xkcd

by **specs112** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:08 am UTC

http://xkcd.com/713/

Alt: Meet hot young singles in your mom's basement today? Man, screw you, GeoIP.

by **zyxuvius** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:09 am UTC

Whoah! Randall used 4 colors in this one!

by **Steve the Pocket** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:10 am UTC

But wouldn't that version of the ad only show up for other people who are surfing from orbit? So, really, they're only trolling themselves.

by **Nintendon't** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:12 am UTC

zyxuvius wrote:Whoah! Randall used 4 colors in this one!

HOLY CRAP I JUST NOTICED WHEN YOU SAID

Also, Amber's pose burns my cheese.

by **Giannist** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:14 am UTC

HAH, whenever I see those ads I think to myself, "Man, there are a lot of whores out here in the rural midwest...."

by **aggiemegaman** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:17 am UTC

-1 for this comic. He used the original design of the ISS and not the current final config that is in orbit now.

by **specs112** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:17 am UTC

I didn't burn my cheese too hard on this one.

And yay, my first post started a new comic thread.

by **TheHomoSapiens** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:19 am UTC

Wow, Randall is such a great artist! I especially love how the girl in the third panel has a neck, and the girl in the second panel doesn't. Also, check out the great illustration of Amber, who appears to be cylindrical with no arms. Randall never ceases to amaze!

Incidentally, the joke in this comic appears to be that a man wants people to think there are whores in space. Genius!

by **Majuba** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:22 am UTC

Yep - good job specs (tried for my first time today too). You need to URL the comic to the picture by the way.

I thought having the "local girl" ad be for ponytail girl might have had more of a punchline, but it would have made less sense. I'd love to get a false entry in a GeoIP for myself - make all the ads easier to ignore. But it would probably mess up Google as well.

by **zyxuvius** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:23 am UTC

Amber's head looks like that of a lego person.

by **rpgamer** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:26 am UTC

Amber has her left arm resting on her left leg, with her right arm angled near her head.

by **specs112** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:29 am UTC

Thanks, Majuba. Linked... I think it worked?

And yeah, Amber looks kind of strange for one of Randall's stick figures.

by **random5** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:35 am UTC

This comic is so much win.

Why would you call it trolling themselves? It's just making cheesy, lying sites which use your ip-location to hillarious effect for you and your fellow astronauts.

by **glasnt** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 5:47 am UTC

"Chat with sexy singles from GOOGLEBOT"

...

HI JOEE

Mod text colour is for mods. Size 200 font should be used at certain times. This is not one of those times. ~~Fatstaff

by **Omegaton** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:06 am UTC

Man, I really hope someone reads this comic and realizes this is how those ads actually work, and not by getting pictures of people actually in your area.

by **Kain** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:12 am UTC

Omegaton wrote:Man, I really hope someone reads this comic and realizes this is how those ads actually work, and not by getting pictures of people actually in your area.

You mean they don't Actually expend the extra effort to do that?? Shock and Awwwww man... :shock:

by **squareroot1** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:24 am UTC

You know what, over 50% of people in the world are female and around 10% the population is gay (Wikipedia says 2-13%), yet I fail to notice ads about "meeting local guys."

Advertisers, on a whole, are idiots, and they think everyone else is stupid.

by **unfalliblekrutch** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:39 am UTC

squareroot1 wrote:You know what, over 50% of people in the world are female and around 10% the population is gay (Wikipedia says 2-13%), yet I fail to notice ads about "meeting local guys."

Advertisers, on a whole, are idiots, and they think everyone else is stupid.

Maybe because your facebook profile says you're interested in women?

(I don't know that any advertisers adhere to that, but they may

)

by **fuzzball45** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:41 am UTC

zyxuvius wrote:Whoah! Randall used 4 colors in this one!

Technically there's more than 4, Black, white, two shades of blue at least in the first panel, and the pink in the third. Altho i suppose it could be argued that black is indeed not a color, bu rather the lack thereof. However it is included as a web color #00000.

Edit: Removed, ... offtopicness..

by **Steve the Pocket** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:52 am UTC

squareroot1 wrote:You know what, over 50% of people in the world are female and around 10% the population is gay (Wikipedia says 2-13%), yet I fail to notice ads about "meeting local guys."

