Editing 490: Morning Routine

{{comic
| number    =490
| date      =October 17, 2008
| title     =Morning Routine
| image     =morning_routine.png
| titletext =I had a really hard time not writing '...profit!'
}}

==Explanation==
Thanks to the portability of the modern computer, the availability of the Internet, and the advent of social networking sites such as {{w|Facebook}} and {{w|Twitter}}, someone could conceivably use their laptop to catch up on the lives of everyone they care about from the comfort of their own bed; indeed, they could do it under the covers if they want to.

This is rather different than the pre-computer days in which catching up with friends required a great deal more effort, and even since the introduction of computers and connectivity to various forms of social media, for quite a while the computer monitor could not easily be closer than ''beside'' the bed, even if you could drag the keyboard beneath the covers. Hence, laptops are ''weird.''

(In the years since this comic was published, tablets/smartphones have become even more widespread, and laptops are probably now less likely to be found used under the covers if only because they are often not the easiest device to use there any more. Or indeed in just about any other location.)

The title text refers to the ''{{w|South Park}}'' episode "Gnomes", in which a race of tiny gnomes steal people's underpants. Their business plan is finally explained as:

:Phase 1: Collect underpants
:Phase 2: ?
:Phase 3: Profit

This became an Internet meme, used in situations where a person's or group's claimed planned course(s) of action held little clear relevance to their stated or inferred objective of "profit", and so was given a penultimate stage left as an entirely ambiguous unknown. As such, although the list bears superficial similarity to a list ending in "Profit," using this punchline with a clearly revealed second-stage would not be particularly effective or funny, yet [[Randall]] suggests that he was strongly tempted to include this, thanks to the memetic resonance.

==Transcript==
:Morning Routine:
#Wake up
#Catch up on the lives of friends around the world
#Get out from under the covers

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Laptops are ''weird''.

==Trivia==
* From January 2017 to February 2017, the xkcd website's page for this comic (xkcd.com/490) was showing a different comic instead of the original comic displayed above. The comic displayed on the xkcd website's page was in fact [[1518: Typical Morning Routine]] and was most likely being incorrectly shown due to a technical error having something to do with the comics' similar names. This error has been fixed and the original comic is displaying correctly again.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]