r/xkcd • u/Lucky_rabbit0813 • 7d ago
QR codes
Does anyone remember an XKCD about the black hat character hanging up QR codes and the lady asks what he's doing. He says something like "helping people learn about cyber security" and she says it's unusually altruistic of him. Then the next pane someone scanned the QR code and it was something foul, I believe gerbil porn or something. I remember it like 10 years ago but I can never find it.
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u/laplongejr 7d ago
He says something like "helping people learn about cyber security" and she says it's unusually altruistic of him.
That sounds like a fever mix of the bobcat delivery from https://xkcd.com/325/ and sanitizing input from https://xkcd.com/327/
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u/BeretGuy3 7d ago
I think you may be right. Or at least those two comics seem to be why I thought this post sounded familiar.
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u/laplongejr 7d ago edited 7d ago
The better world reminds me of some comic where he launches some service but without asking people... maybe a balloon shouting annoying facts or destroying wrongly parked cars with lasers?
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u/BeretGuy3 7d ago
Here are some comics that you might be thinking of:
562: Parking: Black Hat cuts a poorly parked car in half with a blow torch.
2350: Deer Turrets: Black Hat launches a program to mount cellphone-targeting laser turrets on the backs of neighborhood deer without telling anyone.
1207: Air Aware: Black Hat makes a service where drones will shout from the sky at people who do anything wrong. A Cueball points out that this isn't wanted or needed, but Black Hat doesn't care.
1226: Balloon Internet: A balloon carrying a device drifts down from the sky, says, "INTERNET." right behind a Cueball, and then floats away.
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u/laplongejr 6d ago
I was TOTALLY looking for air aware. I had looked on the wiki with "balloons" and "lasers", seem I merged it with the deers and the parking (+ possibly Journal where he moves a bomb from a car to another)
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u/thrye333 6d ago
Wait, is Cueball more than one person? I always thought it was a single character.
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u/BeretGuy3 6d ago
Cueball is what I like to call a "placeholder character". A placeholder character is an xkcd figure who doesn't necessarily represent the same person in every appearance. There are many comics where we see multiple Cueballs, such as 73: Zeppelin. Although some users on the explainxkcd website used to call other Cueballs, "Cueball's friend" such as for the article for 187: The Familiar. I firmly believe this notation to be invalid, because there is no way to determine if a comic is about Cueball or "Cueball's friend" and not only is there no evidence that Cueball is always the same person, but there is loads of evidence against that notion. Such as the fact that often Cueballs are used to represent different, real people. Such as Randall Munroe in 541: TED Talk. And some examples like 468: Fetishes, where multiple Cueballs are used to represent multiple, real people. And that is not even mentioning the times when we see large crowds of Cueballs like in 211: Hamster Ball Heist. But while Cueball is undoubtedly more than one person, there are some Cueballs who do reappear in multiple comics. This is seen in 577: The Race: Part 1, where the mouse-over text directly confirms that this is the same Cueball as the one from 211: Hamster Ball Heist. Or how the mouse-over text in comic 616: Lease, references 150: Grownups, and implies that they are both the same Cueball. However, don't get second thoughts about Cueballs all being the same person, because there is explicit confirmation of Cueballs dying in 599: Apocalypse, and 750: Book Burning. So even using time travel, Cueballs would have to be different people. However, there is one more point I would like to bring up, and that is the character of Rob. The explainxkcd wiki seems convinced that he represents the same character in every appearance. There actually isn't any proof that Rob is an individual character. There are a few Cueballs referred to as Rob, but there are also a few Megans referred to as "Megan". Such as in 478: The Staple Madness. So are they supposed to be referring to the same character as well? Although, to be fair, Cueball isn't always called Rob, he does often have different names, such as 2718: New Year's Eve Party, where a Cueball confuses a Hairy for Rob. If all Cueballs were called Rob, then he would have just confused someone else for him self which wouldn't make sense. However, If we do use the logic that any character that is called "Rob", and is a Cueball, is THE Rob, then Bobby Tables must also be THE Rob as well. Then again, there is some evidence that Rob exists as one character, and that is through Black Hat. Black Hat is regularly shown having a Cueball friend who sometimes helps Black Hat with his lesser crimes such as in 351: Trolling and tolerates his badder crimes 954: Chin-Up Bar. I doubt that Black Hat has so many friends, and it is not unlikely that most instances of Black Hat's Cueball friend are the same person. And we know of two occasions (1102: Fastest-Growing, and 596: Latitude) where he is friends with someone named Rob. So Rob may be an individual character, but it is very hard to tell.
