Shame on Randall

Randall, author of the webcomic XKCD, takes another stab at making fun of Ayn Rand. Or rather, her fans.

Bookshelf: A secret room behind the library shelf tells a reader he has bad taste for trying to pick up Atlas Shrugged.
Comic: http://www.xkcd.com/1049/

Discussion: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=83811

Here's the earlier attempt.

Sheeple: Five people on a subway train all think they're the only thinkers around.
Comic: http://xkcd.com/610/
Discussion: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=42498

I was disappointed by both comics. I often like XKCD, so the anti-Objectivist attitude is jarring, if unsurprising.

I admit that the Sheeple comic contains a respectable joke, though I hate the word "sheeple". Kudos to the commenter who quoted Life of Brian: "we are all individuals". The rotating bookshelf gag is nice too; I just wish it had been poking fun at some other book. Ideally, something by L. Ron Hubbard, or some idiotic self-help book about how a positive attitude makes good stuff happen.

Twilight also seems like low-hanging fruit, though I don't think it deserves as much hate---or love---as people have for it. Any bestseller generates such opinions. The Da Vinci Code would have made an easy target a couple of years ago. Randall chose to mock something classic instead of something trendy, but that doesn't mean he's not taking a cheap shot.

The irony, of course, is that Randall is arrogantly mocking people he thinks are arrogant. Whoops. But wait, if I mock Randall, am I making the same error? Hm... Better not mock, then.

The message board discussions for those two XKCD comics are as chaotic and stupid as most message board discussions, so it's not like it even does any good for Randall to get people talking about Rand. Okay, maybe some good does come of it, who knows, but to me it just looks like a bunch of people saying "is not!" and "is too!" over and over.

Conclusion: Randall's just trolling. Or expressing sincere dislike of Rand fans because he's met some obnoxious ones or because he "just doesn't get it" or both.

The Zits comic from Sunday, December 3, 2006 is benign in comparison. Zits is less snarky and more playful and childlike in general. The comic in question merely says Atlas is really long, so long that it's intimidating to read. It says nothing about whether it would be worthwhile to do so.

To paraphrase the comic: Pierce takes Atlas Shrugged off the library shelf, and his friend Jeremy questions his choice because the book seems quite thick. Pierce says: "If I use anything thinner I get a neck ache." Then he takes a nap using the book for a pillow.

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The comic could almost as easily be making fun of people like Pierce who don't bother to read the book as mocking the author for having written the thing.