The Fake Guy

You know how women always claim they like nice guys? But what they really mean is they want such guys for friends, and want to date Neanderthal assholes with gigantic muscles. And the nice guy is always left there to lie in a puddle of his own hormones and he will never get a date.

Oh those women! Those heartless women!

OK, who here thinks this is a tedious and untrue stereotype? I do.

Apparently, there's a whole comic dedicated to this idea: The Nice Guy. This overlong strip is the best example of what the concept is. Jeff is a nice guy. That means pretending to be a friend to women you like, in the hopes that one day they will want to date you. Also, being a friend means lying when your friend asks for genuine advice about a relationship. It means never saying what you're truly thinking. Women are stupid and should be coddled. 

I was offended as a woman, my boyfriend was offended as a man. Yet this comic apparently is out as a book - WHY? Who reads this stuff? The art is mediocre, but not stellar in any way; the backgrounds and colors are dull, the characters look angular and bulky, and basically it contains all the basic flaws of webcomics. The women have huge boobs and small waists (sigh) with white teeth shining out as they flirt shamelessly with men they don't intend to sleep with. The men are animals who only care about sex and sports. 

I'll leave you with this xkcd strip about how DUMB this stereotype really is. 

I think the right name for this kind of comic is The Fake Guy. Pretending to be someone's friend when all you want is sex? Is NOT nice. 

EDIT: Loyal (sometimes only) reader Robyn found another review of the comic. It's much longer and more detailed and AWESOME, and I encourage people to read it. Unless you actually like The Nice Guy, in which case you may be terribly disillusioned.

I'll quote the same bit as Robyn did in the comments. I hadn't even noticed that strip and its horrendous  message:

Yeah, Mike and Tim, it’s fucking hilarious that your goddamn Mary Sue perfect hero wants a “counterpoint” to not committing date rape. ‘Cause it’s just such a crushing burden going around all day not raping women that even Jeff, the nicest guy in the universe, so nice he has twoangels, needs a break now and then. In his own words, he deserves a counterpoint, as if there’s some kind of rate of exchange whereby you’re allowed to treat someone else’s body as your property once for every five times you let someone cut in line in front of you. In case the fucked-upness hasn’t quite hit home yet, I’ll reiterate: This is a comic about how Jeff is so nice that, faced with a drunk woman, he considers raping her, and is annoyed that he can’t properly justify it. In a comic series where Jeff is meant to represent a man who respects women. And it’s a comedy.

Multiple Monday Musings

Shameless nepotism: my boyfriend Toby discusses Question Duck briefly in his tumbrl. I don't have much to add, so just linkage!

This week's QC has involved some new backgrounds, a singing fairy princess, and a café populated by dark-skinned doppelgangers. I'm really not sure what to say. In one way, it's a change of pace; it shows Jacques wants to develop the strip, and he's clearly worked hard on this. I may gripe about the stories, but I'll never claim he just doesn't bother with the strip. The backgrounds look alive and colorful, there's something new to look at, which is enjoyable. On the other hand, although I laughed at the fairy princess, I'm still not sure if this takes the comic far enough in a new direction.

xkcd is being awesome: The world according to Americans, and the nananana chart. I love how Finland is a part of "Scandanavia" on the map. The nanana chart reminds me of how xkcd introduced me to Katamari Damacy and its amusing, cheerful Japanese pop soundtrack.

Sinfest did a silent Sunday, which I always love. There's quite a lot going on, though, so it took me a while to get. I love today's strip even more; right-wing Christian militia madness and Sarah Palin. I sometimes wonder if Tatsuya Ishida is really vehemently against Christianity, or just approaches it with this intellectual, yet warm irony. The strip can be read both ways.

On the subject of religion: don't apply way too much logic or your head will explode. Also on Kinoko Fry: the good dog, the bad dog and the ugly dog. :D

Finally, Buttersafe ponders on the moth's attraction to a flame. I found the philosophical pondering fascinating, more so than the silly punchline. I recently had a conversation with someone about how elks walk under cars because they can't comprehend how fast a car moves. The ones who learn how fast cars move tend to die. So it's impossible for them to warn the other elks. Maybe this is also true of moths?

Utterly Random Notes.

QC this week: OK, Marten's mother's reaction to Dora is surprising. But since I always find something to criticize - Dora's physique is very odd. Firstly, her breasts seem to vary in size; they look much bigger than they should in panel 3. She's almost two-dimensional in panel 2, so there's no way her breasts would be that large. Also, if the shirt is long on her, as it is in the other panels, it should not rise that high in panel 1.

