Sunday, February 22, 2009

Why do I hate xkcd sucks sucks?

Look guys. I'm sure Dan is a nice dude. I'm sure he's fun to be around, and has a lot of friends, you know, that kind of this. But recently I've been thinking that his blog has started to go down hill. I'm not sure entirely that it sucks - I was going to call this blog "xkcd sucks sucks: overrated" - but that URL is more catchy I think, so forgive me.

He used to be good - I'll show you an example from one of his older posts: "Now, in your new understanding you can appreciate what this is." That's good. That's funny ("in your new understanding" like it's some zen training thing) and it makes sense given that he's talking about having someone understand the purpose of his blog. It just worked.

But by now, the posts just...well they aren't good at all. Here's a newer example. He's critisizing timing? What the hell? Maybe it takes a little while to craft the genius that goes into the posts at xkcdsucks. Maybe there are just better things to do sometime. I mean, come on, it's the same text every time. And what kind of person uses all caps to complain that someone is using all caps too often? Maybe there's some joke there I don't get and if so I'll gladly reconsider, but you'll have to explain it to me if that's the case.

Now it's true I'm likely to be a little biased against a "xkcd sucks sucks" blog because I am the guy who writes "xkcd sucks." And I've thought about that, it's possible that the fact that I write that blog colors my view of the posts on xkcd sucks sucks. But I think that blogging-criticism is an objective thing, and Dan's posts are, at this point, objectively bad.

What do you guys think?