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. stop stealing jokes from @satellitehigh , or in fact from anyone. ‘crowdsourcing’ like that is really not on and you need to apologise

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  3. @Internal – disturbingly enough – yes, and not only in the US!

    I was at a birthday bash for a good friend of mine (in the UK) last Saturday, as the night wore on, the laptop playing the music playlist became the laptop playing youtube videos to anyone in the livingroom – and yes, people do fight over which video to show next.

    I’ll also state the mean age in this group was 26 – We can learn 2 things from this, 1. Even normal parties can become YouTube parties and 2. We’re all screwed, regardless of age!

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  5. haters suck, xkcd rocks. I’m talkin to you Mathieu.

    Praying for the health of you family, Randall. Thanks for the tri-weekly entertainment

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  8. I made a site specifically for Youtube parties. You can search and queue up youtube videos without ever pausing the one that’s playing!

    http://qutube.us/

    If you’re a jerk you can also secretly move your video to the top of the queue :3

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  10. Dude, you’re worried about accidentally copying an idea from DogHouse diaries, when their entire website is blatently a rip-off of XKCD!!!? Or am I wrong? I’d never heard of them until you pointed them out in in this blog post… but that’s what I seem to see when I click on the link.

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  11. I sometimes wonder about the IQ level of those so quick to yell “You copied…” to anyone. I assume it happens to everyone over the years that they had a great idea but never followed up on it, only to see the same item for sale years later, it just means it was an idea that’s time had come, not necessarily that there had been any copying involved. For a good example look at the history of the invention of the telephone. Two people separately invented the same thing, the only reason we remember Bell is that he was first to the patent office. Yours was enough different from theirs to not be a copy anyway.

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  14. Also, your wikipedia philosophy trivia is incorrect).
    I found a symbols-information loop (after extensive testing!
    DOn’t get me wrong, I love your work.
    I just thought you should know.

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  15. To reply to what bear said, you can find “simultaneous” discoveries throughout history. I put “simultaneous” in quotes because I am a physicist and I have a hard time talking about simultaneity. The simultaneous discovery of calculus comes to mind or how Feynman resolved the problem of virtual particles at the same time as I think it was Dyson who also discovered virtual processes at the same time.
    I love your work man. The teaching physics comic is classic (I especially like the mouseover about Feynman). I have a “My Hobby” idea that I wanna run by you but I don’t know if it’s kosher. Good luck with the family issues. thx again
    Jeremy

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  17. Wow… so… I’m really surprised there are people who dislike xkcd so much that they’ll post such negative feedback. I think it’s because they don’t get it.

    PS – When are you going to make an appearance at ConnectiCON?!! I would visit your booth, bring you some gluten free drunken noodles, and express my undying love for your work here on xkcd!

    PSS – I hope things are going well!

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  18. Holy cow! I just found you guys while going through Kristina Horner’s website…. My last name is Strunk….so…..what if we are related? LOL…. Have family ties to Bloomsburg, PA?

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  19. Actually, I think the YouTube party observation is a recurring theme. I remember seeing something along these lines, either comic or blog or article on the Internet, for the past few years.

    I think it’s a reflection of a major characteristic of our culture, something about excitement and discovery and wanting to share the same feeling with others.

    [Oh. That’s a CAPTCHA? Peripherally, I thought it was a banner ad. Oops. Try again…]

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  20. Does it really matter? Doghouse Diaries just posted a comic very similar to your Google+ comic.

    Great minds think alike? :]

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  21. Who cares? It’s great that Randall acknowledged this but aside from this, people think of similar ideas all the time! One of the great things ABOUT xkcd is that it’s a graphical representation of something we’ve thought about, but perhaps couldn’t express graphically… at least not so well.

    Did people throw such a hissy fit every time Marmaduke stole a joke from Family Circus (or from itself)? Or visa-versa? I’m sure deliberate plagiarism happens in the webcomic world but it isn’t via XKCD and I’d hope anyone doing so would at least change the joke a bit more than this, anyway.

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  22. I adore the comic, I havn’t gone to look at the Doghouse Diaries, but now I know it exists, I will, and I’m sure I’ll like it, I’m totally unshocked that 2 people (or groups of people) with a cynical, loving, vicious, tender, scientific and poetic comic mind should happen to fall on the same inspiration, in this global online world we share.

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  23. Oh PS, on the health bit, thanks for sharing and been there, well, not the same one but major, long, slow, hard, changes life, takes much more out of everyone than you can imagine if you havn’t done it. Courage, to you all (especially the two of you).

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  24. Haters, if you don’t like xkcd, don’t read it. If you think you can write better comics, put a site up and i will go read yours and return(your.feedbacks) there.

    ps. For previous post, stay strong, i hope things get better on your side. I wish she gets well! Best wishes.

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  25. Ok this has nothing to do with the thread and I’m way late, but did you all know that Benoit Mandelbrot died! As a nerd community I think we need to do something about that!

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  27. my experience of youtube parties – the fighting over which clip to show next subsides when all the good stuff has been shown and everybody runs out of ideas, but we carry on regardless as less and less entertaining/ funny clips are shown – then… depression. Hope I din’t steal that anecdote from anywhere – apologies if I did!