I'm not sure what you're getting at, there; if you hadn't mentioned the bit about gays I would have assumed you were pointing out that the women they claim you can meet through their service (and by extension, imply have signed up with it) are suspiciously absent from their target market. Hmmmm...

squareroot1 wrote:Advertisers, on a whole, are idiots, and they think everyone else is stupid.

No, they know people are stupid, or at least gullible; notice that they still run these ads, which means they must be working.

Website · by **dawidi** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:55 am UTC

Wouldn't that data point be more useful in a LeoIP database? :mrgreen:

Otherwise I guess you would get ads for the country below, and search results in a different language on each refresh... "Meet local girls in [[Pacific Ocean (18,-127)]]" ?

But GPS tracklogs for a space shuttle mission would be fun to view in Google Earth.

(And yes, that is indeed the original design - with the extra "palm tree" like solar panel module on top - but that's only a minor disappointment :wink:

)

by **Kayangelus** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:01 am UTC

Steve the Pocket wrote:
squareroot1 wrote:You know what, over 50% of people in the world are female and around 10% the population is gay (Wikipedia says 2-13%), yet I fail to notice ads about "meeting local guys."

I'm not sure what you're getting at, there; if you hadn't mentioned the bit about gays I would have assumed you were pointing out that the women they claim you can meet through their service (and by extension, imply have signed up with it) are suspiciously absent from their target market. Hmmmm...

From my understanding, he is referring to the fact that advertisers only appeal to those that prefer women. There is a total lack of advertisements targeted at women wanting to find men, or gay men trying to find men. Essentially ads are only targeting 50% of the population.

by **hintss** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:25 am UTC

6 colors

by **WhiskerTips** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:28 am UTC

Eh. Not bad, not bad. Not great either, I feel like the idea was good, but could have had better execution.

by **VadimC** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:33 am UTC

squareroot1 wrote:You know what, over 50% of people in the world are female and around 10% the population is gay (Wikipedia says 2-13%), yet I fail to notice ads about "meeting local guys."

Advertisers, on a whole, are idiots, and they think everyone else is stupid.

To be fair, they're targeting the people that actually use their services.

Some numbers:

Total number of listings for Canada on Adult Friendfinder: 1,664,829
Number of listings within that group looking for men(or gay couples): 175,806
Number of listings seeking women(or lesbian couples) : 1,220,349

To me it doesn't seem stupid to advertise to the people who will give you money..

by **Pfhorrest** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:36 am UTC

Does it seem to anyone else that Amber is pictured attempting to 34?

by **phillipsjk** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:42 am UTC

I think my ISP has transparent proxys in Vancouver and a small town in Quebec. (That is to say the "local" girls seem to live in at least 3 different cities.)

I also noticed the distances are given in miles not kilometers. So they look up my approximate location, but still assume I live in the United States!

by **floreal** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:50 am UTC

squareroot1 wrote:You know what, over 50% of people in the world are female and around 10% the population is gay (Wikipedia says 2-13%), yet I fail to notice ads about "meeting local guys."

Advertisers, on a whole, are idiots, and they think everyone else is stupid.

naah advertisers arent idiots... they just know that men are more likely to fall straight into believing stuff like that...
not ment to be offensive but hey, thats just reality...
i mean... havnt you ever wondered why you can say "thinking with your dick" but theres nothing like that for woman...
its not needed... just like those adverts with "meeting local guys"... the percentage of girls who would fall for it is extremely small, and i somehow have a hunch that the sites you usually come across those adds arent exactly swarming with girls anyways...
Why handicap your own scam? xD

by **serrath** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:53 am UTC

This can only mean...
The next XKCD meetup is on the moon!
Or well... in low earth orbit on the ISS.

by **TheoGB** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 7:54 am UTC

That sound you heard was this one going over my head and impacting on the terminal behind me.

Hmm...

by **sje46** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 8:16 am UTC

hintss wrote:6 colors

Seven. Three shades of blue in first panel, black, white, and in the last panel, pink and gray.

by **Thesh** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 8:40 am UTC

If you really want to get picky, there are 9929 colors...

by **Felstaff** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 8:43 am UTC

Also, black is technically achromatic, so 6 colours.

