Totally unfunny to me, so maybe I’m missing it too.
The best I can figure is that the joke is the deceased’s virtues were all social media-themed, and maybe that social media have at this funeral the exalted status of religion. So then it is yet another hyperbole on “culture has too much new stuff in it nowadays.”
But I don’t see any visual gags that have anything to do with that – maybe the eulogizer could have had a google glass or a turtleneck or some other marker of trendyness/obnoxiousness? The deceased’s face could be being displayed on a screen, maybe with some kind of snapchat filter? There could have been selfie sticks or hashtags? Whatever you do, don’t make the eulogizer a frumpy-looking old man though.
Is it just a comment that he’s wasted his life? My guess is that speakers at funerals (I’ve never been to one) reflect on the deceased accomplishments, but in today’s society, people don’t do much but sit around and play on their computers/phones. Try as he might, the speaker can’t think of anything to say other than activities related to computers and phones.
Kind of amusing, with a message: Do you want to end up like him?
Open life, closed casket
Could be that he never left his house, only meeting people through social media. And therefore doesn’t want to show his face so it needs to be a closed casket.
Or even that his entire persona online is made up so his actual face won’t match his virtual face, so it needs to be closed to hide that.
Maybe it’s just that no matter what you do and think and when you think and do it, you still end up dead. Modern people who spend their lives online are just as mortal as older people who spent their lives believing in capitalism, champagne and hiking in the hills, or feudalism, God and digging in their gardens. Maybe more bitterly ironic would be the funeral of someone who believed in calorie restriction and intermittent body-freezing, took his 200 daily supplements religiously and was a keen attender of life extension conference RAADFest, with the eulogy given by visually-interesting Aubrey de Grey, though that would not be particularly rib-tickling either.
I didn’t take it as negative; for a totally online person, those are good things to say about him.
I think it’s the modern-day equivalent of “He was a nice guy, kind and generous, and everyone liked him.”
He believed in sharing the gospel and open prayer; he loved socializing and attended Bible study religiously… –> expected, boring;
open source, file sharing, social media –> whoa! What was THAT? In a FUNERAL? Crazy, man! Pure Comedy GOLD!
The eulogist never actually met the deceased IRL. He’s speaking to the only aspects of the guy’s life that he encountered.
Is it a joke about caatching a virus?
I think larK has it. “He believed in” is a common phrase at funerals, as is the idea of the decedent doing something “religiously”. This eulogist puts in unexpected alternatives.
I think Notlob has it . . . that’s how *I* interpreted it, anyway.
I think it’s a bit of Mitch4, beckoningchasm, Treesong and Bekki all rolled together. Typically one’s closest friend might give a eulogy. These days it’s possible that your closest friend would be someone who you met online and who might really know much about you personally. The beginning of a eulogy given by someone like that might sound like this. I think the joke might be better if the person at the front of the room was posting his comments online/tweeting them and the funeral attendees were reading them on their phones (e.g. Guy at front is doing a Yelp review of the life of the deceased).
“might *not* really know much about you personally” I meant to say.
I felt the way Treesong did; those were all laudable things to say about someone, transformed from early concepts to late 20th century. (Of course, sharing has only been laudable if you were sharing your own, say, tools, and not your neighbor’s :-) ).
Sometimes, humor is just giving a reason for the reader to feel the joy and comfort of knowing that there are still good people.
Nobody knows anything about him other than his online persona?
These are all characteristics of people who were cutting-edge nerds in the late 80s and early 90s, which is thirty years ago now, but which have been rendered nearly irrelevant by changes since then.
It’s like saying “He loved the Andrews Sisters and Lawrence Welk”.
The deceased is an old man who became calcified in time.
I know because I am one, and once thought all these were burning issues.
I thought the same as notlob too. Everything mentioned is all about what a sharing person he was. And yet he has a closed casket funeral. What’s up with that?
I guess, one issue in how you react to this is whether you think these are reasonable things to say at a eulogy. I mean, to me, these DO seem like things you might say about a person. A lot of what you want to say in a eulogy isn’t particularly good, (despite the etymology of “eulogy”) or particularly bad — it’s just, y’know, stuff about the person as a person who was distinct from other people and had an actual existence on Earth.
To me, these are all things that you might say about a person to explain to people who they were, how they interacted with the world, and what that person meant to other people. They’re not necessarily good, not necessarily bad, but are, at least, personal. And so, this doesn’t strike me as the least bit funny. It’s just a normal eulogy.
But perhaps Mike Baldwin feels differently? Perhaps Mike Baldwin is saying that there is something pathetic about people for whom these are relevant facts? Perhaps we are supposed to be laughing at the person who cares about stuff like that?
So there was an episode of Maude where they were at a funeral. And the officiator says he will play a piece of music that was particularly meaningful to the departed…. and it was “The Girl from Ipanema” Ha-ha??? The joke being that was a poppy and not deep song.
