713: GeoIP

2026-04-08T23:01:22Z

211.30.60.221: /* Explanation */ Rewrote paragraph to add detail & read more smoothly

{{comic
| number = 713
| date = March 12, 2010
| title = GeoIP
| image = geoip.png
| titletext = 'Meet hot young singles in your mom's basement today'? Man, screw you, GeoIP.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Geolocation|GeoIP}} is a service that converts IP addresses to their respective location on the Earth. This is done by looking up the IP address in a database maintained by various internet service providers. Advertisers often take advantage of the {{w|Keeping up with the Joneses|Jones effect}} by creating localized ads which misleadingly appear to be specific to your location, but are often generic advertisements featuring stock photographs with the name of a nearby settlement inserted into the text.

The comic satirizes this phenomenon. The {{w|International Space Station}} (ISS) has a high speed data downlink, but no direct connection to the internet. But here, [[Cueball]] trolls the advertisers from on board the ISS, by inserting his actual location on {{w|low Earth orbit}} into the database under that IP address. He proudly presents his result to [[Ponytail]] where the advertisements claim that there are "local girls" (one of whom vaguely resembles [[Danish]]) in low Earth orbit; a distance of roughly 420 kilometers above the Earth surface, and thus at least that far away from all other girls in the world if they are not on the space station (or a nearby spacecraft, such as one bringing supplies to the space station). The fact that the phrase "Low Earth Orbit" is slightly grayed out serves to illustrate that that location has been inserted into the generic advertisement.

The title text shows GeoIP has become so accurate that it can now pinpoint the user's location to his Mom's basement. In North American culture, young men who still live in their childhood homes are considered to be immature or excessively babied, since it means that they are either yet to enter the workforce (usually by personal choice, rather than a lack of employment in the area) or are employed at menial jobs that do not allow them to support themselves (especially if they spend whatever money they do earn frivolously, such as on comic books, video games & geek collectibles, instead of saving up to rent a place of their own). The ads are typically of the form -- "Meet hot young singles in <user's location>" where the <user's location> part is filled in from GeoIP. In this case, the GeoIP is either so accurate with its GPS or psychological profile of the ad's target that it not just announces the user is in his parents' house, but it also pinpoints his location as the basement (which is generally considered to be a short step down from still living in one's childhood bedroom), embarrassing or peeving him either because he realized the ad was mocking him or because he seriously expected there to be a 'hot single' in the room who, according to his stereotypically-limited understanding of women, would be willing to have sex with him, to which his grade-school response proves his immaturity.

==Transcript==
:[External view of the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting the blue Earth below, shown with white clouds as stripes below and black sky above. Dialog, written in white on the black sky, comes from within the ISS.]
:Cueball (inside the ISS): ''Yes!''
:Ponytail (inside the ISS): What?
:Cueball (inside the ISS): I got our downlink into a GeoIP database.

:[Internal view of the satellite, Cueball and Ponytail are floating weightlessly around, Cueball is at a laptop style computer mounted to the wall. They are in a white room, with black around, but due to being weightless in space, the room is turned on edge as to not give any semblance of a given up/down direction.]
:Ponytail: Why?
:Cueball: To mess with advertisers. Check it out.

:[A zoom in on the computer screen is shown, it shows an ad on a pink background. The ad has a heading and then shows two photos of long haired girls in sexy poses each with captions below and a labeled button at the bottom. The location (as messed up by Cueball) is written in gray, the rest of the text is in black, to indicate that this part of the text has been inserted in the ad based on the location.]
:Meet local girls in
:<font color="gray">Low Earth Orbit</font>
:tonight!
:Tanya, 18
:Amber, 19
:Chat live

{{Comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Sex]]
[[Category:Your Mom]]

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713: GeoIP