Websnark

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at March 8, 2006 11:30 AM

My dreams ... my dreams ...

Comment from: Tangent posted at March 8, 2006 11:33 AM

Game over, man! Game over!

Comment from: Jonathan Rosenberg posted at March 8, 2006 11:45 AM

You know, you draw comics for nine years and then crap on a sparrow, and it's the sparrow that gets all the fame.

Join me at my new website, www.sparrowcrapping.com.

Comment from: Nich posted at March 8, 2006 11:56 AM

After such gems as stoolfairy and brains4zombies, I was a little disappointed that wasn't a real site.

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at March 8, 2006 11:56 AM

Yet.

Comment from: Phil Kahn posted at March 8, 2006 12:09 PM

Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!

Goddammit.

Comment from: Abby L. posted at March 8, 2006 12:11 PM

I love raising misspelled animals. You get such a great feeling taking care of creatures that might not get a chance to truly live, due to their graphical complications. I salute you, dear Eric.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at March 8, 2006 12:23 PM

Wait... webcomics journalists are even bigger nerds on Earth? Bigger than video game journalists?

I don't know whether to cry in happiness or bitter disappointment.

Comment from: William_G posted at March 8, 2006 12:39 PM

Well, I dont know much about journalisting, but I do know that punchline suggests we'll be waiting a long fucking time for him to return.

Comment from: Ford Dent posted at March 8, 2006 1:35 PM

Aw hell, and here I was thinking of a career in Webcomics criticism.

There's another dream out the window. Thanks a lot Rowland.

Comment from: Kristofer Straub posted at March 8, 2006 2:10 PM

Webcomics criticism should revolve around webcomics that address webcomics criticism.

Comment from: monkeyangst posted at March 8, 2006 2:12 PM

I'm personally offended at Rowland's characterization of webcomics artists, and if I could only stop anally raping crippled orphans for a moment, I would definitely write him a nasty email about it.

However, because I can't stop anally raping crippled orphans, the only other activity I can reasonably be expected to perform is to read Websnark.

Comment from: Tangent posted at March 8, 2006 2:13 PM

So what you're saying, Kris, is that a webcomic version of webcomic criticism (ie, using the webcomic itself as the venue for the criticism) should be entirely about itself?

Comment from: Jonathan Rosenberg posted at March 8, 2006 2:19 PM

Oh, and I almost forgot:

full sized Jon Rosenberg uncut!

I may be full-sized, but I haven't been uncut since I was eight days old.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at March 8, 2006 2:32 PM

Jochaim!

Comment from: kirabug posted at March 8, 2006 3:00 PM

I may be full-sized, but I haven't been uncut since I was eight days old.

Oof. Seems the longer one hangs around here, the more one learns about comic-drawin' folks. TMI ain't just a power plant you know. ;)

Oh, and if you're a huge nerd, doesn't the Nerd Union take away your well-adjusted card? I thought bein' a nerd was all about the angst.

Comment from: Pseudowolf posted at March 8, 2006 3:22 PM

I thought bein' a nerd was all about the angst.

I thought that was what being an emo was all about.

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at March 8, 2006 3:27 PM

Being an emo is all about getting carried around under Rod Hull's arm. What? Oh. That's very different. Nevermind.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at March 8, 2006 3:35 PM

Oh, I thought being a nerd involved doing well in the ways intellectually, like society encourages, and being hated for it.

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at March 8, 2006 4:27 PM

Nah, that's being a geek. Being a nerd adds a layer or ten of social dysfunction.

Comment from: Kusand posted at March 8, 2006 5:34 PM

Paraphrased:

CALVIN: Writing: Moving, spiritually enriching, sublime. "High" art. The webcomic: Vapid, juvenile, commercial hack work. "Low" art. Criticism of webcomics: Sophisticated irony, philosophically challenging. "High" art.

HOBBES: Suppose I draw a webcomic of criticism of a webcomic?

CALVIN: Sophomoric, intellectually sterile. "Low" art.

Comment from: Kusand posted at March 8, 2006 5:51 PM

Also - at what point can criticism of comics that give shout outs to the critics officially be deemed incestuous? :)

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at March 8, 2006 5:55 PM

Also - at what point can criticism of comics that give shout outs to the critics officially be deemed incestuous? :)

Look behind us. ;)

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at March 8, 2006 5:56 PM

Man, sometimes I think The Courage To Heal really shouldn't have diluted the whole definition of incest. I didn't mean to molest Amber.

Crap. Now she's going to be all with the panic attacks and the group therapy.

Comment from: monkeyangst posted at March 8, 2006 6:04 PM

You know, you draw comics for nine years and then crap on a sparrow, and it's the sparrow that gets all the fame.

