Something that I find delightful about this project is that Jim Davis approves of it!
From Wikipedia: "Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, approved of the project, and an official Garfield book (also called Garfield Minus Garfield) was published by his company. It was mainly edited comics by Walsh, with some comics contributed by Davis."
IME while clear two-way communication might be impossible [1], talking to your pet, cat or dog or any other mammal [2] does deepen the mutual bond and provides some communication framework - not saying that your cat will definitely understand what does it mean when you say "Garfield, fetch me that yellow slipper", let alone actually obey, but it will, over time, learn to recognize tone, sounds, and even context, and will also try to vocalize back, which may turn into patterns you start to recognize. So yes, it pays to talk directly to your pet.
Though that's not as strange as talking to your plants that seems to help the plants somehow.
[1] let's call it super rare because one in a trillion trillion is still not zero
[2] smarter birds too, can't say much about reptiles beyond a pond turtle really bonded with my brother
There are a million cat & dog owners out there using Talking Buttons, borrowed from nonverbal human assistive communications. Mostly to make funny Tiktok videos, to be fair. It's rarely clear what is random, what is Clever Hans training, and what is direct operant conditioning.
Not only do I really l talk to my cats, but they talk to me too! We're about equal in our abilities to understand each other; sometimes one of my cats might just run around for a bit yell-meowing and it's not clear why, but I'm sure they feel the same way when I occasionally get upset at things. Other times, like when one of them starts whine-meowing when I'm putting their wet food into a bowl, I know _exactly_ what's she's saying even if it doesn't actually cause me to get it done any faster.
Not only that, but the meows get more frantic as I'm walking towards the spot where the dish goes. She needs to be absolutely certain that there's no chance I'll change my mind two steps before getting there!
yes to all of this. i actually think my cat thinks i am dumb, because she often mimes out the thing that she wants me to do in increasingly unsubtle ways as she gets more and more frustrated as i don't get it-- like she is playing charades and i'm the useless teammate that isn't getting it (which i find absolutely hilarious every time, even if it is often something that is objectively annoying were i to forget that she is a cat and not a human). she also has an astonishing "vocabulary" of very different meow... tambres?... that it is very hard for me to think don't have _some_ purpose-- if they didn't, why wouldn't she just make the same or similar noises every time?
I don't think he's said, but he has written some shockingly creepy stories himself, like the Halloween special which suggests Jon died or moved out ages ago and Garfield is just hallucinating due to starvation and despair. He claimed he wrote it after a market survey indicating that loneliness is what people fear the most (this is a pattern with Davis - he always cheerfully claims he's just in it for the money whenever someone suggests he has any kind of artistic vision).
Or the one in "Garfield: his 9 lives" where a different incarnation of Garfield goes suddenly feral and kills the elderly woman owning him. Jim Davis didn't draw it, but he did script it!
The conclusion doesn't follow the premise. In fact, precisely the opposite arises from it. People who make things for money tend to be controlling about their thing, as it's the thing that makes them money. Others controlling the thing is a potential threat against the money-making capability of the thing, so they usually try to quell it. To not just let a remix be, but actively endorse it, is a notable and unusual event.
It doesn’t really surprise me, but I’m not sure it changes how I feel about it.
My family were huge Garfield fans growing up and had a bunch of the books (one in German). The side characters were fun Odie, Lyman, the overly adorable kitten (Nermal), some relatives that came from a farm or something.
The “worst” thing was at some point it did seem like Davis was cranking them out for the newspaper without some of the care (though it might be I overdosed and became kind of sick of them). The other characters disappeared or became infrequent.
Garfield always struck me as having exhausted all available novelty almost immediately. Simpsons at least was able to do 5-10 seasons (depending on your taste), but there is only so much one can do with 3 panels and a handful of characters eh?
I think he kept his slot more out of nostalgia and risk adversion from the papers than anything else.
It's still notable that Jim Davis has that level of chill about it. Someone with a mercenary capitalist attitude toward their work can be just as much a control freak as Bill Watterson. (Not being judgmental; Watterson's position is completely valid too.)
I don't think the concern is that Davis "did it for the money", and that's not a fair representation of why some of us mock Jim Davis.
I don't think anybody is arguing comic authors shouldn't make money out of their work.
The concern is that Garfield is the product of conscious market research and not whatever we imagine a comic artist goes through when creating their comics. You can dismiss this as some ridiculous search for "purity", but wouldn't you say most people imagine Watterson, Schultz, etc. went through a process more or less "I liked these other cartoons, and wouldn't it be cool to make something about <idea>/<childhood memories>/<something that inspired me>/<something that worries me>" vs "hey, let's make money, what kind of character would make me the most money?".
> The concern is that Garfield is the product of conscious market research and not whatever we imagine a comic artist goes through when creating their comics.
Jim Davis has consistently said this, but really, take a look at strip #1. It's not funny, it's not cute. It's a cruel joke at his own expense - I don't think it's overanalyzing it to say that the cartoonist loser Jon is a stand-in for Jim. If this was a product of market research, it was the worst market research ever!
It's possible Davis overstated his claim for effect. There are definitely elements of Jon as an author stand-in.
As an aside, over here (Argentina) we have an extremely marketing-oriented and bad comics author, Nik, who "invented" a cartoon cat vaguely similar to Garfield called "Gaturro", which started as a copy of Garfield with a slightly more political bent. It's as bad and bland as Garfield, without any trace of originality.
As Fight Club would have it, "a copy of a copy of a copy...".
I'm sure some of my vitriol against Garfield is influenced by my dislike of Nik and his Gaturro.
Art without money is madness. Money without art dies on the vine in obscurity or pays its dues in criticism through time.
99% of everything commercially produced is somewhere between these and, if made by a person, part of a cannon, a body of work that grows and changes as the person does.
Just because an artist invites us into their mind does not mean we don’t owe them the respect we’d give a stranger. At least that’s how I look at it.
We don't owe Jim Davis any kind of respect as an artist. He must earn it.
In the scale you're describing, he leans heavily towards making money and away from the art part. It's OK to feel scorn for this. It's also OK to respect it, but that's not me.