Question Duck, on the other hand, continues to be adorable. Goldfish crackers! And - what is polyester made of? I love the duck's smile in panel 2, like he doesn't care if his master is dozing off at the computer. He's there, ergo, a question might be asked! It's the attitude of every pet. "Oh, you're here? Good. FEED ME." Only Question Duck feeds on questions.

Pets may also cyber-embarrass you, like on yesterday's and today's Sinfest.

I feel like I should think of more to criticize and not just bash QC all the time. Frankly, I do think Sinfest's four-panel style is a bit small and cramped for a webcomic. Webcomics can break form, because they don't have to be confined by the newspaper strip space. But the stories have been consistently good again lately, after a short slump, so I don't really want to complain.

The girl in this comic is just like my boyfriend. He will have no under 192 kbps. No wonder he often identifies with xkcd. I'm becoming nerdier because of him, though; as soon as he showed me this strip, I knew what they were talking about. I like the signs saying "Sale!!!" "Sale!" and "Sale?" I feel like there might be a hidden mathematical joke there - something about them being decreasing or.. hmm? Maybe I'm overthinking this. (like a true nerd might!)

We are the red umbrella. This Marc Johns reminds me slightly of Russian children's books my mother would read to me (no, she's not Russian, she just knows Russians). If you haven't seen any, think of "Worker and Parasite" on the Simpsons. Just about that jolly and cheerful illustrations. So - negative connotations, but the red umbrella is really pretty awesome in its randomness. Except that now I'm relating it to the Soviet Union, and Worker and Parasite, and it seems to really make sense why it's a red umbrella, and why there's the we spirit. Oh dear! I don't mean to ruin the comic for everyone.

In a similar vein, Kinoko Fry continues to amaze and confuse me. There's Submameen and... an octopus with Rubik's Cubes and an eyepatch with an eye... You can click on "random" below, but every strip seems equally random and genius. This is like something out of my dreams. (Not that my dreams are genius.) (Well, why be modest? They are. Holy mental fireworks, Batman.)

Friday Nerd Special.

2-D Goggles discusses measurements. If Ada Lovelace is 5 heads tall, then so is Tintin! Tiny Asterix is only 1,5 heads. Awww. :D Also: chibi versions of Lovelace and Babbage! If you haven't read the comic yet, READ IT NOW. Especially for nerds.

In the vein of nerdiness: the definition of a mathematician at Abstruse Goose.

Calamities of Nature warns against being a thermodynamist. Or a logician. Dangerous fields, those.

Xkcd shows us how nerd love dies: with a graph. An overly simplified one. Have I ever discussed xkcd here? It's the ultimate simply drawn strip: stick figures, graphs and pie charts, computers and wires. I frequently find it funny, and I equally frequently have to ask my nerd boyfriend about the references. It's interesting that I'd much rather look at this than a poorly drawn but colored Paint comic. Stick figures can be pretty OK, but when almost-cartoonish-looking humans have outlines of squiggly Paint lines, and everything is neon green and pink, it's just visually ugly. I think more online comic artists should go for black-on-white and stick figures.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has employed a xkcd-style graph, but also drawn characters. In this case, a winning combination. I also love all of the little details about how the human eye works. A pretty original look on the old "why?" conversations with children. (I'm linking to the gif image because the latest comic doesnt' seem to have an individual link that will work later. Just enlarge it. The main page is here.)

Then, to digress slightly, a nod to the Christian comics I posted about yesterday. Rock music: of the devil, see previous post. Here evidenced by Buttersafe.

Nerd Recommendations

This post is mostly brought to you by my very nerdy girlfriend. She loves Brown Sharpie and I do urge you to check it out, at least if you know something about math. I found these a lot of fun, even if I didn't get all the mathematical implications:

Sigma Freud: functional analysis
Sigma Freud: motivational speaking 
Sigma Freud: couples therapy

One of my new favorites, Abstruse Goose, shows us what exactly happens in our brains during the average phone conversation. Awe-inspiring or kind of disturbing? I'm not sure. Probably both.

Meanwhile, xkcd continues to make graphs about topics that are too often ignored by science.
Frequency with which various adjectives are intensified with obscenities. It's also good to include some unusual words, like peristeronic. On the other hand, if you have to define them, maybe the answer is obvious. At least I learned another new word through xkcd.

Last but definitely not least, if you're a fan of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace's work, do check out 2-D Goggles. The ongoing saga of Lovelace and Babbage vs. the Organist has reached episode 7. In reality, Babbage was an avid hater of street musicians. He even had a chapter in his autobiography called "Street Nuisances". You can read more on that here. The comic's depiction of him as a crazy-eyed organist hater who's trying to end all music as if it's a battle of good and evil - is really pretty close to the truth, if you read his book. What I love about this comic is that it makes superheroes out of math geniuses. It's also damn funny.