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Randall Munroe

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Artist

The Resume

    (October 17, 1984- )
    Born in Easton, Pennsylvania
    Cartoonist and engineer
    Created the webcomic xkcd
    Wrote ‘What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions’ (2014), ‘Thing Explainer’ (2015), and ‘How To’ (2019)

Why he might be annoying:

    He said that in school he had trouble paying attention to ‘anything past thirty seconds at a time.’
    He noted, ‘I know the ‘You are not performing up to yours potential’ speech by heart.’
    The people in his comic are stick figures.
    The name ‘xkcd’ has no significance, but is ‘just a word with no phonetic pronunciation.’
    Some of his humor is pretty esoteric.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was a former contract programmer and roboticist for NASA.
    Foxtrot’s Bill Amend wrote, ‘I'm lucky if I can squeeze out a decent math/physics/Internet joke once a month, and he does it every few days. He's clearly smarter than me. ‘
    The A.V. Club wrote that xkcd ‘at its best isn't a strip comic so much as an idea factory and a shared experience.’
    His time-lapse comic ‘Time’ won a Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story (2014).
    Houghton Mifflin Harcourt decided to include selected drawings and text from ‘Thing Explainer’ (which explains scientific concepts using only the 1,000 most common English words) in their high school chemistry, physics, and biology textbooks (2016).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 50.0% Annoying