> Art without money is madness
This isn't what my comment was about, but I cannot refrain from answering: art can exist perfectly well without money. I'd say the vast majority of art humanity produces is not related to money at all. It is definitely not madness without money.
> Money without art dies on the vine in obscurity or pays its dues in criticism through time.
Sadly, I don't think the former is true, and I don't think the latter matters enough.
I've created so much art in my spare time, for the sheer love and joy of it. It's done for me, but I've shared it with friends and family and they've also greatly appreciated it, and sometimes participated in it with me with splendid results. Money has never entered the equation.
Am I missing something, or am I correct in my reading of that statement? If I'm correct, I don't mean to be judgemental, but that's a horribly disappointing view of art, whatever the medium, and I'm sorry that you feel that way.
Would you go and dig rocks out of a mountain and refine them into pure ore just because?
We are social animals. Art is storytelling. It has many utilities, but it is primarily education and entertainment.
A modern version of the cave painting is to distill complex and uncomfortable truths about the world for those who wish to thrive in a society built on lies.
If you want to go dig shiny rocks from the mountain at great personal risk to your mental and physical health for no benefit to society you are probably sick. If it heals you, that's its utility.
But if you find you're good at it and you want to use this skill for its intended purpose, you aught to be getting paid for it.
As someone who is into producing visual and musical art for no monetary benefit, and happens to do a lot of backpacking and is very into the geology of the areas I backpack in, yes. I would absolutely find great value in something akin to trekking into remote, hard to reach areas just to see some rocks shaped by ancient glaciers.
If that all makes me "sick", then fuck yeah, proud to be mentally ill. It's truly sad that doing something for pleasure, education, love, fascination and reverence (like being fascinated about how our planet shaped itself, or learning to play the guitar because you love music and think it's fun) is viewed as "mad" or "sick" if there isn't some kind of monetary return. YMMV indeed, but money is not everything.
What's sick, in my eyes, is only being able to view things through the lens of monetary value.
Getting together with your friends and playing/creating music together, with/for yourselves, and for no financial gain is of tremendous value, for instance.
Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
I'm sure it impugns many of the classics (and later), not only Garfield! In my mind, it does impugn He-Man, G.I. Joe, etc. YMMV, of course.
> Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
There was a lot of artistry in the Looney Toons, the artists were both doing it for the money (of course) but also out of love for cartoons and they had ideas about them. It wasn't pure cold hearted market research. They didn't go "what would sell more stuffed toys, a pig or a rabbit?".
There must have been some of this too, of course, but have you read memories or articles about Tex Avery and other people involved? They truly cared about their craft. They had ideas about what they wanted to achieve, and it wasn't just "make money".
Good points, and to be honest I love the older, meaner cartoons. But cute Mickey and cute p-p-p-Porky differed from their originals for the same reason as the “Garfield is a lasagna” joke stopped making visual sense.
The internet was never all goofy shit like this. The launch date of G-G is "February 13, 2008", and we already had the creepy Facebook, deplorable shit like jailbait was in full swing, gore was not just popular, it was old news. Internet advertising was already very toxic for many years, and its surveillance capabilities were also ever-increasing. Not to mention, the Eternal September lasted for 15 years now.
My point is, it changed, yes, but "The Internet" was always shit, and you can also always find good fun, as always. You can turn off the doom, and enjoy a good never-ending scroll of a myriad of fantastic hobbies and people sharing their human experience. It takes effort, just like it did back then.
We had "Altavista" and for a very short time it was OK, but then quickly decended into a ad-ridden "portal" This was 1997 or so.
The web was full of popups, and then popunders. It was not uncommon to close your browser in the computer-room, then have to close 20 popups that kept coming back. Some of which showing straight out porn. At least scams like viagra, "buy gold online" or "download more memory" malware.
Before Google, it was merely undoable to find anything useful between all the banners, gifs, "only readable in netscape" search-engines.
Before Mozilla/Firefox, popups made it almost impossible to browse the web for longer than half an hour before the browser crashed or the computer locked up.
Chat was insecure, scammers, groomers, malware injection, mitm was everywhere. There was no privacy.
Forums, BBSes and NNTP were full of "trolls" before this term was even known. Flamewars, flamebait, and again, scammers, groomers and malware everywhere.
I do have fond memories of this time. But also know these memories are distorted. It was a dark forest already.
The main difference, I believe, was that the majority of internet users back then were smart - mostly western - educated or young people. I.e. the "tech literate" folks. Those who know how to deal with malware, scams, groomers, privacy, hackers. Those who know how to navigate around popup-bombs, redirect-loops, illegal-content and criminals.
But the bad stuff was there from the early days. Today, the "bad stuff" has shifted, from criminals into monopolized big-tech tapping our attention and data, but it has always been there, this dark side.
I think this is a sentiment missing from lots of the rose glasses back watching. It took effort to find all these fun things, it still takes effort to find fun things. The only difference is that now the effort floor is in the icy pits of hell and its so easy to slide all the way down there. Things were different but you still had to work for it. Sites were smaller and there were less people, those things still exist, probably more so, there's just an ocean now. We have to learn how to swim maybe but we can still cross.
And also, very different things exist. So yes, it's hard to find the "same" things or "similar" things, but if one adapts a bit to more up to date trends, the horizon broadens a lot. For example, there is much less life on traditional forums now, but much more life on YouTube.
we had facebook, but things weren't centralized to only 5 websites yet. You are right though, there's a lot about the old internet that was better, but there was also stuff that was worse. It was more untamed perhaps. I certainly don't miss rotten.com or goatse or the absolute cesspit reddit was at the time (as you mention). We tend to forget about this and just think about the good, like individual weird blogs hosted on their own quirky websites actually being able to find an audience (which still exist to some extent but not to the same degree at all). Still, I think "the internet was always shit" is too cynical of a take. Some parts of the internet were always shit. Some of it changed for the better, some for the worse.
in the case of reddit I do. We don't need to return to the quasi-CP and complaining about SJWs era. I'll take a censored ad-ridden site with a somewhat less toxic userbase, though of course as always it would be best to have the best of both worlds. Old reddit was just way too unwilling to take out the trash and instead let it fester.
