User Friendly

Where do I begin with User Friendly? How do I start without being perceived as a total asshole? I won't. At one time I was a fan of User Friendly, always awaiting the next day's strip, but then I realized something: I was waiting for poorly-drawn, monotonous drivel pertaining to the greatness of Linux and the depravity of anything Microsoft.

First (and really the only part that I feel hasn't been expressed somewhere on Everything2) substantial part of this diatribe: the writing/jokes/whatever the hell it is. When you really look at the comic, the realization sets in that the vast majority of Illiad's ideas are actually just Slashdot headlines. Not that Slashdot is a bad thing, but to base an entire comic strip on it is both insane. This is especially apparent in the Sunday strips, but it shows up often enough in the regular strips to be annoying. The Metallica ordeal is an ideal example because the transition from headline to strip was virtually frictionless. Simply personify Metallica's request to ban Napster users into an overzealous man in black, and you get the same shit, only a different color. Don't even get me started about the tech support jokes. I believe Scott Kurtz sums it up better than I ever could in the tech support comic rant at PvP:

Guys, do you realize that there is only so many jokes that you can tell about video games? I mean, there is a fixed amount and then it's not funny anymore. It's like tech support jokes. I heard them all the first month I worked tech support. http://www.pvponline.com/newspro/archives/arc3-2003.html

Second point: see User Friendly Media. No words can express how I felt when I saw the site.

Now that I've lifted the major things that piss me off from my chest, I can take a quick jab at the drawing. I could accept the fame of User Friendly more easily if not for the atrocious drawing. Penny Arcade's strip with the characters of User Friendly all decked out in whore gear makes this distrubingly apparent. Gabe literally took stick figures and turned them into objects that actually made the cast look humanoid. It wasn't like going from one style to another, as seen in many crossover comics, but an evolution from child-like to at least sophomoric. Goats, Sinfest Red Meat, PhD, PvP, Penny Arcade, and many other comics have good, and even creative artwork, even if some of them have less-than-spectacular writing. And that's it for this rant.

User Friendly is a free daily internet cartoon found at www.userfriendly.org. It details the lives of A.J., Miranda, Greg, Dust Puppy, Stef, the Chief, Smiling Man, Erwin, and Sid (to name a few) as they work and play at their job at a ficticious company called Columbia Internet.

Common themes are Information Technology/Computer Science oriented but includes most topics that geeks (a.k.a - computer nerds, techies, techs, etc.) would find interesting and/or compelling.

Also features the 'Link of the Day' which is always a non-business site of interest to geeks. In the past they have featured a website that provides magic 8 ball answers by actually turning an 8 ball using automated motors connected to the web server, an Anime Title Generator, and the Darwin Awards.

Time magazine stated that User Friendly was "a strip in the wry, verbal vein of Doonesbury...the humor is a combination of pop culture references and inside jokes straight outta the IT department."