Undocumented Feature
Permanent link to this comic: http://xkcd.com/1305/
Image URL (for hotlinking/embedding): http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/undocumented_feature.png
An old Windows utility has an undocumented feature.
[[Windows popup with "Loading support forum..." text and an hourglass icon.]]
If you open "Help" and click on the background, you get dropped into a "support" chat room.
Only a few of us ever found it.
[[Background of a chat room, with lines like "Morning!", "Hey!", and "You never finished that story".]]
But we became friends.
We kept launching the program to check in.
[[A figure sits with a laptop on the left side of the panel. Another figure looks at a monitor on the right side of the panel.]]
Eventually some of us were running VMs just to keep accessing it.
As the internet aged
[[More background of a chat room, with lines like "But none of us gets through li..", "You know?", "Yeah...", "You should talk to Kim about th...", and "I did"]]
So did we
We don't know who runs the server. We don't know why it's still working so many years later.
[[Three large question marks.]]
Maybe we're some sysadmin's soap opera.
It will probably vanish someday
[[5 figures floating randomly in a bubble.]]
But for now it's our meeting place
Our hideaway
[[Camera zooms out, with darker nodes and edges starting to come into view beyond the bubble.]]
A life's worth of chat,
[[Camera zooms out further. Many dark grey nodes and edges are visible, the bubble just a small space within them.]]
Buried in the deep web.
But even if it lasts forever, we won't.
[[A sunset.]]
When we're gone, who will remember us?
Who will remember this strange little world
[[Two figures looking at each other inside a bubble.]]
And the friendships we built here?
[[Blank panel, except for centered text.]]
Nobody.
This place is irrelevant. Ephemeral.
[[Panel with a bubble on it.]]
One day it will be forgotten
[[Bubble begins to fade.]]
And so will we
[[Bubble continues to fade, only barely visible.]]
[[Bubble disappears, leaving the panel blank.]]
[[Blank panel, except for centered text.]]
But at least it doesn't have fucking video ads.
{{Title text: And it doesn't pop up a box every time asking you to use your real name. In fact, there's no way to set your name at all. You just have to keep reminding people who you are.}}
A webcomic of romance,