Or 9928 for you picky people

Argument about whether black is a colour starting ...now.

by **scrub** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 9:37 am UTC

My internet is provided by my University but as I don't live at the main campus when I see these adverts it gives me "local girls" that are a good two hours drive away

I suppose I'd make the drive if they where actually real ;D

by **blurrymadness** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 9:38 am UTC

You know what, over 50% of people in the world are female and around 10% the population is gay (Wikipedia says 2-13%), yet I fail to notice ads about "meeting local guys."

You know you're incorrect on that yes? Maybe in the united states there are more women than men... but in places like china it is far the opposite. It can be explained biologically because the sperm that generate males and females are actually quite different from one another, and while the male sperm are less reliable, they are far faster IIRC... thus you notice a small percentage bump in the number of males vs. females.

Further, keep in mind that there are not only more males in the world, but this is after considering how many more males die on the job, die in wars/police actions, that they die at a lesser age, etc etc... Nature has compensated for our ability to get our gender killed quite well.

by **Mytogen** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 9:54 am UTC

floreal wrote:i mean... havnt you ever wondered why you can say "thinking with your dick" but theres nothing like that for woman...

Not to burst your bubble, but there is an expression very much like that. The word would be "hysterical" - when your mind gets too influenced by the uterus.

by **Apteryx** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 10:33 am UTC

I liked the comic, it wasn't going to survive over analysing because of course . . . it is just a comic, but I thought it was humourous. Probably a silly question, but can the ISS crew just dial up, or do they need special connections to be able to use the internet?.

Mytogen wrote:
floreal wrote:i mean... havnt you ever wondered why you can say "thinking with your dick" but theres nothing like that for woman...

Not to burst your bubble, but there is an expression very much like that. The word would be "hysterical" - when your mind gets too influenced by the uterus.

Very elegantly phrased rebuttal.

Isn't it funny how post like that posters are acceptable because they write "not ment to be offensive but hey, thats just reality..."

but if a man wrote a sexist screed of various stereotypes denigrating women, the flood gates would open. Not ment to be offensive, ladies, but hey, thats just reality... nah, can't see it being a shield.

by **Madtentacle** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 10:44 am UTC

I would love to change the Geoip city info on a friends ip address to read something like "your disgusting dreams", "mourning" or maybe "debt".

by **Michael of Lucan** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 10:56 am UTC

blurrymadness wrote:
You know what, over 50% of people in the world are female and around 10% the population is gay (Wikipedia says 2-13%), yet I fail to notice ads about "meeting local guys."

You know you're incorrect on that yes? Maybe in the united states there are more women than men... but in places like china it is far the opposite. It can be explained biologically because ...

There are nasty reasons for gender imbalance in China, and psychology not biology is the cause. Suppose your totalitarian government has a One Child policy, forbidding parents to have more than one child to cut down the population. And then suppose you have a society with a heavy prejudice in favour of male children. By an amazing coincidence, a lot of female children die in the womb or don't survive childbirth. And the majority of children born are male.

There have been similar problems in other communities who placed a premium on male children for social reasons. It ain't biological, but diabolical.

by **Czhorat** » Fri Mar 12, 2010 11:15 am UTC

Apteryx wrote:I liked the comic, it wasn't going to survive over analysing because of course . . . it is just a comic, but I thought it was humourous. Probably a silly question, but can the ISS crew just dial up, or do they need special connections to be able to use the internet?.

Mytogen wrote:
floreal wrote:i mean... havnt you ever wondered why you can say "thinking with your dick" but theres nothing like that for woman...

Not to burst your bubble, but there is an expression very much like that. The word would be "hysterical" - when your mind gets too influenced by the uterus.

Very elegantly phrased rebuttal.

Isn't it funny how post like that posters are acceptable because they write "not ment to be offensive but hey, thats just reality..."

but if a man wrote a sexist screed of various stereotypes denigrating women, the flood gates would open. Not ment to be offensive, ladies, but hey, thats just reality... nah, can't see it being a shield.

I didn't see it as an elegantly-phrased rebuttal at all. The idea that female "hysteria" is caused by the influence of those mysterious female-parts on the otherwise rational mind is, thankfully, a very much out-dated one. To point out that, due to cultural reasons, ads like the one parodied here work better on men than on women is not sexism; it is simply accurate.

Finally, please don't try to equate any attack on men in general with a hypothetetical attack on women; given the much greater power men still wield in society it isn't even close to being a symmetrical situation.

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