Editing 386: Duty Calls

[[Cueball]], and many people everywhere, feel an {{Wiktionary|irrepressible}} urge to correct people on the Internet, and often get intensely invested in arguments over mundane or insignificant topics. In this comic, Cueball is presented as an exaggerated example of one such arguer.  His statement that "This is important" shows his excessive investment in whatever (unnamed) topic he is arguing about. Additionally, Cueball's interpretation of the argument as "someone is wrong, I need to correct them" rather than "someone disagrees with me, I should learn from them" parodies Internet arguers' insistence in the obvious, objective superiority of their viewpoint. The phrase "Duty Calls" used in the title is traditionally used in much more dramatic contexts (say, by a police officer, firefighter, doctor, etc. when talking about their job), so applying it to the job of arguing on the Internet is a humorous mismatch that puts Cueball's disproportionate investment into perspective. In [[955: Neutrinos]] another incarnation of Cueball is cured of a similar disease. A much later comic is simply called [[1731: Wrong]], but here it is not the other people who are wrong! A callback to this comic was made in [[2051: Bad Opinions]].

The title text reinforces the absurd nature of his emotional investment in this argument. His reasoning that "they'll keep being wrong!" if he leaves suggests that the only solution he sees is to continue to argue until everyone on the Internet has agreed with him on all issues–a ridiculously impossible plan. By taking this satire to its logical conclusion–an eternity of arguing on the Internet with no time for pleasure in real life–Randall reminds the reader that getting emotionally involved in Internet arguments at the expense of real life is a terrible, terrible idea.

There are a lot of people in the Internet.{{Citation needed}} Some percentage of those people are objectively wrong about known things. In consequence, there are a lot of wrong people in the Internet. So, correcting those people is a {{w|Sisyphus#Punishment_in_the_underworld|never ending task}}. Also, some of those people are wrong because they are {{w|Crank#Slang|cranks}}, and won't accept even a clear demonstration of their error. But the people posting corrections can self-justify their effort because they are helping the {{w|Lurker|lurkers}} who otherwise could be led astray by the errors published.

This comic used to be [https://web.archive.org/web/20220125023401/https://store.xkcd.com/products/signed-prints available as a signed print] in the xkcd store before it was [[Store|shut down]].