Irregular Webcomic!

Archive     Blog     Cast     Forum     RSS     Books!     Poll Results     About     Search     Fan Art     Podcast     More Stuff     Random     Support on Patreon
New comics Mon-Fri; reruns Sat-Sun
<   No. 1672   2007-08-25   >

Comic #1672

1 Mercutio: Someone's edited the Wikipedia page "2007 Martian invasion of Earth"! It says the Martians have given up and gone home.
2 Man in Black: Good. My work here is done.
3 Mercutio: But the truth is out there now! There's no way you can cover this up! It's one of the most important events in human history!
4 Man in Black: {walking away} Check the talk page.
4 Mercutio: "Nominated for deletion"... "No secondary sources"...

First (1) | Previous (1671) | Next (1673) || Latest Rerun (2569) | Latest New (5164)
First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
Shakespeare theme: First | Previous | Next | Latest || First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
Martians theme: First | Previous | Next | Latest || First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
This strip's permanent URL: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1672.html
Annotations off: turn on
Annotations on: turn off

A few weeks ago I found a story somewhere about a survey in which people were asked to nominate the most important events in human history. The second oldest event on the top ten list was World War II. Now, call me unreasonable, but I suspect that in the entire 200,000 year history of humanity, nine of the top ten most important events probably did not happen within the last 70 years.

Unfortunately I can't remember where I found this story, so can't point you at it. But my point here is that we suffer from an effect in which we judge recent events to be more important or significant than ones that occurred longer ago. You see the same sort of thing when people are asked to list the "greatest movies ever made". Any sort of such list compiled from average respondents will probably contain five movies from the past five years in the top ten.


2018-01-20 Rerun commentary: And so, alas, being ten years old this particular comic strip no longer makes any new lists of "top ten comic strips of all time".

In the month after it was first published though, man, it was at worst number 3 or 4 on most people's lists. Together with this Garfield strip and this Fred Basset strip.

LEGO® is a registered trademark of the LEGO Group of companies, which does not sponsor, authorise, or endorse this site.
This material is presented in accordance with the LEGO® Fair Play Guidelines.

My comics: Irregular Webcomic! | Darths & Droids | Eavesdropper | Planet of Hats | The Dinosaur Whiteboard | mezzacotta
My blogs: dangermouse.net (daily updates) | 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe (science!) | Carpe DMM (long form posts) | Snot Block & Roll (food reviews)
More comics I host: The Prisoner of Monty Hall | Lightning Made of Owls | Square Root of Minus Garfield | iToons | Comments on a Postcard | Awkward Fumbles
© 2002-2024 Creative Commons License
This work is copyright and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International Licence by David Morgan-Mar. dmm@irregularwebcomic.net