I hear you. I laid the foundations for most of the houses on this street, do they call me Angus the Stonemason? No, they do not.

I dug wells for half the families in town, do they call me Angus the Water-bringer? No, they do not.

I built bridges over nearly every creek in the county, do they call me Angus the BridgeBuilder? No, they do not.

But you fuck one sheep...

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at March 8, 2006 6:21 PM

For the record, I just found the line. I nearly responded to monkeyangst's post in a manner so obscene, Eric would have warned me despite the fact that the post did not actually insult anyone, present or otherwise. I'm censoring myself for the good of what little decency I have left.

But damn, was it funny.

Comment from: monkeyangst posted at March 8, 2006 6:39 PM

For the record, I just found the line. I nearly responded to monkeyangst's post in a manner so obscene, Eric would have warned me despite the fact that the post did not actually insult anyone, present or otherwise. I'm censoring myself for the good of what little decency I have left.

Now you pretty much have to post it.

Comment from: kirabug posted at March 8, 2006 7:58 PM

Or at least tell us where to email to hear it ;)

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at March 8, 2006 8:06 PM

You know I list my email address in my TypeKey account, right?

Comment from: Doug posted at March 8, 2006 9:43 PM

Also - at what point can criticism of comics that give shout outs to the critics officially be deemed incestuous? :)

When they become self-referential, comments upon the commentary iterating endlessly, becoming so dense and inaccessible that they reach the point of collapse and form a singularity from which no meaningful dialogue can escape, the entire form being sucked from existence down the whirling vortex of literary crticism, dissappearing from the ken of Man and scholarly citation for all eternity.

At that point, all goes still and quiet.

Then someone thinks, 'Y'know, I bet some people would be amused if I posted my comic on the web...'

The cycle then starts anew.

Comment from: cyco posted at March 8, 2006 10:01 PM

"Nah, that's being a geek. Being a nerd adds a layer or ten of social dysfunction."

According to Roast Beef, a nerd is someone who excels at all intellectual pursuits, while a geek is good at merely the technological ones. And if anyone would know, it's Beef.

Comment from: William_G posted at March 8, 2006 11:08 PM

Here are my favorite words of wisdom on the Nerd/Geek question:

"I'm not a nerd, Bart. Nerds are smart"

Comment from: Doc posted at March 9, 2006 12:38 AM

I've always gone with the Beef definition myself, with the additional that nerds are usually reasonably high functioning whereas geeks are the ones that are consumed by hormones and forget to use deodorant. If at 12 you were reading war and peace you were probably a nerd, if you were the head of a CS clan you were a geek.

Comment from: Aerin posted at March 9, 2006 3:09 AM

A friend of mine who shares my unlikely name once classified it this way: Nerds have some sort of technical prowess and geeks lack social skills, while dorks are just weird.

Comment from: Josh C posted at March 9, 2006 3:27 AM

See, that's interesting, because I'd always known geeks as the ones with social skills and nerds as the ones to be shunned for dirt, creepiness, and obsessiveness. I must conclude that there are two orders of nerds, high and low. The low order being those shunned and scummed (and shivered at), while the high being those highly intellectual individuals who, while they do retain a basic set of social niceties (such as bathing), assume a degree of solitude in their daily lives.

The definition of geek doesn't change, though, I don't think- it's anyone who's well-versed in a subject they love. I've heard geek applied to nearly every hobby, barring sports- the appropriate term there is "buff".

Comment from: elvedril posted at March 9, 2006 4:51 AM

I always used the following definitions:

nerd: somebody who excels in academic fields but does poor in social encounters.

geek: somebody who is obsessed with something that isn't socially acceptable to be obsessed with (pretty much anything besides sports or music).

dork: somebody who does poorly in social encounters but doesn't excel academically.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at March 9, 2006 7:41 AM

You know, we really need to come to an end of the Geek/Nerd Semantic Debate... I'm beginning to cringe whenever I see anyone say "No, you didn't mean geek, you meant nerd" or vice versa.

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at March 9, 2006 8:12 AM

Less filling!

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at March 9, 2006 8:17 AM

Josh C and Elvedril
There are definately both Sports and Music geeks. They may be more socially acceptable than standard geeks, but not always.
The guy who can recite baseball statistics for hours, the armchair football coach, the person who has just one more b-side to find to have his collection of Tori (or whoever) complete, That guy at the ball game without a shirt and with face paint . Yes the paint is on his face, but it is also on his chest and belly and well, it may be under his pants, but damnit he already took off the shirt, so I'm not asking.

These people get the same "oh hell, this one may be dangerous" looks that the rest of us get when we start talking about our passions.

