94: Profile Creation Flowchart

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Profile Creation Flowchart
This one goes out to xxCrazyPixie1987xx
Title text: This one goes out to xxCrazyPixie1987xx

Explanation[edit]

AIM (short for AOL Instant Messenger, now defunct) was an instant messaging software that offered its users profile pages to share info about themselves or their friends. Randall notes that these pages fall into one of three categories:

  • People without friends or significant others who linked to their LiveJournal (a blogging service popular in the early 2000s);
  • People with friends and significant others who would celebrate their relationship all over their page;
  • People with friends who would fill their profile with inside jokes only their friends could understand.

The "Angsty about it" -> "Yes you are" section implies that everybody who does not have a boyfriend or girlfriend is upset and wishes they did.

Both AIM and LiveJournal were known for their teenage user base, as shown by the title text's fictional AIM screen name.

The title text seems to reference the kind of behavior someone with a tribute page would display, but is actually an example of an inside joke, for cartoonists. The text comes from Natalie Dee Comic 956, from January 8, 2006, a few months before this xkcd comic was published on April 26 of the same year.

Transcript[edit]

[A flowchart is shown.]

Have Friends? → No → Link to your LiveJournal
Have Friends? → Yes, and want to alienate everyone else → Inside jokes!
Have Friends? → Yes → Have Boyfriend/ Girlfriend? →
No → Angsty about it? →
Yes → Link to your LiveJournal
No → Yes you are → Angsty about it?
Yes → A profile tribute is the greatest possible expression of love.


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Discussion

The Natalie Dee comic 956 is titled (or labelled) "this one goes out to xxcrazypixie1987xx", i.e. (apart from case) exactly the title text of this comic. Dee was published some months after xkcd (August 2006 instead of April 2006), but if the date stamp in the URL is correct still a few days before xkcd's 143: Parody Week: TFD and Natalie Dee was published. Not sure if this is common Natalie Dee folklore or if it's worth mentioning in the explanation here (and maybe also at #143, then). --YMS (talk) 14:27, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Good catch. I think we should remove the original title-text line, seeing as it's not accurate. (The screen name isn't exactly fictional.) DownGoer (talk) 04:07, 26 June 2023 (UTC)