xkcd: Explain!

The digital mode of communication allows for rich communities to form around webcomics. While there is much fan-to-fan interaction on forum sites like Reddit, which focus mostly on emotional responses to content [1], xkcd is unique in that its audience has created a wiki (explainxkcd.com) dedicated to explaining each comic. Because xkcd is a webcomic of “romance, sarcasm, math, and language,” the strips often reference topics that even avid readers are not familiar with, making the wiki almost a necessity for understanding the humor in certain comics. Furthermore, contributing to the community gives people a sense of collective efficacy, whereby they feel like they have accomplished something by being part of the community. This often leads to better personal well-being, and helps explain why people remain loyal to the wiki, and by extension, xkcd [2]. With an explanation posted within hours for every comic released, the xkcd community is quite vibrant, and will likely remain self-sustaining into the future [3].

The above screenshot gives a glimpse into this world. The top oval highlights that the community has produced a complete explanation for 98% of the 2100+ xkcd strips. This is impressive in its own right, but even more so in light of the fact that the community is so demanding in terms of what qualifies as a “complete” explanation, as you can see in highlighted in the bottom oval. There, you can see that the wiki has an extremely high level of attention to detail, ensuring that all the comics have an explanation that covers every facet of the strip.

This level of interaction would not possible without the Internet, making community formation one of the most striking contrasts between digital and print comics. The Internet links the audience of the webcomic with each other and the author, affording the ability to build robust communities very quickly. This is not the case in print because the communication is much slower, if it exists at all. A print version of explainxkcd would surely be much less well-maintained.

1. Lacalle, Charo, and Núria Simelio. 2017. “Television Fiction and Online Communities: An Analysis of Comments on Social Networks and Forums Made by Female Viewers.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34 (5): 449–63. doi:10.1080/15295036.2017.1358820.

2. Jeongsoo Han, Mina Jun, and Miyea Kim. 2019. “Impact of Online Community Engagement on Community Loyalty and Social Well-Being.” Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal 47 (1): 1–8. doi:10.2224/sbp.7545.

3. Dover, Yaniv, and Guy Kelman. 2018. “Emergence of Online Communities: Empirical Evidence and Theory.” PLoS ONE 13 (11): 1–17. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0205167.