedy gold, but somehow its readership thinks the exact opposite. It's supposed to be clever, it's supposed to be insightful, it's supposed to be intelligent, and I guess
reading it is supposed to make you cool in the "smart people" subculture. A subculture full of people who think they like science, but don't know anything except what they've seen in sci-fi; people
who think they're computer nerds, but don't know anything except what "recursion" means; people who think they're smart but aren't smart enough to realize that reading xkcd is for lame pretentious assholes.
And don't get me started on what a serious lameass you have to be to enjoy stupid videos like that in the first place.