489: Going West

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Going West

Title text: Listen, they request that you stop submitting a listing for your house labeled 'WHERE YOU BROKE MY HEART'.

Explanation

Megan has been hired by Google Maps and plans to move to California presumably because this is where Google headquarters is located. Her boyfriend Cueball states that he cannot move there. Megan then just ends their relationship. Cueball does not just give up -- he takes her hand and looks deep into her eyes and claims that he can see a future for them. But Megan asks him to look deeper, and he sees a typical Google Map message. He realizes that they already own her, and he has no chance of stopping her from going to California.

Google Maps is a service to let people look at the world through their web browser. When Google Maps was first starting out, the maximum zoom level a person could select went past the highest resolution imagery available in certain areas. When this happened, Google Maps would tile the message "We're sorry, but we don't have imagery at this zoom level." When Cueball looks "closely" enough into Megan's eyes, he sees this same message and knows it is over.

The title text refers to a functionality of Google Maps that allows users to submit/update information about places on the map, such as business listings, monuments, etc. Such updates must be approved by Google before other users can see them. Apparently, Cueball has been repeatedly submitting 'WHERE YOU BROKE MY HEART' as a listing for his own house, so that Megan, who is now on the Google Maps team, will see those submissions. The title text is probably her reply.

Transcript

[Cueball and Megan are talking, while Cueball is walking away from Megan holding his hands up. Megan is holding a folded page of a letter up in one hand. The envelope can be seen behind the page, which only displays one line of visible, but unreadable, text.]

Megan: I'm sorry. The Google Maps team hired me.

Cueball: But I can't move to California!

[Megan has taken her hand down holding the letter so the backside of the envelope is now visible. Cueball turns towards her and holds one hand up in front of himself.]

Megan: Then I guess this is the end.

Cueball: It can't be!

Cueball: Listen.

[Cueball and Megan are holding each other's hands with stretched out arms, looking into each other's eyes. The envelope has disappeared from Megan's hands.]

Cueball: When I look deep into your eyes, I see a future for us.

Megan: Look deeper.

[In this frameless panel, Cueball takes a hand up to his chin, while he bends his head very close to Megan's head, and she even leans a bit back. The letter and envelope have returned to her hand, after they went missing in the previous panel.]

[Cueball stands normally, as does Megan with her letter.]

Cueball: "We're sorry, but we don't have imagery at this zoom level"?

Cueball: They... They have you already.

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Discussion

Weird. I almost never use the random button on xkcd, but I did yesterday 2-3 times, and then once today. And today I came to this comic in the first try. And I may have missed seeing this before, even though I believed I have been through at least the first 600 comics... Or maybe it just did not register the first time? But today it did as the last I came across yesterday was 449: Things Fall Apart where Megan breaks up with Cueball who do not wish to break up. And they are only 40 comics between. I can also not remember reading that one before. But they are so similar, and that I got those on two random comics in a row is just weird and fun to me! --Kynde (talk) 10:34, 9 September 2019 (UTC)