6 Comments

1. 

   I don’t think it’s mocking ideas from readers. It seems wrong for Tundra. Some other comic might do that.

   OTOH, a search for Aldo Bruns in California comes up empty.

   It might be that he thought it wasn’t a good comic, but didn’t have any good ones in mind. So he ran it but blamed it on a mythical reader’s idea.

2. 

   I also don’t think it’s mocking using ideas from readers. For one thing, there’s nothing unusual about the comic that makes it look like a parody. It’s not the greatest joke, but it’s not bad in some odd way that makes it look like a parody. In fact, it looks like a very common design pattern for this comic: “What if we take a normal observation or comment that someone might make, but swap in an animal saying it?”

   For another thing, if it’s mocking the idea, it’s pretty hard-core to actually put your website up and encourage people to send in more ideas, when you have no intention of using them.

3. 

   For a tundra joke it’s a lot better than average isn’t it? I actually thought it was mildly funny.

   I’m actually not being snarky or sarcastic. I seriously do think this joke is quite significantly better than the average Tundra joke.

4. 

   Of course, the comment is coming from a beaver. A dam builder and all.

5. 

   I agree with everyone else that this is (unfortunately) not a sarcastic hit on crowd sourcing. I need to clarify that I have absolutely no objection against cartoonists using gags submitted by someone else. It’s the sycophantic “credit” lines, and misusing the cartoon as a billboard to garner more submissions that I find offensive.

6. 

   There’s a subreddit for people who make self-applicable commentary without quite realizing it’s self-applicable: /r/selfawarewolves.