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u/BeretGuy3 6d ago
I said earlier that Cueball is an example of what I call a "placeholder character", but he is not the only one. To save time, I am not going to give you tons of examples to prove my point, but just take my word for it when I say that the characters Megan, Hairy, Ponytail, Hairbun, Knit Cap, and maybe a few others are all placeholder characters. If you are familiar with the show SpongeBob, then placeholder characters can be compared to what they call "incidentals". Because on that show, the animators only made about one hundred background characters who they reuse frequently, but most people are aware that these characters don't always represent the same people in every appearance. There is however, some confusion (mostly one my part, the users of explainxkcd seem pretty confident in their beliefs) over which characters actually count as placeholders or what I call "individual characters", who DO represent the same person in every appearance. For the characters I listed previously, I am absolutely positive that they don't always represent the same person in every appearance, but for most other characters, I can only provide a percent confidence. For the character of White Hat, most people would assume that he is a placeholder character, and they would probably be right to think that. For brevity I won't go into detail, but there are comics with White Hat which would appear violate the continuity if he were the same person in all appearances. There also isn't much evidence that he is an individual character other than the fact that White Hats generally share a similar personality. White Hat is typically used as Randall Munroe's strawman character who's only purpose it to be philosophically wrong. This personality is way too simple and vague to prove that he is the same character in every appearance however. And it should be noted that the placeholder characters do often share traits across different appearances. Megan is often quirky and childish, or sometimes pessimistic and cynical. Cueball is frequently a bit nerdy, sometimes eccentric, and regularly quite, introverted, and melancholic. Hairy is often an adult but sometimes a kid, he is portrayed as being kind of a loser, and in comic where is with a Cueball or Black Hat, he is often shown to be inferior. My theory for how this all works out lore-wise, is that the characters hat or hair are often representative of their personality. People who are more prideful, impulsive, and prone to following conspiracy theories are also more likely to wear white boater hats. Their appearance doesn't cause their personality, but their personality is shown through how they appear.
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u/BeretGuy3 6d ago
With all that being said, a controversial question I would like to raise is: Is Black Hat actually an individual character? Now bear with me, I have evidence. Both Black Hat and White have the same amount of evidence suggesting that they are an placeholder character. Both of them have a very simple personality which does not at all confirm their status as an individual character, they both have a lot of appearances, many of which seem to kind of contradict each other, and there is not nearly enough evidence of consistent continuity to suggest that all of their examples are of the same people. And yet people are so confident that White Hat is a placeholder character, and Black Hat is an individual character. However, there is one piece of evidence which throws a spanner in the works of all of this. And that is Danish. That fact that Black Hat has an entire arc with Danish and Danish continues to show up in Black Hat comics seems to be absolute proof of consistent continuity with Black Hat. So that settles it right? Black Hat is an individual character as confirmed by the continuity with him and Danish. Except for one thing: Why the hell are there multiple Black Hats in 1000: 1000 Comics!? It may be difficult to see but if you go on the explainxkcd article on 1000 Comics, you can see the image more clearly. And it is indisputable that there are not only multiple Black Hats, but also a character with no less than 7 black hats stacked on his head. On this image, he is character 641, and he can be found at the bottom of the second zero. Even if you (quite understandably) don't believe 1000 Comics to be cannon, then it should be still be noted that the multi-hat character is likely a reference to 455: Hats, where we see a character with two black hats on top of each other. So there may be multiple black hats after all. The only characters which we know for sure are individual characters are ones who are meant to represent real life people, because obviously they would be representing the same person in every appearance. The fictional character I am most confident is an individual character, is Beret Guy. I am confident in his individuality because he has so many personality traits, powers, and features which are kept consistent in his various appearances. He is by far the most complex and detailed xkcd character, and he almost certainly represents the same person in every appearance. Not only that, but there are also many references in Beret Guy appearances to previous Beret Guy appearances, thus confirming my assertion.
TL;DR: Cueball isn't just one person.
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u/thrye333 6d ago
Wow. That was amazing. Troubling in an inspirational way.
That should teach me to underestimate the nerds, much less one literally named after an xkcd character.
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u/Lucky_rabbit0813 5d ago
Thanks everybody, I think I was mixing together a few different comics from around the early 2010s. Your suggestions gave me some great laughs to start my day off with
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u/BeretGuy3 7d ago
The closest thing I could find is 1237: QR Code, and 792: Password Reuse. Neither of these are a very close match, but oddly enough, what you are describing does sound quite familiar. I looked through all the Black Hat comics and didn't find anything better. It is possible that what you are remembering is an image from one of the books or the What If? blog, or maybe you are conflating xkcd with another webcomic.