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  28. I am not sure that the demand for phalluses made of ABS will ever be that high. ABS is the same, er, rigid plastic that LEGO bricks are made from. Perhaps a slightly more flexible plastic would be better?

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  29. There is no symbol-information loop on Wikipedia and there never was. It’s a conspiracy, man.

    And come on, Doghouse fans and xkcd fans should be able to get along. Both versions of the joke are great, and, I mean, Youtube parties really are like that… So why is it so far fetched that two independent sets of intelligent, observant people would make a joke about the same thing?

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  30. You know, if I were some sort of comedy professional, I’d probably note that this sort of thing happens all the time, that it’s nothing to get worked up over, and that creators usually aren’t bothered too much by it.

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  33. So, what’s with the removal of the forum link on the main page? Disassociating yourself from the forum?

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  36. Hi,

    Sorry if I’m putting this in the wrong place. A comment on #925: Based on the slopes of the curves, a good argument could be made that cell phones prevent cancer.

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  38. Agreeing with Phil. The graph on 925 would definitely indicate that cell usage prevents cancer, not the cancer causes cell phones (which wouldn’t explain the flattening of the cancer incidents part of the graph.

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  40. Oh, look, I’m breathing… is this plagiarism (sp?) too?

    There are no new ideas. No new jokes. Not until new words are coined, and chances are someone in that circle would already have a joke or two about it.

    Just shut up and enjoy the entertainment.

    God speed, Randall!

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  42. Hi Randall,
    I’m sorry that this probably isn’t the best way, but I wanted to send you a little support and information. I’ve been reading since I was in college – 1999. My husband was diagnosed with cancer, soft tissue sarcoma, when he was 24. I know how terrifying and isolating it can be, and I’m sorry you have to know it too. Your comic about family illness struck a chord many months ago. It is just right on. I wish you and your fiancee the very best of luck.

    Support for you, as the partner of the sick person, is very important. Try to take care of yourself. I found this website really useful in having someone else young and in a support role to talk to: http://www.youngcancerspouses.com/ especially the bulletin board.

    Much luck. I’ll continue to think of you – and to read.
    Hugs,
    Krista

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  45. *sigh* what a sad world in, where someone who relies on his own life experience(as does every other artists on the web who writes/draws their own web comic) comes up with an idea that’s similar to another strip by someone in a similar situation!

    The fact that you have an idea similar to someone else’s disgusts me and as such i will never read another strip of yours again.

    Oh wait, you mean that because we’re all human we sometimes have similar ideas and thus can not control everyone else. so sometimes an idea thats been done before(because we all know the INTERNET is full of new ideas) recurs by chance between many different people in a small timeframe?
    i guess that makes sense.
    TL;DR. I forgive you.

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  46. The silliest thing is that those n00bz who might complain about “repeats” are the same ones who just hit “RT”/share/Like all day on social networks instead of producing awesome content.

    You’re awesome. Keep making awesome stuff 🙂

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  47. Pingback: Tantanoo’s Must Watch Videos at a YouTube Party Playlist | Tantanoo.com

  48. One of my moms (my stepmom) is battling myeloma, and after an initial round of chemo, and after a second round of WMD chemo followed by a difficult stem cell auto-transplant, life soon become a realization that chronic cancer is a reality:
    1. Watch “the numbers” grow until they reach “the threshold”.
    2. Start the next round of chemo with a new drug cocktail.
    3. Hope the chemo knocks the numbers down.
    4. If the numbers drop enough, Goto 1.
    5. If they drop a little, Goto 2.
    6. Don’t ever want to get here.

    She’s done the loop twice now to Step 4, about 9 months apart, with great results. So far.

    Cancer “survival” for many cancer types has become something that has less to do with a “cure” or “remission” than it does with having drugs in the pipeline to try next, drugs to which the cancer has not yet become resistant.

    For my mom, in her daily life she doesn’t battle cancer itself any more, but rather the side-effects from the cancer (anemia) and the chemo (neuropathy, nausea, weakness). However, all of it is quite manageable, and seldom interferes with her living a very full and active life.

    I wish you and your fiancee at least the same, hopefully better.

    HTH,

    -BobC

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  49. This doesn’t have anything to do with this post, but with today’s comic “Lanes” (July 28th).

    I’m celebrating a decade cancer-free in February, but I still panic at the slightest symptom. They found the lump in my throat at a GYN visit, so I panic at the thought of going to any doctor at all.

    I never use the term “survivor”, and no one I know that’s had cancer ever uses “cured”, even if it’s been thirty years.

    No, I count the days “cancer-free”. Like an addiction. Like I could fall of the wagon at any moment.

    Which I guess is true.

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  50. The comic kinda scared me, today. I’m a childhood cancer survivor, and I’ve been in remission for about 8 years from Leukemia. I knew it could come back, but I didn’t think of it in terms of how it is in the comic! Wow. I guess at 8 years, I’m not doing too bad. At least for my type of leukemia.
    Anyway, best of luck to you and your fiancee!

    -Chris F

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