What you described in your first paragraph is still the old internet and it was way better than the post-truth/bot/AI hellscape of today. I’ll take “creepy” stuff over a complete separation from reality any day.
Garfield Minus Garfield is an iteration of a trend on SA and FYAD of editing Garfield comics by re-ordering panels, removing panels, removing characters/dialogue/etc, and shuffling panels from other Garfield strips to make humorous and/or unsettling mashups.
That is to say the trend predates the 2008 launch of the site.
Ok, maybe a more accurate statement would be that the ratio of goofy shit to angst-generating bullshit was much higher in 2008. Maybe it was 70/30 in favor of goofy shit and now it's 1/99 in favor of bullshit. We had Facebook and Twitter back then, but neither had been weaponized against us yet. Both had a very different flavor than they have today.
Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope.
Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope.
Getting malware just for existing? Early software firewalls that burned CPU cycles/crashed your PC? That were the only option because hardware firewalls were stupid expensive and not at all practical for residential use? Nope.
Norton Antivirus? ABSOLUTELY NOPE.
Blue screens when you looked at IE or Navigator the wrong way? Nope.
Flash? Lol, nope.
WAP? The 2004 kind? Lol, hell nope.
"This page is best viewed on Internet Explorer", i.e. IE4/5/6 or it's basically unusable? Nope.
Having to actually go seven or eight o's into the Gooooooooooooooooooooooogle footer to find what you were looking for? Def nope.
Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform.
You have to work hard to get hit with a virus these days, especially on iOS/macOS or Linux, though it's much harder on Android these days too. Also, I loved wasting my life on /., but Reddit is so much better, even after the API-pocalyse.
I definitely miss open messaging platforms though. AIM for life.
The old internet had something today's internet lacks: a justified belief that the future would be better. Things were new and exciting, and you saw opportunities and rapid improvements everywhere. Today it's just governments and megacorporations, and bureaucracy upon endless bureaucracy.
> Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope.
> Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope.
I was there too, and realized that these sort of reductions in speed made one far more mindful of what one was doing
> Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform
This too is particularly debatable. Applications are thin wrappers around web browsers, there are constant annoyances (want to receive notifications for this webpage? Not now? We’ll ask you later.) I bet if I pulled someone from 2005 they’d look at a lot of things on a current website and see malware. And is it really more cross platform when we’ve achieved that by having less platforms?
I'm not sure anything on your list is even about "the internet", as opposed to other tech around it. Do you know what people mean when they say "the internet?".
Absolutely. I remember being about 14 or 15 years old, reading old .txt files about, like- how to build blue boxes and experiment with the phone system, C programming tutorials for MUDs that had peaked in the late 90s, IRC archives (even though IRC was still around, I had no way of finding my way to good channels), and getting this distinct sense that I had just missed something really cool, and was stuck with an Internet that had already passed its prime.
>Remember when the internet was all goofy shit like this instead of algorithmically optimized social media angst?
I first accessed the internet in 1998 through school. I still like it more how it was in those days. Most people didn't care about the Internet so the people lurking the Internet had a particular interest in it or were technically inclined.
Once some guys discovered they can make tons of money through the Internet, those good times are over.
It's like you travel to a beautiful place which is not popular. Once it starts becoming a major tourist attraction, it will be ruined for good in 20 years.
there was still angst then, it just was more targeted in single directions, not like now where the angst is aimlessly directed at society, sponsored by squarespace
If you had to encapsulate the vibe, it would be "people just post shit to see if other people are as weird as they are."
It was a whole era, folks. And I don't mean "does anyone else" Reddit crap that is absurdly naive. This was way more before and way more naive than that. You didn't have any expectation that you were normal (even if you were weird). You just did it to gauge how fucking weird you were.
All the big social media platforms were around when this started. The dominance wasn't in full swing yet but it only took a few years for vbulletin and everything else to dwindle.
There's a great YouTube documentary that ties all the Garfield subculture together, and it's absolutely worth your time: What The Internet Did To Garfield
And in the second series there's a video of Garfield and Odie making a home video. They created YouTube channels for the in-video characters with actual character relevant content, including that home video, 5 years before the second series was posted. Absolutely amazing work, hats off!
I think Lex also has recycled some questions / topics across several guests. I'd enjoy a virtual panel supercut where we see only all the guests' responses to the same prompt.
Tim Ferriss minus Tim has long been a dream of mine
After discovering Dwarkesh, Lex and Rogan have struck me as tragic waste. At worst a laundromat for psychopathic distortions, and at best a lazy unguided exhibition of the guest’s choosing.
I love how this turns the comic into psychological horror.
Super Eyepatch Wolf actually did a really interesting analysis about how Garfield entered the horror genera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2C5R3FOWdE. I click on the video randomly out of curiosity, but I got really sucked in.
Maybe the Jan 27 entry, but the Nov 03 entry reads much the same if Garfield is present or not. What I mean is, the strips that focus on Jon talking to Garfield always had this element.
Remember, Jon is already talking to a cat who he assumes can't understand him & knows can't talk back. He might as well be talking into the abyss. Only we can read Garfield's inner monologue. Jon's actions are sometimes presupposed by Garfield's whims. This premise is already the basis of some horror or otherwise unsetting fiction.
If Garfield is there or not, if we focus on Jon as the main character of the strip, we might have to do some introspection, whether it's about expecting to have a conversation with cat as if he were your son, that our lives are as boring as his, etc. These are scary thoughts! Garfield's presence serves as a humorous distraction and allows us to forget these thoughts and laugh at Jon, even if briefly. In the same way, Freddy Krueger delivers funny one liners to break up the dread of realizing we're in some sort of living nightmare like people of Elm Street...
> Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.
Did not think I would be relating to Jon on a Thursday morning.
Its also pretty interesting given that the original title for the comic that would become Garfield was simply "Jon"
There was a small YouTube documentary about finding the old comics in libraries and scanning them in. I the description of the video there is links to scans of all the ones they were able to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxiwjaUSYJM
This is the first thing that came to mind for me as well. Have always loved how mean everyone seems without the canned laughter to tell us "hey, this is funny!"
