TITLE icon-based featuring Bapper, Mtn. Dewd & Bastich
PANEL 1 (BASTICH, MTN. DEWD, and BAPPER are sitting at a circular table. BASTICH is reading a comic book titled "Perl Girl" and MTN. DEWD is holding an iPad.) MTN. DEWD: Ha! CrankyBlogger really let those crybaby Netflix subscribers have it this time! BAPPER: You don't say!
PANEL 2 (BASTICH raises his hand dismissively at MTN. DEWD.) BASTICH: Oh, come on! Of course Netflix subscribers are going to complain about a price hike! But a day later, all anyone wants to do is bash them all for complaining at all instead of dancing in the streets!
PANEL 3 (MTN. DEWD raises his finger while responding to BASTICH.) MTN. DEWD: You do realize now you're complaining about people complaining about people complaining, right?
PANEL 4 (BASTICH rests his chin on his hand as he thinks.) BASTICH: You're right. And now you're complaining about my complaining about people complaining about people complaining...
PANEL 5 (A comic book flies in the air as BASTICH throws his hands up in the air in a blind panic.) BASTICH: Oh no! Now I'm complaining about you complaining about me complaining about people complaining about people complaining! It's an infinite loop!
PANEL 6 (BASTICH freaks out off-panel while MTN. DEWD and BAPPER speak. BAPPER holds his fingers up to mime a CTRL+ALT+DEL keystroke.) BASTICH: It never ends! MTN. DEWD: Better get out of here before his stack overflows. BAPPER: I dunno, a good three-fingered solute used to work like a charm back when I was programming basic as a kid...
Commentary
This strip was originally posted only to my Facebook feed. From the original post:
I posted this at a time when it seemed like Social Media was making personal blogs obsolete (why navigate to a zillion sites or micro-manage an RSS reader if you can just doom scroll everything in one place?). That may still be the case, but now I'm leaning into my lack of cool by posting it to my own site to persist in obscurity.
I don't really remember the hoopla about this particular NetFlix price hike, but I do remember the backlash against the backlash, which inspired this joke tying into the classic infinite loop bug that nearly all programmers have dealt with.
The three-fingered solute (sic) refers to the old Control-Alt-Delete keystroke used to reboot a MS-DOS/Windows computer, also known affectionately as the Vulcan Neck Pinch.