Comment from: elvedril posted at March 9, 2006 8:35 AM

roninkakuhito:
Well yes and no. On the one hand the people in question are often treated in ways similar to geeks. And it is possible that they can actually be geeks (for instance a music geek being a person who stops by the record store to bore everybody with their knowledge of trivia about obscure bands).

But the threshhold is different. Few people would call the guy with the facepaint a geek. They might call him a freak, or they might accept his self-designation of "superfan" with an ironic twist. With music too obsession with a style is not usually given their own monikers. A person obsessed with punk music is a "punk" not a "punk geek", can you even imagine calling somebody a "punk geek"? Sounds like the two terms should be in opposition.

A fan of anime who can list off the episode titles of the show Rah Xephon is an "anime geek". A fan of heavy metal who can list off the song list of every Death album is a "metalhead". The language difference exists even in cases where the social ostracism might be the same.

Comment from: Cnoocy posted at March 9, 2006 9:13 AM

Oo! Oo! Can I call Mitch Clem a punk geek?

And will he kick my ass for doing so?

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at March 9, 2006 10:04 AM

Just because they have a name for your particular branch of geekdom doesn't make you not a geek. A metalhead is a geek. Just like a Trekker (especially one who insists on the distinction between Trekkie and Trekker) is a geek even if there happens to be a seperate name for their particular form of geekdom.

Same with a "superfan." In fact, the superfans of traditional geeky pastimes are the ones who really deserve the quasi-negative meaning of the term "geek."

I don't think that having your own special moniker means you aren't a geek. It may mean that you don't have to admit geekdom to yourself, but it flies, it has feathers, it quacks, and it nibbles Centauri to death. No matter what you call it, it is still a cat.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at March 9, 2006 10:13 AM

Your cat has feathers and quacks? Wow.

And I know people who are self-described sports geeks. They're usually the guys who come up with new stats that ideally make the game easier to understand. And the best get incorporated into general understanding of the sport (such as batting average, quarterback rating, or plus/minus).

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at March 9, 2006 10:14 AM

Just thought if a better one than the duck:
Calling it a Mountian Whale doesn't make a deer a fish.

Comment from: roninkakuhito posted at March 9, 2006 10:19 AM

32 Footsteps
Babylon 5 reference.
"Londo Mollari: "This is like being nibbled to death by... What are those earth creatures called? Feathers, long bill, webbed feet... go quack?"

Vir Cotto: "Cats"

Londo Mollari: "Cats! Like being nibbled to death by cats!" "

Comment from: elvedril posted at March 9, 2006 5:18 PM

roninkakuhito:
You're right, point withdrawn. I guess the only difference is that the average person feels safe while calling a group of trekkies or emo fans "geeks" but doesn't have the guts to say the same thing to a group of punks.

Oh and thanks for explaining the Star Trek reference, since that's not my particular brand of geekdom I just thought you were confused.

Comment from: Ray Radlein posted at March 9, 2006 5:49 PM

As a sports geek, I firmly reject the notion that quarterback rating contributes in any way to anybody's general understanding of the sport of football. If pushed, I may concede that there might exist some guy writing software for the Elias Sports Bureau who knows exactly what goes into that number, but I will not believe that it reflects any sort of deep understanding of reality.

(Also, real sports geeks laugh at batting average; it's all about the OPS, baby!)

Comment from: Alexis Christoforides posted at March 9, 2006 7:06 PM

elvedril - I'm just wondering if those are your definitions or if you found them somewhere. I'll be using them, thanks!

(Also, real sports geeks laugh at batting average; it's all about the OPS, baby!)

And now I finally know how other people feel when they talk to me.

Oo! Oo! Can I call Mitch Clem a punk geek?

And will he kick my ass for doing so?

Mitch Clem will kick your ass ANYWAY. He's the new Chuck Norris!

Comment from: quiller posted at March 9, 2006 8:31 PM

Lord knows there aren't really definitions for the colloquial usage of geek, nerd and dork. For the record, when I discussed this with my ex, who was an ex-Cal Tech student (I went to Harvey Mudd College which is similarly geeky) we basically agreed as follows.

Nerds are those who have much knowledge and interest in a subject. This can be any kind of subject matter, from history to chemistry to sports, but it is generally useless knowledge acquired for fun, not for work. A sports nerd is not made by rooting for your team in a bar, but by memorizing the batting averages of everyone on every team. Ken Jennings is a nerd who made it work for him.

Geeks are those who are generally technically knowledgable and have interest in one or more geeky subjects, like SF, comics and computers. It is a bit of a demographic group and a lifestyle, used in phrases like Alpha Geek and Geek Chic, and company names like Think Geek. Eric Raymond is a geek.