You won't find me defending The Big Bang Theory, but it's worth noting a lot of actually funny television would have this kind of dead energy if you removed the laugh track, because it's both written for that environment and paced and acted for the audience reaction breaks.
True, the awkward long pauses between each beat are there specifically for the laugh track and if they had gone without the track they wouldn't include the pauses either.
I don't think this came about by randomly deciding to take a character out of a strip. The creators of G-G recognized that Jon is a depressing character who has these one way discussions with Garfield. Garfield's inner monologue (that Jon is not aware of) provides all the humor, mostly at Jon's expense. Take the humor out of the comic, and you're left with the depression. It goes straight from a comedy to a tragedy.
This is what's interesting about G-G. The tragedy was always there. We kinda knew the tragedy was always there, but we'd rather laugh at Jon with Garfield than commiserate with Jon.
Taking superheroes out of a random movie would lead to silliness, yes, but nothing poignant.
Love GMG, glad to see it at number one here. It's really quite amazing how much funnier and yet more profound it is without Garfield. If you like this, you might also enjoy Nietzsche Family Circus: https://www.nietzschefamilycircus.com/
I used to have one stuck to the door of my doom room. No one laughed. :(
The derivative I also like, and don't see it here is the markov chain garfield - from back when markov chains were the bee's knees in text generation. The generator is fed by existing garfield comic text, and the generated text is superimposed to a template of existing comics. It might take a few refreshes, but I always manage to amuse myself with the absurdity that it spits out.
What's missed from the popular take on GMG is that it's not always depressing. Sometimes Jon finds joy in mundane things that Garfield isn't there to damper.
I think the most surprising thing about it is that it's good. Not just good as a curiosity, but actually good, in ways and to a degree that would be pretty hard to replicate if you set out to create it from scratch, without existing Garfield strips to lean on.
I did! And it started to make me wonder whether the same shenanigans could be applied to make any interesting Calvin minus Hobbes strips ... but my guess is it wouldn't turn out quite so dark
I think (worry?) that stumbleupon rearranged my brain much like drugs or alcohol rearrange the brain of an addict. Once you’ve been there, you can’t go back to being able to have “just one” beer or, in my case, “just one click” on a link aggregator. I think the novelty-seeking part of my brain was always there, but SU helped pathologize it. I found some cool stuff, but I kind of wish it had never existed.
HN has a gentle enough design that I can enjoy it without it sucking me in, but I make a conscious choice to avoid Reddit, twitter, et al.
Eh, if you hadn't found Stumbleupon then you would have experienced the same effect from one of the zillion other competitors in the attention economy.
You're right that this kind of novelty-seeking content has a profound impact on the brain. It's really interesting to see finally see longitudinal research, plus research on screens/novelty on child development (search for $thing + "psychosocial development").
One of the most encouraging thing I've taken away is that neutral pathways are still quite plastic well into adulthood.
For example, here's an experiment to try if you wake up and scroll in bed. After you do your morning routine, jot down a mood score (-1 feeling crummy, 0 meh neutral, +1 feeling good). You can do this for a week or two if you want to collect control data. Then, force yourself to get out of bed without looking at your phone (buy an alarm if you have too). You should see changes in your mood log within a week. Sleep regulates/replenishes dopamine levels, and scrolling through a dopamine wonderland first thing in the AM can result in dopamine dysregulation for the rest of the day. Try it!
It's so strange that StumbleUpon died but TikTok thrives today.
TikTok's algorithm is based entirely on when you click the Like button and when you linger on a video, exactly like StumbleUpon's algorithm. StumbleUpon even had a video product, StumbleVideo, that was basically just TikTok.
But, in 2018, when StumbleUpon shut down and sold their assets to Mix, the prevailing wisdom was that people didn't want to use StumbleUpon because they wanted to use Reddit and Facebook, to follow curated feeds of links, instead of random links that other people like.
If that wisdom were true, TikTok should have failed too, because TikTok just gives you "random stuff that similar people like," just like StumbleUpon.
I guess it just goes to show that there's no accounting for the rise and fall of social media apps/networks.
TikTok was mobile device centric, and the people that glommed onto it quickest were young mobile users. StumbleUpon was just a website that the "olds" used. Maybe I'm wrong, but did SU have a mobile app? If so, they did a very bad job of getting it into the hands of those that TikTok did.
StumbleVideo was exactly like TikTok, including focusing on mobile. The only material difference is that StumbleVideo's videos were landscape instead of portrait, and they had a "Stumble" button instead of swiping.
(Maybe it's the swiping gesture? Maybe the gesture is more comfortable in portrait?? But it's hard to see why that would make or break a video app like this…)
I used SumbleUpon but not their video service, but some differentiating factors is TikTok specializes specifically short form video content in an environment where creators are rewarded and incentivized to make addictive content.
I signed up a while back and got an invite today so things are happening. It'll be interesting to see what a Digg looks like on today's internet. Things are much less innocent these days.
I so fondly remember StumbleUpin, but I’m trying to recall what was so amazing about it. Was it just something of a novelty at the time or the autocuration of the decentralized web would still be relevant?
it seems like a few social media sites took over from the random delight of finding someone’s little weblog or side project.
I hear they’re trying to buy it back and restart with their uber gains
It wasn't completely random or completely (in the current social media sense) algorithmic: There was a settings page where you could pick among dozens of broad topics you were actually interested in and it would only give you results people categorized under it.
When Garfield Minus Garfield was being published regularly, I was a regular. I couldn't get enough of its dark, sardonic undermining of the comic aesthetic.
There's a site called cloudhiker that kinda does the same thing. The idea is the same but there was something special about early days Stumbleupon. Idk if we'll ever recapture that.
Loved stumbleupon! I think when I realized that I was no longer stumbling upon anything interesting was the leading indicator of the long downhill trend of interesting content on the web.
I definitely recommend this one, it has greater longevity due to the wider number of schticks the author is able to engage in over the different comics.
