621: Superlative

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Superlative

Title text: Stay while I recount the crazy TF2 kill I managed yesterday, my friends.

Explanation

The comic parodies a famous advertisement campaign for the Dos Equis beer brand. In the campaign, Jonathan Goldsmith plays "The Most Interesting Man in the World", a suave elderly gentleman with a number of astonishing life experiences and skills. The campaign's format generally includes the narrator presenting hyperbolic descriptions of the man's accomplishments, followed by the man delivering his signature catchphrase, "I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.", which has been widely adopted as an internet meme.

Cueball plays the antithesis of the protagonist in the campaign: the least interesting man in the world. Unlike the stories in the advertisement, his affairs tend to bore the listeners. Being the generic everyman, he possesses no outstanding capabilities at all. While the original is said to "speak French... in Russian", Cueball seems to have forgotten his French altogether. He also has apparently nothing of interest to tell, either in real life or in his blog. Instead, he will talk away about his weird dreams and his success in video games. Moreover, he is unable to stand too much beer and therefore absolutely ill-qualified to advertise it.

A superlative is a form of description that conveys the quality of being an extreme example (typically the most or least, in some way), and while the comic makes clear that this individual is not extraordinary in so many ways, his sheer blandness and lack of any exceptionalism is (in its own way) a very extreme position, hence the title describing this obviously unsuperlative individual as "Superlative", though there may be a small complication to this viewpoint that is related to the thwarted search for 'boring' numbers.

The title text is a reference to the slogan of the campaign "Stay thirsty, my friends." It also references Team Fortress 2 (TF2), a multi-platform, multi-player First-person shooter game.

Transcript

He has dreams.

[Cueball is gesturing to Megan.]

Cueball: I was in this weird cross between work and my old house...

Which he'll tell you all about.

He can speak French.

Or could in high school, anyway.

A little.

Cueball: Man, I knew all these tenses and stuff once.

His blog has four posts, all apologies for not posting more.

[Cueball is sitting at a desk, typing.]

Cueball: Sorry, I've been trying to think of stuff to put here.

He is

The least interesting man in the world.

[Cueball is sitting at a table. Megan and Ponytail are paying no attention to him.]

Cueball: I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I stick to a glass or two. Any more and I feel sick.

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Discussion

A clever comic, but makes it all too clear to me how much more like this guy I am, than Dos Equis man. Cut it out, Randall! 108.162.219.58 20:44, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Am I the only one who never saw the Dos Equis commercials when they were on TV, and thought upon seeing The Most Interesting Man In The World in Internet meme-age, that it was actually George Zimmer, Founder & CEO of The Men's Wearhouse? Boct1584 (talk) 14:38, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Isn't the Dos Equis guy also ill-qualified to advertise the beer? According to him, he "doesn't always drink beer," and I've seen an image macro poking fun at this by continuing, "so I probably shouldn't be advertising it." 172.68.47.6 06:43, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

I'd disagree, If someone drinks beer 5 days out of a week, tequila one day, and abstains the remaining day then they "don't always drink beer" but still consume a decent quantity of it. "Not always" is an imprecise qualifier since it can cover anything less than 100% of instances.162.158.74.177 16:21, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I always took it to mean "I don't always drink beer, so when I do, I'm really discerning . . . " L-Space Traveler (talk) 12:15, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

How is someone speaking French in Russian? Is he speaking French with a thick Russian accent, or vice versa, or is he just mixing words in two languages so that no one besides the Russian nobility of XIX can understand him?

That's the joke - he's Just That Good! L-Space Traveler (talk) 12:15, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Surprised this is really the only XKCD comic to mention TF2 StapleFreeBatteries (talk) 17:08, 7 September 2024 (UTC)