Talk:1224: Council of 300
This phenomenon is explained by a Google engineer on YouTube. 62.245.198.190 08:17, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
No reference to Committee of 300?. Sorry, I have no time to elaborate. --Palmpje (talk) 12:41, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
I think the first panel is poking fun at the complete irrelevance of merit in videos going viral (i.e. a kid crying about a celebrity or a horrible song that only got recorded because the "artist's" parents were rich). You could say it seems that merit makes a video less likely to go viral, but then you'd have to think about how a small percentage of the videos are worthy of virality, and you see that that percentage within the category of viral videos is proportionate. But, that said, a conspiracy by a dark cabal would answer more questions about this phenomenon more adequately than the commonly quoted, "people are stupid," so I think the first panel is a reference to this. Hence the, "We decree that this video meets our standards and should go viral." The explanation given above really only starts in the second panel. Plus, it wouldn't be the first time xkcd referenced and made fun of conspiracy theories.173.25.45.105 14:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
- To me, it's just a silly hypothetical link between the number 301 and the Committee (which I didn't know about until, like, just now). I wouldn't say that it's a biting commentary about Internet popularity, but different strokes for different folks. Alpha (talk) 16:50, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
- I can just see the guy doing finger quotes around "go viral". Wwoods (talk) 19:20, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
What's the helicopter-carrying-a-string video? Is that something specific and real? 200.49.162.52 09:56, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
301 is the number of people in the council plus the first regular person to view it. It's an obvious point, but we seem like we want to be complete. Not sure where to add it, so I'll let wiki-magic take care of that. 76.106.251.87 19:07, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
The council member in the second panel seems to have a collar. Has Randall every drawn figures like that? 141.101.96.120 12:45, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
The collar looks like a cape to me.