Clicking on the image on this post leads to a wild NSFW 404 page. Not sure I was expecting to get an extremely sus, probably illegal, asian porn site. Wth
This makes me contemplate how different people’s experiences will alter their perception of this project. Having never read Garfield, the man in these comics comes off as unhinged. But, I imagine, if I was familiar with the source material, I might mentally insert the missing parts and compare this with that in my head.
As someone who has casually read Garfield from time to time, I'd describe Jon (the man in the comic) as a lovable loser. A lot of the jokes in the comics are at his expense.
The concept would be more interesting and realistic if they removed only Garfield's thought bubbles (after all, Jon can't hear Garfield's thoughts anyway) but still left Garfield in the comic.
Yeah I never liked this one. There's that one other that replaces Garfield with a slightly realistic cat (without thought bubble of course) and I prefer that.
The somethingawful forums started this with garfield in the comic before "Garfield minus Garfield" was a thing. I agree that the original gag is much better.
My favorite type of humor is the absurd non-sequitur. The more incongruous the better. Like when out of no where someone asks, "If you could trade your shadow for a parrot, would you do it?" Or, "What's your opinion on invisible bicycles?"
I find the dating on this website confusing. It says Jan 27 AND Nov 03, and when I click previous comic, in order it goes: Feb 04 / Jun 14, May 31, Oct 13, Aug 02, Jan 08.....I'm so confused.
A. Why are there 2 comics per day?
B. Why are the dates seemingly random?
This is great to see on the front page! I include it as part of the newsletter I run on the best/nostalgic side of the internet so it’s cool to see it resonating with people here for that reason.
I used to have a small bookmark collection of "anti-comics", and this was on the list. Others included Dinosaur Comics, Partially Clips, and Pokey the Penguin.
> I mean this one is just reality. I’m not sure Garfield is a figment of Jon’s imagination
It's not reality. Hobbes it's not unambiguously stated to be a figment of Calvin's imagination either.
That's a fine interpretation but it's not canonical. Watterson wanted the ambiguity, as Wikipedia mentions (sorry, I don't have the interview with the direct quote where Watterson states this):
> "[Watteron] gave an example of this in discussing his opposition to a Hobbes plush toy: that if the essence of Hobbes' nature in the strip is that it remain unresolved whether he is a real tiger or a stuffed toy, then creating a real stuffed toy would only destroy the magic."
Garfield is certainly (meant to be) real, but I've never seen a strip that confirms that Jon can actually hear Garfield's thoughts. I think that's why Garfield minus Garfield works so well.
I feel like removing it removes some noise, but doesn't affect the tone. Story is, the MASH showrunners didn't want a laugh track, but the network insisted, so they used the lowest-fidelity one they could get away with.
They filmed in front of a live audience in a theater and those are real people laughing. It's unsettling because the actors pause between lines until the laughter stops.
Reflexive dismissals of shows with laugh tracks are lazy.
To each their own! When I watch Ross ask how to beat up a woman in the street with eyes bugging out of his head there's a pretty big difference between a laugh track and no laugh track. Just like Garfield comics hit very different when you realize that John is actually talking to himself.
I don't "reflexively dismiss" all shows with a laugh track. Some of Friends is genuinely hilarious. But a lot of it is only funny, to me, when surrounded by others laughing.
This is great, seriously. This is hilarious. Super dark. The theme music changes hugely when Garfield is not there. Getting wind swept Scottish Hebrides vibes and Hans Zimmer soundscapes lol.
Something that I find delightful about this project is that Jim Davis approves of it!
From Wikipedia: "Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, approved of the project, and an official Garfield book (also called Garfield Minus Garfield) was published by his company. It was mainly edited comics by Walsh, with some comics contributed by Davis."
See also "What Jim Davis thinks of G-G" (linked from the bottom of the page):
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/private/61669516/fSymsOGXO...
Careful; the Dan walsh hyperlink goes straight to porn!
Pathological case for link rot.
Sweet, thanks for letting me know!
Welp wish I had read that before clicking on it.
Ah, I See You're a Man of Culture As Well
Worse, it’s not even interesting porn, just banal straight Asian stuff
Did you have to mention that? Now my trousers are messed up.
This is the link that I had in mind when I was writing my comment, thanks so much for posting it here!
Also makes me wonder if people talk to their cats...
IME while clear two-way communication might be impossible [1], talking to your pet, cat or dog or any other mammal [2] does deepen the mutual bond and provides some communication framework - not saying that your cat will definitely understand what does it mean when you say "Garfield, fetch me that yellow slipper", let alone actually obey, but it will, over time, learn to recognize tone, sounds, and even context, and will also try to vocalize back, which may turn into patterns you start to recognize. So yes, it pays to talk directly to your pet.
Though that's not as strange as talking to your plants that seems to help the plants somehow.
[1] let's call it super rare because one in a trillion trillion is still not zero
[2] smarter birds too, can't say much about reptiles beyond a pond turtle really bonded with my brother
There are a million cat & dog owners out there using Talking Buttons, borrowed from nonverbal human assistive communications. Mostly to make funny Tiktok videos, to be fair. It's rarely clear what is random, what is Clever Hans training, and what is direct operant conditioning.
Wait, is there anyone who doesn't talk to cats? I had no idea.
Not only do I really l talk to my cats, but they talk to me too! We're about equal in our abilities to understand each other; sometimes one of my cats might just run around for a bit yell-meowing and it's not clear why, but I'm sure they feel the same way when I occasionally get upset at things. Other times, like when one of them starts whine-meowing when I'm putting their wet food into a bowl, I know _exactly_ what's she's saying even if it doesn't actually cause me to get it done any faster.
Quiet... Chilling... Quiet... I make certain noises as I retrieve the wet food container Meeoooooooooowwwww! races ahead to where the dish is
Not only that, but the meows get more frantic as I'm walking towards the spot where the dish goes. She needs to be absolutely certain that there's no chance I'll change my mind two steps before getting there!
yes to all of this. i actually think my cat thinks i am dumb, because she often mimes out the thing that she wants me to do in increasingly unsubtle ways as she gets more and more frustrated as i don't get it-- like she is playing charades and i'm the useless teammate that isn't getting it (which i find absolutely hilarious every time, even if it is often something that is objectively annoying were i to forget that she is a cat and not a human). she also has an astonishing "vocabulary" of very different meow... tambres?... that it is very hard for me to think don't have _some_ purpose-- if they didn't, why wouldn't she just make the same or similar noises every time?
