Xkcd history

On January 25, 2003, Randall Munro registered the domain name xkcd.com. Later, many tried to find the meaning of this set of letters, offering the author their versions: duck x back without a vowel, extreme keyboard configuration daemon, and the like. But the name of the most popular web comic book means nothing to geeks.

At the beginning of the zero, Munro was tired of semantic nicknames (Skywalker4, Animorph7, and so on). I wanted some word that does not get bored, which will belong only to its creator. That was a time when some four-letter addresses in the .com zone were free, unlike today’s total cybersquatting. Therefore, Randall picked up four letters that no one had used before, which meant nothing and which were not pronounced or were in any way an acronym.

The domain was registered, but was not used until Munro began making small sketches at an enviable frequency. To this day, new comics appear every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In this case, the author never received any art education.
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Then Munro still worked at NASA, but was engaged in small enough projects to be able to escape from any nonsense. For example, once while working on navigation algorithms, he programmed a robot that drove him through the space agency offices in an office chair with wheels.

In 2005, the comic began to gain popularity. The breaking point was a drawing about sudo and a sandwich . After that, the seriousness of the little hobby became apparent.

The joke is based on the fact that the first request to cook food is ignored, but everything changes with the Unix command for executing an operation on behalf of the sudo superuser.

Munro never thought anyone was interested in console commands. After the publication of this comic, the readers' database doubled, and a whole heap of orders for print t-shirts arrived in the online store - Boing Boing posted a link to xkcd on its website.

At some point, xkcd began to make more money than the main work. There were some problems with self-organization: sometimes I wanted to draw at work, and at home, where I had to rest and do my amateur projects, the author of xkcd solved mathematical problems.

Already in 2006, he exchanged spaceships for drawings and left NASA. Income began to bring T-shirts, posters, stickers and other products, and the comics gradually gained immense popularity among wide circles of nyards. By October 2007, the site was visited 70 million times a day.

Comics are so popular that very often they are used almost as emoticons when discussing various technical and not so much questions: from the choice of passwords to the status of relationships on social networking sites .

xkcd seems simple, although the comic has a few permanent characters. Sometimes Randall creates unique issues, it can be something very unusual and fascinating in its complexity, or a very interesting infographic about radiation , money or even the stupidity of the infographic itself .

Much of the work day Munroe takes away reading mail and replies to letters, posts on forums , drawing, working with goods, the rest is devoted to personal life and socialization. The author of xkcd has a clear schedule, otherwise the regularity of the releases would be completely broken. In order to combat procrastination after the wedding, comics are not drawn from home. Munro goes to the office like a real job: it's easier to distinguish between places for washing dishes and writing emails.

Randall traded prestigious and stable work at NASA for drawing stickmen, a simplified depiction of human figures so that limbs and torso are depicted as sticks. But he does not regret it and does not even consider his career finished. Internet celebrities of his level is enough just to publish a resume on your own site, and immediately there will be a stream of offers.

His book What If? became a bestseller in the US and the UK. 24 hours after the start of pre-orders on Amazon, she hit the sales tops, despite the fact that several months remained before the release.

In the book, Randall addresses the many different questions of his readers, answering them in as much detail as he can. For example, the reader asked what could be seen in several time points of the period of the last millions of years, standing in Times Square . For an accurate answer, Munro used many different sources, studying in detail the movement of glaciers.

But people also ask difficult questions that are strongly associated with politics and sociology. People often ask what will happen if this or that state is changed in the state, as if the physical equation can solve the organization of society.

Book what if? is a logical continuation of the already existing format of the same section on xkcd.com (there is an amateur translation of it into Russian ). It all began with open lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where volunteers can teach students everything they see fit. Randall liked the idea, and he, too, decided to participate.

The lecture was good, but somewhat dry, and the Monroe class was a little bored. After attempting to use the Yoda example, there was some recovery. Answering the question about the power of the explosion of the Eye of Sauron turned out to be much more interesting than telling the harvested material. The second half of the lecture was devoted simply to answering questions from the audience.

So the idea of ​​What If was born. The first few articles were written a long time ago, for them the necessary format of the blog simply did not exist. There are several secrets that make it possible to keep the quality of the material at such a high level. Munro sometimes finds interesting research, and later selects a suitable question for their use.

In addition, he has a lot more free time than an ordinary person. Therefore, Randall can reflect for hours on randomly coming strange questions that the average person perceives as mental noise. On each of the articles can take a whole day of clean work, that is, most often the search for the answer is stretched for several days.

Inspiration for xkcd comics is in daily life: Munro highly appreciates having a source for new ideas. He tries new programs and games, monitors trends in the world of high technology, science news and works on mathematical problems. If he didn’t do this, the pictures would tell how a person is sitting at home at his computer - there’s already enough of this in the world of web comics.

Once Munro thought that for humor you need a special mindset, thanks to which it is enough just to set a few parameters and get a joke at the exit. But this is far from the case: you just need to notice the daily cliches and point at them.

How does one of the largest geeks of the planet relate to nerd culture? He believes that people should not distance themselves from the rest on the basis of their love for technology and science. It is dangerous to build your personality around the idea of ​​your own intelligence, because you can easily present yourself in a repulsive manner. Munro himself prefers not to focus on geekiness.

Randall Munro is a celebrity, but he is not recognized by a bystander as any TV star. A lot of people know what xkcd looks like, but they live all over the planet. Randall spoke to huge audiences and even appeared on television, but his great fame is somewhat frightening.

In the past, such a loner would never have achieved such fame and recognition, and his book would hardly have been so popular. Everything has changed in many respects thanks to the Internet, now anyone can start quickly and cheaply distribute their comics.

This is true: it took Bill Watterson several years for Kelvin and Hobbs to be noticed. Today, his success can be repeated by an ordinary amateur artist with a cheap graphics tablet and access to the Web.