Okay then. Let’s move on.
I’ve never taken a strip down before, but although some people clearly enjoyed it, the negative comments I received were downright frightening, and suggested some possible interpretations of the strip that I honestly hadn’t considered, and with which I have no desire to be associated. So I made the decision to remove it.
I’m sure this will annoy some people, and I’m sorry. But PartiallyClips is here to entertain, and I’d clearly failed at that to a very significant degree with the strip I removed.
Anyway, I had this one ready to go. It’s another dip in the “overly-smart kid” well, as well as a tribute to the old “kids go out of their way to hate healthy stuff” comic strip staple. Enjoy!
-=ShoEboX=-
Awww. Now I want to see the bad one! Did it have riboflavin? I bet it had riboflavin…
Yeah, give us a link, we WANT disturbing interpretations!
Seeing as how the “Talking at Computer” strip is gone, I assume that’s the one Shoebox means. The image seems to still be available for those interested:
http://partiallyclips.com/comics-rss/2011-12-20_talking_at_computer.jpg
It wasn’t really that offensive at all…pretty tame by webcomic standards. Pretty tame by primetime TV standards, to be honest.
Considering that one of the most popular webcomics in existence features a fair amount of cursing and robotic appliance that sexually assaults fruit and then uses that same “appendage” to dispense fruit juice for your enjoyment, yeah, that was pretty mild.
Considering that one of the most popular webcomics in existence took a completely different tack when one of their comics caught similar flack, and considering the huge amount of backlash and backlash-to-the-backlash they got, I think taking it down was the wisest thing to do.
I wonder what riboflavin tastes like, anyhow. I looked at the molecular structure on wikipedia but I don’t actually know how molecular structure translates to taste, so it was no help.
It offends me that anyone could be offended by that. Offended people need to get punched in the face, is all I’m saying.
This is a VERY funny strip… I know just how that kid feels.
Poor guy just caught a case of the trolls last night. I saw the scary comments. I think a couple of people google certain words on a regular basis just so they can freak out and take it totally out of context to make everyone uncomfortable. The strip wasn’t bad at all, I thought it was funny. But a couple of the comments were downright disturbing. It wasn’t your fault, ShoEboX, idiots on the internet infect everything eventually.
So a bunch of butthurt trolls didn’t like the last strip?
See what I did there?
Let me be the first to say that I am utterly offended that ColdFusion is offended that others were offended by that. I am punching myself in the face as I type this, which is why the lyrical flow of this comment is so poor.
Rape jokes aren’t funny. Jokes about raping robots? Weird, and maybe funny.
Yeeeeah, I can see why some people would be offended by it. Bradbury was pretty much forced to release his book in eformat. His publishers required it for his book to get another printing. But he got the last laugh by pricing it higher than the paper version.
Rape jokes are too funny! Robot rape jokes take it to a whole new level of funny!
Somebody point me to the fruit raping robot webcomic…..I is intrigued…
Shoe, i respect your decision to take the comment down. You did what you felt was right to keep the peace.
To the people who went out of their way to put him in a situation where he felt he needed to take it down? pththththththth
Oh crap, not this again.
The comic you took down wasn’t that offensive. Think I’ve figured out the other ‘implication’, but it’s a bit of a stretch.
Come on, most of us have a sense of humour and won’t be offended.
Makes me want to go play all my National Lampoon CDs and early SNL DVDs and every other bit of non-politically correct comedy until my palate is cleansed of the stench of the “offended” crowd.
Honestly, the Emotional IQ of many on the Internet is just appalling.
Technically, it wasn’t even a rape joke. It was a joke about the prevalence and relative qualities of s&m sex toys in the future. If the guy is good with a toy called the “sodomeer” it’s a pretty good bet that contact is consensual. A lot of sex toys are strongly named. And I don’t really think anyone was offended who didn’t go out of their way to GET offended. They’re trying to get everyone riled up. That’s what trolls do. Apparently, they also travel in packs, which I did not know.
And anyway, the worst comment, the one that was probably the one that got the strip taken down, wasn’t by someone who was offended. It was by someone who was offenSIVE. And honestly, they were so offensive that getting rid of the strip or at least the comments was the only way to get rid of it. I can’t blame ShoEboX for freaking out- I spent a couple hours trying to find a way to respond and couldn’t, and I’m not repeating it here cause it was that bad.So, everybody take a deep breath and stop hating on the politically-correct crowd, cause it wasn’t really their fault. It was a guy who made the joke completely not funny anymore. And the sooner we get over this, the sooner we can get back to some awesome clip-art comics.
Welcome to the world of the heckler’s veto. And like Ricky Gervais said, “Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re in the right.:”
Coincidentally, TBS showed a movie, “Susan Slept Here”, from 1954, so I looked it up on IMDB. It was a pretty good movie about a 17 year old (played by 22-year-old Debbie Reynolds) moving in with a 35-year-old screenwriter. They fall in love and get married. One of the comments was that it was a funny movie about statutory rape. I liked the movie, but I thought that description was a little harsh…
Seriously, I missed the comments so I have no idea, but the cartoon was just funny, no more offensive than the orgasmatron in that Woody Allen movie. Anyway, this one’s funny too.
Technically, it wasn’t the strip itself that got Penny Arcade into trouble; it was their reaction to the trolls. Essentially, people were focusing on the wrong part of the joke and instead of explaining that, Mike and Jerry doubled down on the offensiveness and wound up looking like idiots.
I’m sorry that you had to take that strip down. It wasn’t my type of humor, but I didn’t find it overly offensive either — certainly not enough to warrant the fuss it apparently generated.
Anyway, riboflavin boy is pretty funny. : ) I imagine riboflavin tastes like those vitamins that have that starchy, vomit-like flavor.
Haters gonna hate, man. It’s ridiculous.
While I shrug at the whole unfunny/takedown, sadly psuedon mousey has the right notion. The PA debacle, while accepted, is a really strange yet plausible case.
On one hand, no publicity is bad publicity. On the other, do you really want to deal with persons such as Shakesville? All published works will be scrutinized. You can’t please everyone. Today, it’s a blogger. Back in the 80s, it was a lone housewife (re: Married w/Children). Going gung-ho is fine… if you believe in the work.
Personally, I thought the strip was on the fence between too-wordy and not-wordy-enough.
And dammit, all that talk got me distracted from the latest comic! What’s wrong with tasting riboflavin?
Yummy nummy B2 vitamins. Can’t get enough of that urine-yellowing goodness!
An s&m sex toy? Ohhhh! I was wondering what the heck the second interpretation could be.
I thought he was going off on a bit of hyperbole, like he didn’t know what the heck kind of technology people would have in the future, so he used nonexistent rapebots as an example of something that would need upgrading (which rightly freaked his coworker out XD).
Oh, and the current strip was good, too.
That too, Anon.
Of course, nobody can burn “Farenheit 451″ as an eBook.
Unless it’s DRMed…right Ray?
…Yup, original one was better. You can joke about anything as long as it’s constructed right, and that one was. Maybe robo-buggery was a bigger problem than I thought?
However! I always enjoy riboflavin as a punchline. But I’m weird like that.
This strip seems significantly better. I looked at that minefield into which the other guys got themselves involved, and — wow — you really saved yourself some trouble by just pulling the other strip. First they stepped on the first mine and set that off, and then danced a little jig in the next area of the minefield, and then — it all just started exploding, and kept on exploding, with others dancing around in the minefield and triggering new explosions. Maybe it hasn’t stopped yet. …What a terrible grind, just because people don’t respect the feelings and traumas that others have undergone.