I 100% talk to mine!
Frankly, people not talking to their cat(s) should be registered as certified sociopath
How does Jim Davis feel about the Garfield Lovecraft stuff?
I don't think he's said, but he has written some shockingly creepy stories himself, like the Halloween special which suggests Jon died or moved out ages ago and Garfield is just hallucinating due to starvation and despair. He claimed he wrote it after a market survey indicating that loneliness is what people fear the most (this is a pattern with Davis - he always cheerfully claims he's just in it for the money whenever someone suggests he has any kind of artistic vision).
Or the one in "Garfield: his 9 lives" where a different incarnation of Garfield goes suddenly feral and kills the elderly woman owning him. Jim Davis didn't draw it, but he did script it!
For the curious:
https://screenrant.com/garfield-his-9-lives-primal-self-horr...
Jim created Garfield for money[1]. It's not surprising that he likes anything that can make him more money, he isn't personally tied to the character.
[1] Garfield was originally created by Davis with the intention to come up with a 'good, marketable character' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield
The conclusion doesn't follow the premise. In fact, precisely the opposite arises from it. People who make things for money tend to be controlling about their thing, as it's the thing that makes them money. Others controlling the thing is a potential threat against the money-making capability of the thing, so they usually try to quell it. To not just let a remix be, but actively endorse it, is a notable and unusual event.
He always cheerfully said this whenever someone suggests he had any kind of artistic vision.
I'd say there are things which suggest he's not entirely sincere about that.
Is "man works for money" something that should surprise anyone?
Newspaper comic artists aren't working for free. They all want money. That's why they work.
It doesn’t really surprise me, but I’m not sure it changes how I feel about it.
My family were huge Garfield fans growing up and had a bunch of the books (one in German). The side characters were fun Odie, Lyman, the overly adorable kitten (Nermal), some relatives that came from a farm or something.
The “worst” thing was at some point it did seem like Davis was cranking them out for the newspaper without some of the care (though it might be I overdosed and became kind of sick of them). The other characters disappeared or became infrequent.
I don’t begrudge him though.
Garfield always struck me as having exhausted all available novelty almost immediately. Simpsons at least was able to do 5-10 seasons (depending on your taste), but there is only so much one can do with 3 panels and a handful of characters eh?
I think he kept his slot more out of nostalgia and risk adversion from the papers than anything else.
It's still notable that Jim Davis has that level of chill about it. Someone with a mercenary capitalist attitude toward their work can be just as much a control freak as Bill Watterson. (Not being judgmental; Watterson's position is completely valid too.)
It honestly seems a little silly to worry about the purity of the intent of an artist.
That Davis did it for the money is just "meh". Most people work for money.
I don't think the concern is that Davis "did it for the money", and that's not a fair representation of why some of us mock Jim Davis.
I don't think anybody is arguing comic authors shouldn't make money out of their work.
The concern is that Garfield is the product of conscious market research and not whatever we imagine a comic artist goes through when creating their comics. You can dismiss this as some ridiculous search for "purity", but wouldn't you say most people imagine Watterson, Schultz, etc. went through a process more or less "I liked these other cartoons, and wouldn't it be cool to make something about <idea>/<childhood memories>/<something that inspired me>/<something that worries me>" vs "hey, let's make money, what kind of character would make me the most money?".
Davis is not the only one, of course.
> The concern is that Garfield is the product of conscious market research and not whatever we imagine a comic artist goes through when creating their comics.
Jim Davis has consistently said this, but really, take a look at strip #1. It's not funny, it's not cute. It's a cruel joke at his own expense - I don't think it's overanalyzing it to say that the cartoonist loser Jon is a stand-in for Jim. If this was a product of market research, it was the worst market research ever!
It's possible Davis overstated his claim for effect. There are definitely elements of Jon as an author stand-in.
As an aside, over here (Argentina) we have an extremely marketing-oriented and bad comics author, Nik, who "invented" a cartoon cat vaguely similar to Garfield called "Gaturro", which started as a copy of Garfield with a slightly more political bent. It's as bad and bland as Garfield, without any trace of originality.
As Fight Club would have it, "a copy of a copy of a copy...".
I'm sure some of my vitriol against Garfield is influenced by my dislike of Nik and his Gaturro.
Art without money is madness. Money without art dies on the vine in obscurity or pays its dues in criticism through time.
99% of everything commercially produced is somewhere between these and, if made by a person, part of a cannon, a body of work that grows and changes as the person does.
Just because an artist invites us into their mind does not mean we don’t owe them the respect we’d give a stranger. At least that’s how I look at it.
We don't owe Jim Davis any kind of respect as an artist. He must earn it.
In the scale you're describing, he leans heavily towards making money and away from the art part. It's OK to feel scorn for this. It's also OK to respect it, but that's not me.
> Art without money is madness
This isn't what my comment was about, but I cannot refrain from answering: art can exist perfectly well without money. I'd say the vast majority of art humanity produces is not related to money at all. It is definitely not madness without money.
> Money without art dies on the vine in obscurity or pays its dues in criticism through time.
Sadly, I don't think the former is true, and I don't think the latter matters enough.
Different pen strokes for different folks.
I used to binge read those meaningless colorful flip books to put myself to sleep.
Benadryl without the side effects.
Is it art? It felt like the smear of endless days I couldn’t escape and it was comforting. It didn’t challenge me, but I treasure it.
Like a child’s fairy tale that never ends and every day was just… ever after
>Art without money is madness.
... wha?
... huh?
I've created so much art in my spare time, for the sheer love and joy of it. It's done for me, but I've shared it with friends and family and they've also greatly appreciated it, and sometimes participated in it with me with splendid results. Money has never entered the equation.
Am I missing something, or am I correct in my reading of that statement? If I'm correct, I don't mean to be judgemental, but that's a horribly disappointing view of art, whatever the medium, and I'm sorry that you feel that way.