And there was the opening scene in “The Big Chill” where a person says she’ll play something meaningful… and it was The Rolling Stones “You can’t always get what you want” Ha-ha??? The joke being that the song as popular and trendy but boomers being entrenched in modern pop culture (and modern pop culture only) find it deep.
This is similar. Social media is shallow and trendy and it’s a wasted life to focus on it.
…. except it’s mean. And all these “trendy” things are now obiquitous and not jarring. And if they are shallow… well, some times a bit of polite shallowness is appropriate. THere are worse things.
” And yet he has a closed casket funeral. What’s up with that?”
But despite what movies and television will have you believe the vast majority of funerals are closed casket. I’ve never been to an open one and neither have half the people I know. And I’ve never met *any*one who said the want one or like them (to the extend that one can “like” a funeral). If this was the joke it should have gone the other way and have an open casket with the body in his underwear.
I’ve been to several “open casket” funerals, including several relatives (my mother among them) and more recently that of a former lover.
Creepy at the time and even creepier in retrospect. I would much prefer closed casket (and even more prefer ‘here’s the urn with his/her ashes’).
Not sure I understand the list. For the most part, only those in the software-development community have a real grasp of the concept of open-source software, and by and large they strongly support it. Which is sort of the opposite of their opinion of social media these days. So perhaps the joke could be that his tech opinions are… random? But that would only register with a small audience.
CaroZ: you bring up a very valid point; I also think you are giving the cartoonist way too much credit to believe he was aware of the differences you raise — I think he just threw in whatever geeky techy concepts he could come up with; the equivalent of technobabble, really.
@larK Perhaps not just random, though still uninformed — both “sharing” and “open” sound like he must have been a nice guy.
Hmmm… I guess most other people have connections and upbringings where describing someone as being religious is considered “nice”.
I think Mitch4 has it best. A pun on generic nice words for a eulogy open/sharing/religious but in computer terms because that’s the trendy wild cwazy world we live in.
Coincidentally, I read today, ‘Throw me to the wolves’, by Patrick McGuinness, about fiction vs fact, social media vs reality, told in fictional form as a murder mystery AND including some great musings and philosophy, all rolled into one book. I highly recommend it.
Used to go with Robert to funerals (and occasionally a wedding) related to his staff at work. AME funeral, Seventh Day Adventist, and Catholic are open casket. Jewish not. And Robert is not an “open casket” type of person.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Totally unfunny to me, so maybe I’m missing it too.
The best I can figure is that the joke is the deceased’s virtues were all social media-themed, and maybe that social media have at this funeral the exalted status of religion. So then it is yet another hyperbole on “culture has too much new stuff in it nowadays.”
But I don’t see any visual gags that have anything to do with that – maybe the eulogizer could have had a google glass or a turtleneck or some other marker of trendyness/obnoxiousness? The deceased’s face could be being displayed on a screen, maybe with some kind of snapchat filter? There could have been selfie sticks or hashtags? Whatever you do, don’t make the eulogizer a frumpy-looking old man though.
Is it just a comment that he’s wasted his life? My guess is that speakers at funerals (I’ve never been to one) reflect on the deceased accomplishments, but in today’s society, people don’t do much but sit around and play on their computers/phones. Try as he might, the speaker can’t think of anything to say other than activities related to computers and phones.
Kind of amusing, with a message: Do you want to end up like him?
Open life, closed casket
Could be that he never left his house, only meeting people through social media. And therefore doesn’t want to show his face so it needs to be a closed casket.
Or even that his entire persona online is made up so his actual face won’t match his virtual face, so it needs to be closed to hide that.
Maybe it’s just that no matter what you do and think and when you think and do it, you still end up dead. Modern people who spend their lives online are just as mortal as older people who spent their lives believing in capitalism, champagne and hiking in the hills, or feudalism, God and digging in their gardens. Maybe more bitterly ironic would be the funeral of someone who believed in calorie restriction and intermittent body-freezing, took his 200 daily supplements religiously and was a keen attender of life extension conference RAADFest, with the eulogy given by visually-interesting Aubrey de Grey, though that would not be particularly rib-tickling either.
I didn’t take it as negative; for a totally online person, those are good things to say about him.
I think it’s the modern-day equivalent of “He was a nice guy, kind and generous, and everyone liked him.”
He believed in sharing the gospel and open prayer; he loved socializing and attended Bible study religiously… –> expected, boring;
open source, file sharing, social media –> whoa! What was THAT? In a FUNERAL? Crazy, man! Pure Comedy GOLD!
The eulogist never actually met the deceased IRL. He’s speaking to the only aspects of the guy’s life that he encountered.
Is it a joke about caatching a virus?
I think larK has it. “He believed in” is a common phrase at funerals, as is the idea of the decedent doing something “religiously”. This eulogist puts in unexpected alternatives.
I think Notlob has it . . . that’s how *I* interpreted it, anyway.
