Talk about unrealistic. In “real life” someone who actually said “skinny on the deets” would no doubt be lying unconscious and face-down in a quickly-expanding pool of their own blood within seconds. This Spencer (if that’s even his real name) clown is really pushing his luck, I’ll tell you what.
So BB intends to pay their new news anchor via a Kickstarter campaign, do they? Well har-dee-har-har, how very Web 2.0 of them, eh? Again we see TomBan struggling with his concept of how The Internet actually works, as what little he knows about it comes tumbling out of his confused brain like a big blob of mashed-up gunk that splatters all over the page in a confusing mish-mosh of interchangeable babbling that doesn’t actually mean anything. Around here we call those “weekdays”, by the way.
Son of Stuck Funky 
How many people had to google the word “deets?” I consider myself a reasonably intelligent guy, but that’s the first time I’d heard heard of that word. It sounded like something out of the quaint language of GIL THORP, like “playdowns.”
I don’t get why “crowdsourcing”=”subscription fee”. Although seriously, it’s not that unreasonable for an online news source to charge for subscriptions.
I’m still waiting for Cindy to find out she’s going to be paid in paypals, not dollars.
Well, I have to say that the picture of the internet as portrayed in this episode is pretty well done…if it were written by Kaspar Hauser, that is.
@SpacemanSpiff–yeah, wouldn’t Bitcoin have made as much or more sense? Well, let’s see what tomorrow brings. There’s still time!
I am at a loss for words at just how moronic this is. Funny? No. Serious? No. Mr. B, just retcon a who shot JR Patrick Duffy shower reveal with Lisa and take everyone back 15 years – without the cancer. Just please stop the bullshit.
The Indiegogo to get “Starbuck Jones” published didn’t turn out so jot, huh?
Or hot, even. Damn fat typing fingers…I blame the Internet.
The address http://www.buddyblog.com re-directs you “The Buddy Group”. From the site: “The current industry climate in LA is changing rapidly as tech and creative are coming together more often than not to collaborate on innovation and storytelling“. Wow! it’s like they’re describing this very arc, right?
It’s time to take away Tom’s car keys.
Does “Deets” mean “details?” I don’t even have a reference point for “crowd sourcing model.” And kick starter? Isn’t that something recent, like in 2010’s? But his other Internet references are from the 90’s! Oh, this is all so convoluted and awful!
I get the feeling that every time Cindy reappears, sooner or later we’re going to find out that her career prospects are even worse than they were before. She’s being interviewed by a clear nut who probably used to bill himself as an internet guru before people accused him of sounding like something out of Dilbert. Is he expecting to pay all of his staff from kickstarters?
I tried looking up “skinny on the deets” but I’m afraid I broke Google.
Anyway, Cindy should bail on this disasterous “interview” and hurry back to Westview. Funky will take pity on his Ex and hire her to work at the pizzeria. He can pay her with Montoni’s stock options.
I thought ‘the skinny’ WAS ‘the deets’. Man, I will never be hip to this fast-moving intarweb jargon.
I keep expecting Dilbert and Wally to show up and slap Kid Buzzword with a Cease-and-Desist order. Then again, I also expect to spend the rest of the week trying to decipher all the poorly-understood gibberish he’s spouting.
As opposed to Funky, who’s fat and has the DTs.
If Cindy’s first location shoot is from Elbonia, I’ll forgive BanTom for 3 of his badly drawn limbs. A prisoner exchange of sorts in the War on Limbs and Proportions.
Well all he has to do is say ‘long tail’ and I get bingo.
Well, for the first time in a long time, TB is actually following is his script of depicting contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner. It will be interesting to see how young adult, Michael Spencer is able to get this over the hill news reader to work for his company at minimum cost. It won’t be easy, but I’m sure young Michael will do all he can to make his internet company a success before he dies of cancer.
Uh, yeah. I don’t think Batiuk knows how Kickstarter actually works. The people crowdfunding towards Buddy Blogs would only be subscribers *after* the Kickstarter was successfully funded and long over. Then Buddy Blog could say, “OK, we got our funding abd the Kickstarter is done, now you can subscribe to Buddy Blog. So, here is how a subscription to Buddy Blog works!” But apparently TB thinks donating to a Kickstarter is the same as a “subscription” to the not-yet-exisiting-product. But yeah, Tom, keep on flailing your arms at the dartboard with your silly non-takedown of the “oh-so-not-to-be-taken-seriously-cynical-naive-young-people-driven-Interwebz” har har!
Also, for fans here of classic comic strips, I HIGHLY recommend the Bloom County Library complete collection volumes by IDW Publishing. I recently got my hands on all five volumes (volume 2 is even signed by Berke Breathed! whoo!) and they are an absolute joy. The strips are beautifully reproduced and some of them have notations from Breathed. Once I finish these I will get the Outland and Opus volumes. Also going to start reading my Calvin and Hobbes books again.
Amazing blog post of the day: according to the blog at Comics Kingdom, some of the strips submitted by cartoonists are pulled by the editor (yes, Brendan Burford, really, no i’m not kidding) for poor taste or… something. Anyway, hard as that is to believe, one may note that our beloved author either didn’t respond or has no examples of something that was rejected, or that he himself thought didn’t work.
Well, that part at least makes sense.
Sure, this story arc is ham-fisted and poorly-researched, but I think it is also kind of hilarious and a decent illustration of how a reader’s opinion of a character influences their perception of a story. Cindy is far from the most loathsome of the old Westview High crew, but she is far from likable. TB may intend for this story to shed some sort of angry light on the difficulty members of the old media have in adapting to and monetizing the internet/new media at levels comparable to what they once made (something Doonesbury did 10 YEARS ago), but the reader must view this through the lens of Cindy. Looking through that lens, this story comes across to me as Spencer playing an elaborate joke.
He flew Cindy out to California to interview for a job that has no solid description or real pay and appears to be on the verge of uncontrolled laughter during this entire conversation. He’s totally messing with her. It would come across as a really cruel joke if I liked Cindy; it comes across as a pretty funny one since I don’t.
“Skinny on the deets”, however, deserves no defense and will receive none from me. Even the writers for Kim Possible would have turned that down for being too stupid.
@billytheskink: Sadly, this “Let’s troll the snob who made my beloved (insert relative’s name here) high-school life a living, breathing Hell” thing might actually be what Batiuk is doing.
I hate to tell you all, but here in NW Ohio…other side of the state from Batiuk…people DO actually say “deets”. And I have blasted them every time I’ve heard it.