Would you go and dig rocks out of a mountain and refine them into pure ore just because?
We are social animals. Art is storytelling. It has many utilities, but it is primarily education and entertainment.
A modern version of the cave painting is to distill complex and uncomfortable truths about the world for those who wish to thrive in a society built on lies.
If you want to go dig shiny rocks from the mountain at great personal risk to your mental and physical health for no benefit to society you are probably sick. If it heals you, that's its utility.
But if you find you're good at it and you want to use this skill for its intended purpose, you aught to be getting paid for it.
*Your mileage may vary. Just my take.
As someone who is into producing visual and musical art for no monetary benefit, and happens to do a lot of backpacking and is very into the geology of the areas I backpack in, yes. I would absolutely find great value in something akin to trekking into remote, hard to reach areas just to see some rocks shaped by ancient glaciers.
If that all makes me "sick", then fuck yeah, proud to be mentally ill. It's truly sad that doing something for pleasure, education, love, fascination and reverence (like being fascinated about how our planet shaped itself, or learning to play the guitar because you love music and think it's fun) is viewed as "mad" or "sick" if there isn't some kind of monetary return. YMMV indeed, but money is not everything.
What's sick, in my eyes, is only being able to view things through the lens of monetary value.
Money is just a proxy for the value your skill brings to society.
I appreciate your perspective, but I hope you appreciate that mine is just aligned with a more social view of the world.
Social impacts don't need to be tied to money.
Getting together with your friends and playing/creating music together, with/for yourselves, and for no financial gain is of tremendous value, for instance.
I'm similarly appalled by weard_beard's replies as you are.
I find lots of joy in life without money entering directly into the equation (other than "without money I wouldn't be able to live").
When I start doing something I enjoy -- a hobby, an activity, a craft -- the first thought into my mind is definitely NOT "how can I monetize this?".
> Money is just a proxy for the value your skill brings to society.
It can be, but it's not the only one.
> mine is just aligned with a more social view of the world
I wouldn't say this, no. It's just a money-oriented worldview, not a more social one.
What you're saying about art is true of all labor and I think its villainous to single out the arts as being more or less deserving compensation.
Wow, "villanous"! Hyperbolic much?
In any case, I didn't say anything about art in my comment immediately above. I was disagreeing with your worldview.
I also didn't say anything about arts being less deserving of compensation.
Could you try addressing what other people actually say?
Doesn’t that impugn a whole lot of classics?
Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
> Doesn’t that impugn a whole lot of classics?
I'm sure it impugns many of the classics (and later), not only Garfield! In my mind, it does impugn He-Man, G.I. Joe, etc. YMMV, of course.
> Dudes sitting in a smoky room: “Yeah, so the pig’s a big fat pig with mobility issues and get this, he stutters hahahaha gonna sell like moonshine, go tell the artists.”
There was a lot of artistry in the Looney Toons, the artists were both doing it for the money (of course) but also out of love for cartoons and they had ideas about them. It wasn't pure cold hearted market research. They didn't go "what would sell more stuffed toys, a pig or a rabbit?".
There must have been some of this too, of course, but have you read memories or articles about Tex Avery and other people involved? They truly cared about their craft. They had ideas about what they wanted to achieve, and it wasn't just "make money".
Good points, and to be honest I love the older, meaner cartoons. But cute Mickey and cute p-p-p-Porky differed from their originals for the same reason as the “Garfield is a lasagna” joke stopped making visual sense.
we at hacker news work for first principles instead
I wish there was a hacker news minus hacker news
I can give you hacker news minus hackers?
reddit.com/r/technology
http://n-gate.com/hackernews/ , but it sleeps
Remember when the internet was all goofy shit like this instead of algorithmically optimized social media angst?
The internet was never all goofy shit like this. The launch date of G-G is "February 13, 2008", and we already had the creepy Facebook, deplorable shit like jailbait was in full swing, gore was not just popular, it was old news. Internet advertising was already very toxic for many years, and its surveillance capabilities were also ever-increasing. Not to mention, the Eternal September lasted for 15 years now.
My point is, it changed, yes, but "The Internet" was always shit, and you can also always find good fun, as always. You can turn off the doom, and enjoy a good never-ending scroll of a myriad of fantastic hobbies and people sharing their human experience. It takes effort, just like it did back then.
Indeed.
We had "Altavista" and for a very short time it was OK, but then quickly decended into a ad-ridden "portal" This was 1997 or so.
The web was full of popups, and then popunders. It was not uncommon to close your browser in the computer-room, then have to close 20 popups that kept coming back. Some of which showing straight out porn. At least scams like viagra, "buy gold online" or "download more memory" malware.
Before Google, it was merely undoable to find anything useful between all the banners, gifs, "only readable in netscape" search-engines.
Before Mozilla/Firefox, popups made it almost impossible to browse the web for longer than half an hour before the browser crashed or the computer locked up.
Chat was insecure, scammers, groomers, malware injection, mitm was everywhere. There was no privacy.
Forums, BBSes and NNTP were full of "trolls" before this term was even known. Flamewars, flamebait, and again, scammers, groomers and malware everywhere.
I do have fond memories of this time. But also know these memories are distorted. It was a dark forest already.
The main difference, I believe, was that the majority of internet users back then were smart - mostly western - educated or young people. I.e. the "tech literate" folks. Those who know how to deal with malware, scams, groomers, privacy, hackers. Those who know how to navigate around popup-bombs, redirect-loops, illegal-content and criminals. But the bad stuff was there from the early days. Today, the "bad stuff" has shifted, from criminals into monopolized big-tech tapping our attention and data, but it has always been there, this dark side.
> It takes effort, just like it did back then.
I think this is a sentiment missing from lots of the rose glasses back watching. It took effort to find all these fun things, it still takes effort to find fun things. The only difference is that now the effort floor is in the icy pits of hell and its so easy to slide all the way down there. Things were different but you still had to work for it. Sites were smaller and there were less people, those things still exist, probably more so, there's just an ocean now. We have to learn how to swim maybe but we can still cross.
