It's funny, jumping the shark seems to be the slowest spreading meme, or something. Lots of memes just stay confined to subcultures. But I'd never heard of jumping the shark until I read it in a comic years ago, but it's plainly going on spreading, but not yet turned into just a normal piece of language.
Occasionally I think it may have, but then I just ignore the comments on the LJ feed for a while and suddenly I realise that it's just the prats who feel the need to tell everyone how cool they are for getting the joke that are irritating.
[x] I have been living under a rock and had no idea what "jumping the shark" meant until I Googled it.
XKCD's quality has possibly passed its peak: it got steadily better as its confidence and sense of style bedded in, but has since been slightly samey some of the time.
However, gradually running out of fresh ideas isn't the same thing as trying to be sensationalist or veering way from the original format.
Hm, there definitely have been a number of cartoons that feel a little forced (like a copycat of the comic, rather than the comic). But in my experience, that always feels like the case because when you get one a day, the "meh" ones stand out, but when going through the archives when you first start reading, you skip past them.
And it's really hard to keep a continuous stream of perfect ideas, I'd generally rather someone kept trying, as sometimes every cartoon can't hit everyone, and the one you love the most other people didn't like so much.
So I was ready to defend it. But to be fair, I jumped back 200 in the archives, and every cartoon for a week was great, so maybe it has lost something. (It feels like some comics are more forced, whereas before, he'd put out a single idea in a pic and four words, and if people didn't like it, tough. But that's just a guess, I may well be wrong.) But I think is still far from jumping the shark. (Which, despite the parabola, is not the peak, but the point where it's officially over :))
I checked both "has jumped the shark" and "has not jumped the shark" because I think xkcd's quality has declined a bit over, say, the last year but it's not really a shark-jumping sort of decline (in terms of severity, suddenness, or kind of quality-loss).
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 12:51 pm (UTC)(S)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 01:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 02:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 02:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 10:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 10:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-26 06:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 01:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 01:58 pm (UTC)I've usually found reading the LiveJournal comments on comics feeds an exercise in futility.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 02:35 pm (UTC)XKCD's quality has possibly passed its peak: it got steadily better as its confidence and sense of style bedded in, but has since been slightly samey some of the time.
However, gradually running out of fresh ideas isn't the same thing as trying to be sensationalist or veering way from the original format.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 03:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 05:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 06:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-25 10:38 pm (UTC)And it's really hard to keep a continuous stream of perfect ideas, I'd generally rather someone kept trying, as sometimes every cartoon can't hit everyone, and the one you love the most other people didn't like so much.
So I was ready to defend it. But to be fair, I jumped back 200 in the archives, and every cartoon for a week was great, so maybe it has lost something. (It feels like some comics are more forced, whereas before, he'd put out a single idea in a pic and four words, and if people didn't like it, tough. But that's just a guess, I may well be wrong.) But I think is still far from jumping the shark. (Which, despite the parabola, is not the peak, but the point where it's officially over :))
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-26 07:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-27 09:35 am (UTC)