Editing 2299: Coronavirus Genome 2

Jump to: navigation, search

Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.

The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision Your text
Line 17: Line 17:
 
In continuation of the previous strip, Cueball appears to be fascinated by the fact that the entire genome of this very consequential virus can be fully detailed in a text file, using only 30,000 characters. He realizes that he can't fit this much information in a single tweet (Twitter has a 280 character limit), but is able to fit the entire genome in a Facebook post (Facebook allows [https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-increases-status-update-character-limit-to-63206/ up to 63,206 characters in a post]).
 
In continuation of the previous strip, Cueball appears to be fascinated by the fact that the entire genome of this very consequential virus can be fully detailed in a text file, using only 30,000 characters. He realizes that he can't fit this much information in a single tweet (Twitter has a 280 character limit), but is able to fit the entire genome in a Facebook post (Facebook allows [https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-increases-status-update-character-limit-to-63206/ up to 63,206 characters in a post]).
  
βˆ’
This strip draws humor from the contrast between the costly physical precautions that are being taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus between people and the blitheness with which Cueball attempts to share (the genome of) the coronavirus electronically.  Cueball's response (that it's okay, because he sanitized his phone before posting) could be taken as a sarcastic rebuttal, given that Megan sent the genome to him without knowing why he wanted it, or a commentary on the useless or counterproductive behaviors of clueless people (e.g. people who wear gloves before touching potentially-contaminated surfaces, but then scratch their noses while still wearing the possibly-contaminated gloves).  It could also be a reference to the ''{{w|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}}'' series, in which humanity is revealed to possibly be the descendants of the "useless" occupants of the planet Golgafrincham, including telephone sanitizers; unfortunately, after sending their useless members to the planet later called Earth, the remaining Golgafrinchans were subsequently wiped out by a plague caught from an unsanitized telephone. This may also be a reference to the concept of digital data sanitization (the screening of user inputs to prevent exploitation of security flaws) as in [[327: Exploits of a Mom]].
+
This strip draws humor from the contrast between the costly physical precautions that are being taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus between people and the blitheness with which Cueball attempts to share (the genome of) the coronavirus electronically.  Cueball's response (that it's okay, because he sanitized his phone before posting) could be taken as a sarcastic rebuttal, given that Megan sent the genome to him without knowing why he wanted it, or a commentary on the useless or counterproductive behaviors of clueless people (e.g. people who wear gloves before touching potentially-contaminated surfaces, but then scratch their noses while still wearing the possibly-contaminated gloves).  It could also be a reference to the ''{{w|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}}'' series, in which humanity is revealed to possibly be the descendants of the "useless" occupants of the planet Golgafrincham, including telephone sanitizers; unfortunately, after sending their useless members to the planet later called Earth, the remaining Golgafrinchans were subsequently wiped out by a plague caught from an unsanitized telephone.
  
 
The title text deals with the almost inevitable outcome of the resulting message being 'liked' by some other party. In this case Megan, although she just told Cueball it was weird that he shared it. This may be a commentary on the common reflex to "like" your friend's posts, even if you think they're strange. Alternately, the "like" button on Facebook was historically the only way to signal a reaction to a post (other than actually commenting).  When someone posted about a bad event, such as an injustice, a tragedy, or a difficult personal event, people might "like" the post to indicate their support of the person posting it, but it could read as having positive feelings toward the incident itself.  (Facebook has since added multiple reaction buttons to express such emotions as surprise, sadness or anger).  In this case, Megan "like"ing the coronavirus genome could be taken to mean that she likes the virus itself, which would be quite odd. {{citation needed}}
 
The title text deals with the almost inevitable outcome of the resulting message being 'liked' by some other party. In this case Megan, although she just told Cueball it was weird that he shared it. This may be a commentary on the common reflex to "like" your friend's posts, even if you think they're strange. Alternately, the "like" button on Facebook was historically the only way to signal a reaction to a post (other than actually commenting).  When someone posted about a bad event, such as an injustice, a tragedy, or a difficult personal event, people might "like" the post to indicate their support of the person posting it, but it could read as having positive feelings toward the incident itself.  (Facebook has since added multiple reaction buttons to express such emotions as surprise, sadness or anger).  In this case, Megan "like"ing the coronavirus genome could be taken to mean that she likes the virus itself, which would be quite odd. {{citation needed}}

Please note that all contributions to explain xkcd may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see explain xkcd:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

To protect the wiki against automated edit spam, we kindly ask you to solve the following CAPTCHA:

Cancel | Editing help (opens in new window)