I think it’s a bit of Mitch4, beckoningchasm, Treesong and Bekki all rolled together. Typically one’s closest friend might give a eulogy. These days it’s possible that your closest friend would be someone who you met online and who might really know much about you personally. The beginning of a eulogy given by someone like that might sound like this. I think the joke might be better if the person at the front of the room was posting his comments online/tweeting them and the funeral attendees were reading them on their phones (e.g. Guy at front is doing a Yelp review of the life of the deceased).
“might *not* really know much about you personally” I meant to say.
I felt the way Treesong did; those were all laudable things to say about someone, transformed from early concepts to late 20th century. (Of course, sharing has only been laudable if you were sharing your own, say, tools, and not your neighbor’s :-) ).
Sometimes, humor is just giving a reason for the reader to feel the joy and comfort of knowing that there are still good people.
Nobody knows anything about him other than his online persona?
These are all characteristics of people who were cutting-edge nerds in the late 80s and early 90s, which is thirty years ago now, but which have been rendered nearly irrelevant by changes since then.
It’s like saying “He loved the Andrews Sisters and Lawrence Welk”.
The deceased is an old man who became calcified in time.
I know because I am one, and once thought all these were burning issues.
It’s not a strong joke.
I went to the original and nobody got it then, either.
https://www.gocomics.com/cornered/2018/06/15
I thought the same as notlob too. Everything mentioned is all about what a sharing person he was. And yet he has a closed casket funeral. What’s up with that?
I guess, one issue in how you react to this is whether you think these are reasonable things to say at a eulogy. I mean, to me, these DO seem like things you might say about a person. A lot of what you want to say in a eulogy isn’t particularly good, (despite the etymology of “eulogy”) or particularly bad — it’s just, y’know, stuff about the person as a person who was distinct from other people and had an actual existence on Earth.
To me, these are all things that you might say about a person to explain to people who they were, how they interacted with the world, and what that person meant to other people. They’re not necessarily good, not necessarily bad, but are, at least, personal. And so, this doesn’t strike me as the least bit funny. It’s just a normal eulogy.
But perhaps Mike Baldwin feels differently? Perhaps Mike Baldwin is saying that there is something pathetic about people for whom these are relevant facts? Perhaps we are supposed to be laughing at the person who cares about stuff like that?
So there was an episode of Maude where they were at a funeral. And the officiator says he will play a piece of music that was particularly meaningful to the departed…. and it was “The Girl from Ipanema” Ha-ha??? The joke being that was a poppy and not deep song.
And there was the opening scene in “The Big Chill” where a person says she’ll play something meaningful… and it was The Rolling Stones “You can’t always get what you want” Ha-ha??? The joke being that the song as popular and trendy but boomers being entrenched in modern pop culture (and modern pop culture only) find it deep.
This is similar. Social media is shallow and trendy and it’s a wasted life to focus on it.
…. except it’s mean. And all these “trendy” things are now obiquitous and not jarring. And if they are shallow… well, some times a bit of polite shallowness is appropriate. THere are worse things.
” And yet he has a closed casket funeral. What’s up with that?”
But despite what movies and television will have you believe the vast majority of funerals are closed casket. I’ve never been to an open one and neither have half the people I know. And I’ve never met *any*one who said the want one or like them (to the extend that one can “like” a funeral). If this was the joke it should have gone the other way and have an open casket with the body in his underwear.
I’ve been to several “open casket” funerals, including several relatives (my mother among them) and more recently that of a former lover.
Creepy at the time and even creepier in retrospect. I would much prefer closed casket (and even more prefer ‘here’s the urn with his/her ashes’).
Not sure I understand the list. For the most part, only those in the software-development community have a real grasp of the concept of open-source software, and by and large they strongly support it. Which is sort of the opposite of their opinion of social media these days. So perhaps the joke could be that his tech opinions are… random? But that would only register with a small audience.
CaroZ: you bring up a very valid point; I also think you are giving the cartoonist way too much credit to believe he was aware of the differences you raise — I think he just threw in whatever geeky techy concepts he could come up with; the equivalent of technobabble, really.
@larK Perhaps not just random, though still uninformed — both “sharing” and “open” sound like he must have been a nice guy.
Hmmm… I guess most other people have connections and upbringings where describing someone as being religious is considered “nice”.
I think Mitch4 has it best. A pun on generic nice words for a eulogy open/sharing/religious but in computer terms because that’s the trendy wild cwazy world we live in.
Coincidentally, I read today, ‘Throw me to the wolves’, by Patrick McGuinness, about fiction vs fact, social media vs reality, told in fictional form as a murder mystery AND including some great musings and philosophy, all rolled into one book. I highly recommend it.
Used to go with Robert to funerals (and occasionally a wedding) related to his staff at work. AME funeral, Seventh Day Adventist, and Catholic are open casket. Jewish not. And Robert is not an “open casket” type of person.