3292: Geology Class

Geology Class

|< < Prev #3292 (August 31, 2026) Next > >|

Title text: The rise of AI review bombing tools threatens to take away a crucial source of experience for geology undergraduates.

|< < Prev Random explanation Next > >|

Explanation

In this strip, Ponytail is a geology professor welcoming students to a new class. Rather than a typical geology curriculum, she informs her class that they'll be spending multiple class periods review bombing several local businesses at a nearby shopping mall: Applebee's, a chain restauraunt; Costco, a discount retailer; and Sephora, a beauty and personal care products retailer. "Review bombing" is a practice in which a group of people leave negative online reviews to artificially lower the score of a piece of media or property. This practice is most commonly driven by people with an ideological or personal objection to a business. In this case Ponytail explains that her goal is to manipulate state construction projects for her own academic purposes.

By undermining businesses in a specific area, Ponytail hopes to steer business, and therefore traffic, to a different area. This, she assumes, will change the state's road building plans in such a way that they will expose specific rock layers. She specifically refers to "roadcuts" which are sections of hills that are dug or blasted away to make room for a road to go through. Since such cuts make vertical "slices" through the hills, they expose layers of rock, making them useful to geologists who want to examine those rock layers, who would otherwise not have had easy, practical, or legal access to excavate the site themselves. The implication is that Ponytail wishes to study these rock layers but lacks permission and/or funding for a typical excavation project. This implication is backed up when a student objects and she responds that they "should have told the city to approve my dig permit". In other words, an excavation that wouldn't be allowed for academic purposes might be approved when economic trends justify it.

Even putting aside the very dodgy ethics of such a plan, it's questionable whether this strategy would work. The idea that a campaign of review bombing would meaningfully alter traffic in a specifically predictable way seems very optimistic. Governments are also notoriously slow to change plans, and the expectation that they'd promptly pivot to a new plan for roads may be unrealistic. Even if all of this worked, the permitting and construction timelines would mean it would be unlikely to bear fruit for a significant period of time. Of course, as a geologist, Ponytail probably thinks on different timescales than most people, and may not be bothered by delays of a few years.

The comic highlights the somewhat sad truth that basic geologic research is highly dependent on economically driven human activity, especially groundwork. Numerous type locations (i.e. defining examples for geologic strata) are situated in quarries, digs, etc. This creates multiple problems, because it means that research is often limited to cases where construction work just happens to intersect with significant sites. Even when that does happen, the original purpose of the dig generally takes priority over the research, often leaving geologists and paleontologists to beg for permission to visit sites, work around construction activities, and scurry to secure their finds before the site is destroyed by the same activity that uncovered it.

Ponytail being a teacher instead of Miss Lenhart may seem unusual, but she has done this before in 982: Set Theory.

The title text references how the rise of large language models makes it possible to use AI to review bomb something. Such usage of AI is generally considered to be a problem because it applies a new technology to enhance antisocial effort. This strip parodies that by presenting review bombing as an important human skill, and worries that AI will undercut the ability of students to gain experience. The danger of AI preventing entry-level experience is a very real one, but applying that worry to this kind of activity is obvious satire.

Transcript

[Ponytail is teaching a class to Cueball and Megan. Ponytail is holding a pointer.]

Ponytail: Welcome to Geology 201.

Ponytail: Today we'll be review-bombing an Applebees.

[Ponytail points toward a map on the wall.]

Ponytail: Tomorrow we'll do Costco and Sephora.

Megan: Why?

Ponytail: If we cut traffic to the Northgate Shopping Center, it will go to the East Plaza instead.

[Zoom-in to Ponytail pointing to the map of the city, with several roads and intersections marked, and a river running through it.]

Ponytail: This will push the state to cancel the North Bridge project and shift funds to the Highway 3 extension...

[Back to a wide view of the class.]

Ponytail: ...creating new roadcuts through Triassic shale.

Megan: I like Applebees.

Ponytail: Then you should have told the city to approve my dig permit.

  Add comment          Create topic (use sparingly)          Refresh 

Discussion

welp, I'm here, so might as well: first 7amiþ moi · 💬 · 📊 22:48, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

honestly not sure why i put a comment here when i added the transcript earlier GreyFox (talk) 23:37, 31 August 2026 (UTC)

Working in geology may have given Ponytail a false sense of how quickly communal infrastructure budget reassignments happen.178.197.208.8 05:33, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Geologists are used to playing the long game. 80.113.13.183 06:59, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

this comic is highly unrealistic. no one likes applebee's. Lettherebedarklight (talk) 15:38, 1 September 2026 (UTC)

Maybe someone with a knowledge of these local businesses could add a few words what sort of business they are in. For example I've heard of Costco but not the two other ones.MindTheGap (talk) 09:21, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

That was in there, but seems to have been chopped out, along with a lot of other stuff, in a Great Rewrite: https://www.explainxkcd.com/w/index.php?title=3292:_Geology_Class&diff=prev&oldid=415502 Feel free to work some of it back in. 82.13.184.33 10:23, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

the Applebee's brand name is misspelled as a plural instead of a possesive singular (no apostrophe). should this be noted in the explanation in any way? GreyFox (talk) 14:23, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

This sounds like an episode AP bio. 2600:1700:DB0:8910:C531:1099:B1B4:69E5 02:52, 6 September 2026 (UTC)
        Add comment