We didn't really discuss dorks, but I'd consider them to be those who are socially inept to the point that even your average geek or nerd marvels at their cluelessness. Dork is the only one that I'd still consider derogatory if someone seriously applied it to me. I have no particular examples, but I know a few at the local SF club, and I'm sure you know some too.

One can be any combination of these, or just one of them. I don't claim these are final definition by any means, but to me there are computer geeks and comics geeks, but history nerds, and sports nerds. Back in high school 20 years ago when Revenge of the Nerds came out, I would have probably defined things differently.

Comment from: gwalla posted at March 9, 2006 8:45 PM

Devo are punk geeks.

Or is that geek punks?

SO CONFUSED

Comment from: alpaca2500 posted at March 9, 2006 9:34 PM

As for me, I plan to raise alpacas from now on.

that's exactly what i plan on doing when i retire form whatever career i may have. that's actually been my plan since i was 15...

Comment from: TasteMyHouse posted at March 10, 2006 3:23 AM

gwalla: Devo = new wave.

Comment from: Ray Radlein posted at March 10, 2006 4:20 AM

(Also, real sports geeks laugh at batting average; it's all about the OPS, baby!)

And now I finally know how other people feel when they talk to me.

OPS stands for "On Base Plus Slugging," and is derived by combining two other basic measures of baseball offense, the "On Base Percentage" (roughly, a version of batting average that includes walks) and the "Slugging Percentage" (a weighted version of the batting average, in which a double has twice the value of a single, a triple has three times, etc.).

For a long time, baseball insiders and experts have known that both OBP and SLG are better measures of offensive ability than batting average is; but at some point in the past couple of decades, some clever sabermetrician discovered that combining them resulted in a new measure that was even better at correlating with run production.

There are other, more complicated statistics that can be used to measure offensive ability (including things like OPS+, which attempts to compensate for differences between ballparks), but OPS has the advantage of being fairly straightforward, and requiring only the use the type of basic data (hits, walks, at-bats, doubles, triples, etc) which is commonly available for all players (i.e., the stuff you can find on the backs of their baseball cards).

Comment from: elvedril posted at March 10, 2006 4:31 AM

Alexis Christoforides -
Well they're my definitions, but ones I developed from what I think is common usage. So I didn't find them spelled out anywhere, but I think it's relatively close to what people mean when they say those terms.

Comment from: miyaa posted at March 10, 2006 5:27 AM

Ever get the feeling statistics are like the cooler, hipper, and sexier sisters of mathematics? They're used in like everywhere, and actuaries and vegas casinos worship them like goddesses.

Comment from: Jin Wicked posted at March 10, 2006 6:29 AM

This is the nerdiest discussion I ever almost paid attention to.

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at March 10, 2006 9:01 AM

An ecologist, an economist, and a statistician go bow hunting. They spot a deer. The ecologist takes a shot, and overshoots ten feet. The economist takes a shot, and undershoots ten feet. The statistician says, "Hey, we got'im!"

Comment from: Christopher B. Wright posted at March 10, 2006 10:40 AM

gwalla: Devo = new wave.

Not really. New Wave is an 80s, post-punk phenomenon. Devo was around as early as the mid-to-late 70s.

Rollins talks about listening to Devo before he joined Black Flag.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at March 10, 2006 11:15 AM

Nah, DEVO are legit geeks. If anything, their music actually is Dada. Brilliantly so, but still Dada.

Though you can't discount their membership in the Church of SubGenius, of course.

Though that does beg the question of what to call DEV2.O, beyond the obvious label of "abomination."

Comment from: miyaa posted at March 11, 2006 2:40 AM

I'd like to see someone try to make a Dada comic once. Just to see how bizarre that would be.

Comment from: gwalla posted at March 12, 2006 11:19 PM

32: The San Francisco Chronicle had a good article on DEV2.0 today. My favorite bit:

"The overzealous minds of gatekeepers are always unfathomable," Casale says. "In many cases, they were telling me what the lyrics meant that I wrote 25 years ago. In 'That's Good,' there's a parochial school nursery rhyme couplet that goes 'Life's a bee without a buzz, it's going great till you get stung.' That had to go because 'B' is slang for bitch and 'life's a buzz' means you're high. Stung means you're getting away with it until the cops pop you. I found out I was writing gangster rap lyrics. It became a Devo experiment to learn how corporate thinking works these days."

miyaa: Tales Designed To Thrizzle #2

Comment from: miyaa posted at March 15, 2006 1:15 AM

In an old usenet group I still hang out in, gwalla, if someone on there showed something so spectactular, so deeply moving, so well, so damn mind-blowing, they'd ask the person to marry them in a net.marriage.

Gwalla, we've gotta have a date at the very least.

Comment from: gwalla posted at March 15, 2006 2:11 AM

miyaa: So...what are you doing around Comic-Con time?</suave>

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: