The Oatmeal isn’t God and Alex Knapp isn’t the Devil

Ethan Gach

I write about comics, video games and American politics. I fear death above all things. Just below that is waking up in the morning to go to work. You can follow me on Twitter at @ethangach or at my blog, gamingvulture.tumblr.com. And though my opinions aren’t for hire, my virtue is.

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14 Responses

  1. Tod Kelly says:

    Can I just say that one of the things I love about the internet is that it allows epic Tssla vs. Edison battles to occur at all?Report

  2. Alex hasn’t updated his sub-blog since October. I think that proves that he is the devil.Report

  3. James Hanley says:

    Regardless of any truth value in the Oatmeal’s comic, it was painfully unfunny. The author comes across as a pretty big douchebag himself.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to James Hanley says:

      Most of these geek-comic authors are.

      Like the man said, the first step in art appreciation is to kill the artist.

      Of course, eliminating the concept of a creator makes the geek-comic trope of “I Will Temporarily Abandon The Funny Because THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE” become a bit confusing.Report

      • James Hanley in reply to DensityDuck says:

        I love the geek comics XKCD and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and they’re not really douchebags. I’m not familiar with others, so I can’t make a general statement about geek-comic authors.

        “I Will Temporarily Abandon the Funny Because THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE” is almost always a mis-guided decision.Report

  4. Patrick Cahalan says:

    > Which means you’d have to get up pretty early in the morning
    > to not be fooled by money. Which means, huh? Exactly.

    Space awesome.Report

  5. swearyanthony says:

    As shown in the History Book “Five Fists Of Science”, Tesla was the one who along with Mark Twain created Giant Robots to preserve peace. http://www.amazon.com/Five-Fists-Science-Matt-Fraction/dp/1582406057/ This makes him inherently cooler.

    As far as the Tesla-vs-Edison question: Tesla was unquestionably a genius. And Edison was a brilliant businessman. And I would strongly suggest that the former deserves to be much better known than he is.Report

  6. DensityDuck says:

    The whole “Tesla is the REAL genius!” thing seems to come from the same place as “did you know that the song ‘Wonderful Tonight’ is really about spousal abuse?”Report

  7. James K says:

    Very well said Alex.Report

  8. Erik Kain says:

    “Would I be venturing too far afield if I proposed that Tesla’s geekdom is intimately tied to his unsung-ness?”

    Freddie also wrote this recently. Which seems relevant.Report

  9. Dada says:

    Dude. You’ve just come across as such a D, and I don’t mean dude again. It’s ok to back slavery, as long as a majority doesn’t object, you’re freaking kidding me?
    Slavery, animal cruelty, samo across ages…Douchy!Report

    • E.C. Gach in reply to Dada says:

      Dada, you clearly misunderstood my point. It wasn’t that slavery is fine if a bunch of people say it is, but rather that if we are to judge people by absolute standards, rather than historically relevant ones, Tesla is as much of an asshole as Edison.

      It was also to counter Oatmeal’s extrapolation of certain actions (testing on cats) to the core of Edison’s character. He uses those actions to establish Edison’s character, and then uses that character portrait to guess at how he felt about other people, which is a completely fallacious move in this case.Report