Oops!

Posted byRandall 223 Comments on Oops!

I’m at a family reunion, where a YouTube-watching party inspired today’s comic. I woke up to find several emails letting me know, to my dismay, that the comic Doghouse Diaries has already done a similar strip about the same experience.

I linked to their site last year when I posted my color survey results, but I confess I hadn’t read through their archives, so I think this was just a case of parallel inspiration. Still, I really like their version and I’m sorry for the repetition!

Happy 4th of July, and to those of you spending it with family, enjoy sitting through your parents watching Double Rainbow for the first time!

223 replies on “Oops!”

  1. Hey, I think it’s such a universal thing to have be the case that it’s easy for anyone to really think it up, so don’t sweat it. It’s admirable that you’ve pointed out the similarity yourself. Classiness points go up by 529+!

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  2. I absolutely respect that you pointed out the difference yourself! Honestly I try to wait as long as possible to read it (so there’s less of a wait for the next 2 days) but I was in the IRC channel when the “Canadian Surrealist Porn” comic came out late.

    In case she never let you know, Graendal made some cool visualizations of your philosophy comment, which has since became something of a phenomenon (as I’m sure you’re aware). Here they are (from Reddit): http://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/i61cj/wikipedia_philosophy_i_made_some_cool_graphs/

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  3. Hey no big deal. Just a fluke of the universe. In 900+ comics you’re bound to copy someone.

    I like yours better because of how simple it is. That alone makes it a whole new comic, really.

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  5. i just think that all the comics are great, it doesn’t matter if you copy someone or someone copies you in a while, i wait for about to weeks at a time so i have several comics to read.

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  6. Yup — theirs is excellent, but there’s room for more. Its really interesting to see the parallel takes.

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  7. What I like is that xkcd communicates the story so much more efficiently. One panel instead of four.

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  8. On behalf of what I’d hazard to guess is the majority of the world: “Who gives a flying flip?” Why is (unintentionally) doing something similar to someone else seen as a crime worthy of internet outrage?

    I see this constantly on the internet, that there’s some intellectually stunted commenter who raggs on a content creator because “that’s not original – XYZ did that three years ago”. Well, okay, that’s not surprising. There’s thousands (millions) of people on the internet – it’s highly likely that some of them are occasionally going to do the same thing. I bet if you spent enough time you could find historical equivalents for any work by any given content creator, even those viewed as highly original. “There’s nothing new under the sun” and all that. I get the impression that these people expect content creators to be intimately familiar with the complete archive of every internet comic and never repeat even a closely related joke.

    Best I can tell, it’s a petty form of tribalism. They’re devoted XYZ fans and think that it’s the bestest thing in the world, and by inadvertently doing the same thing as XYZ you’re somehow trying to horn in on their greatness – like how Leibniz tried to steal the glory for the idea of Calculus from Newton, or how Wallace tried to horn in on Darwin’s glory (examples chosen for their irony).

    My view is that as long as you weren’t *deliberately* trying to copy Doghouse Diaries, you have nothing to apologize for.

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  9. NO! I refuse to believe it! You copied them just like Coldplay copied Joe Satriani! I don’t care if you’d never heard that other song before… You must have done it on purpose.

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  10. Comedy is all about finding hidden rules and suprising but universal truths. It’s not to be wondered at if separate comics hit on the same truth… Scientists can discover the same things separately, and comedy is really just anthropology done for fun 🙂

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  12. Now they have a huge boost in their traffic. I think you have, by being aboveboard and linking to their site, more than made up for the accident.

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  13. If a billion Internet cartoonist created enough comics, given enough time, I’d still lay odds you come up with a higher percentage of original ideas than 99.7% of the rest.

    I also applaud you for quickly, publicly, and usefully (complete with link!) acknowledging the similarity. Way to go.

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  17. Why is (unintentionally) doing something similar to someone else seen as a crime worthy of internet outrage?

    Because so many people don’t _assume_ it’s “unintentionally” until it’s been pointed out and stated that it’s unintentional.

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  18. This thing just makes me think of hypothetical “Family Feud” categories, as in, “We asked 100 internet geeks/aficionados the following question: ‘What kind of things would you attempt to do at a YouTube party?’.”. “Fight to show your favorite videos” would likely be the one of the top categories.

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  21. I think your version is much much better… And I totally agree with Lawrence Charters, that your ideas are much much more original than others.

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  26. I have never seen or been nor even heard of any of those youtube-parties.
    I think I need to get out more.
    …
    Wait! I mean LESS!

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  27. I thought it seemed oddly familiar–but I just assumed it was deja vu or something. Thanks for solving that mystery for me.

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  29. its like the case with Finding Nemo, the pixar movie came out a few weeks after a french guy published a kids book with almost the exact same story.

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  31. So why aren’t doghousediaries listed under the friends comics on the front page yet?

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  34. Actually, parallel inspiration happens all the time– I practice a form of hoop dance that is relatively new, and I often find that other hoopers in other parts of the world come upon/discover/invent/explore similar concepts to me, at around the same time.

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  35. Are these comments hand picked? Cause it sure as hell seems to be that way. His comics aren’t filled with original ideas, they haven’t been for quite some time. His comic isn’t better than doghouse’s comic. It’s nice that he posted a link and acknowledged, for once, his plagiarism, but that is all he has going for him here.

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  36. With Google+, you can have web-based YouTube parties!

    Also, Mathieu: If you don’t like xkcd, why do you still read the comics and the blog?

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  37. Not uncommon at all. In political cartooning circles, they call it a “Yahtzee” when five or more cartoonists use similar images to portray a current event. Since they’re all working from the the same basic news sources, they’re pretty much inevitable.

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  38. Someone linked my to the Doghouse comic about a week ago. When I saw this xkcd comic, I thought that I had already seen it. Then I tried to figure out what was happening and why my brain was warping the universe in this way. I eventually ended up hiding under my refrigerator.

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  40. Parallel inspiration confirms the idea!
    I like XKCD, and I’m always eager for more…
    is there any other XKCD-Like comic site?? I did not find any so far…

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  41. http://xkcd.com/305/
    the internet has billions of users. everyone’s had the same ideas before. half the fun is seeing other people having the same idea. a few weeks in discrete math we started class looking at xkcd comic (monday wednesday friday class) because it was humor related to the class.

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  44. There is such a thing as a YouTube party? This news dismays me.

    You Americans are weird.

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  45. Rodger Combs,

    I’m hoping Randall will get his act together and start making good comics again.

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  46. RM – according to http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm there are over 2 *billion* people on the internet, not thousands (!?) or millions. Or maybe you meant there are thousands or millions of cartoonists?

    Mathieu – sorry you’re having a bad day. I think we all understand that not everyone likes XKCD, but frankly, nobody is interested in your mean-spirited comments.

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  47. I for one love this strip and the way you handled the situation is impressive. I dont think there was any harm done or intended and because of it im now reading the doghouse comic strips so in a way it could be almost a good thing.

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  48. Apologies in advance for the off-topic comment, but I’m really sorry to hear about your fiance. As a long term fan of your work (you’re in my top 10 most kick-ass people of all time) it’s really sad to hear this. I hope she gets better!

    All the best and thanks for your years of entertainment! In my eyes you’re a brilliant mind in the generic human ocean.

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  50. “Andrew McDonald says:
    July 5, 2011 at 10:30 am
    Kudos to Justin for referencing xkcd in defense of xkcd.”

    Yeah, the Meta-verse just got a little more crowded.

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