And also, very different things exist. So yes, it's hard to find the "same" things or "similar" things, but if one adapts a bit to more up to date trends, the horizon broadens a lot. For example, there is much less life on traditional forums now, but much more life on YouTube.
we had facebook, but things weren't centralized to only 5 websites yet. You are right though, there's a lot about the old internet that was better, but there was also stuff that was worse. It was more untamed perhaps. I certainly don't miss rotten.com or goatse or the absolute cesspit reddit was at the time (as you mention). We tend to forget about this and just think about the good, like individual weird blogs hosted on their own quirky websites actually being able to find an audience (which still exist to some extent but not to the same degree at all). Still, I think "the internet was always shit" is too cynical of a take. Some parts of the internet were always shit. Some of it changed for the better, some for the worse.
>the absolute cesspit reddit was at the time (as you mention)
You prefer the corporate, censored, ad-ridden site that reddit is now? That is bizarre.
The internet of old was better, in my opinion. It took work to be there; now it takes work to not be there.
in the case of reddit I do. We don't need to return to the quasi-CP and complaining about SJWs era. I'll take a censored ad-ridden site with a somewhat less toxic userbase, though of course as always it would be best to have the best of both worlds. Old reddit was just way too unwilling to take out the trash and instead let it fester.
What you described in your first paragraph is still the old internet and it was way better than the post-truth/bot/AI hellscape of today. I’ll take “creepy” stuff over a complete separation from reality any day.
Garfield Minus Garfield is an iteration of a trend on SA and FYAD of editing Garfield comics by re-ordering panels, removing panels, removing characters/dialogue/etc, and shuffling panels from other Garfield strips to make humorous and/or unsettling mashups.
That is to say the trend predates the 2008 launch of the site.
Ok, maybe a more accurate statement would be that the ratio of goofy shit to angst-generating bullshit was much higher in 2008. Maybe it was 70/30 in favor of goofy shit and now it's 1/99 in favor of bullshit. We had Facebook and Twitter back then, but neither had been weaponized against us yet. Both had a very different flavor than they have today.
I miss the old internet. I'm pretty sure anyone old enough to have experienced it misses it.
I was there. Nope.
Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope.
Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope.
Getting malware just for existing? Early software firewalls that burned CPU cycles/crashed your PC? That were the only option because hardware firewalls were stupid expensive and not at all practical for residential use? Nope.
Norton Antivirus? ABSOLUTELY NOPE.
Blue screens when you looked at IE or Navigator the wrong way? Nope.
Flash? Lol, nope.
WAP? The 2004 kind? Lol, hell nope.
"This page is best viewed on Internet Explorer", i.e. IE4/5/6 or it's basically unusable? Nope.
Having to actually go seven or eight o's into the Gooooooooooooooooooooooogle footer to find what you were looking for? Def nope.
Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform.
You have to work hard to get hit with a virus these days, especially on iOS/macOS or Linux, though it's much harder on Android these days too. Also, I loved wasting my life on /., but Reddit is so much better, even after the API-pocalyse.
I definitely miss open messaging platforms though. AIM for life.
The old internet had something today's internet lacks: a justified belief that the future would be better. Things were new and exciting, and you saw opportunities and rapid improvements everywhere. Today it's just governments and megacorporations, and bureaucracy upon endless bureaucracy.
Old internet was something different socially for subcultures, especially DIY subcultures and communities.
You just don't connect with people the same way on giant message boards or platforms like Reddit where you're one user out of a billion.
It was just... Smaller and personal, I guess?
It feels like everything today is optimized for monetization, ads, tracking, etc.
I guess I could summarize it as saying the internet went mainstream and changed its audience and charm.
I was there too.
Napster was good because it was new. And the music was yours when you got it.
Never used NAV. Never cared to. Linux didn't need it.
Hated Flash too, and never used it. Internet was still great without it.
WAP was new, too. But Ethernet existed, and we wired our house.
Used Firefox/Netscape Navigator. Avoided IE pages like the plague.
I do malware research. You're grossly underestimating how common malware is today. Ever hear of ransomware?
Not everything on the Internet is better today. Some things are, but many are not.
And don't even get me started on the cesspool that Reddit is.
Hmm, when I think “old Internet” I don’t think Napster, IE, WAP… I think usenet, gopher, telnet MUDs, IRC netsplits and FTP warez.
All of that was terrible. It was still better than tiktoks and facebooks.
smash like and subscribe, code blitz50 for 0.5% off sea of legends
> Waiting ages for basic serif pages to load over your 56k (or 128k connection if you were rich and had ISDN)? Nope.
> Downloading tracks from KaZaa/WinMX/Limewire/Napster for a million hours only for them to be some warped shit that the studios planted? Nope.
I was there too, and realized that these sort of reductions in speed made one far more mindful of what one was doing
> Almost everything about using the Internet is better today IMO. Faster, prettier, more secure and more cross-platform
This too is particularly debatable. Applications are thin wrappers around web browsers, there are constant annoyances (want to receive notifications for this webpage? Not now? We’ll ask you later.) I bet if I pulled someone from 2005 they’d look at a lot of things on a current website and see malware. And is it really more cross platform when we’ve achieved that by having less platforms?
I'm not sure anything on your list is even about "the internet", as opposed to other tech around it. Do you know what people mean when they say "the internet?".
Flash brought a lot of good stuff...
And the people who were there before the old Internet missed that too. Something something eternal September.
Absolutely. I remember being about 14 or 15 years old, reading old .txt files about, like- how to build blue boxes and experiment with the phone system, C programming tutorials for MUDs that had peaked in the late 90s, IRC archives (even though IRC was still around, I had no way of finding my way to good channels), and getting this distinct sense that I had just missed something really cool, and was stuck with an Internet that had already passed its prime.
>Remember when the internet was all goofy shit like this instead of algorithmically optimized social media angst?
I first accessed the internet in 1998 through school. I still like it more how it was in those days. Most people didn't care about the Internet so the people lurking the Internet had a particular interest in it or were technically inclined.
Once some guys discovered they can make tons of money through the Internet, those good times are over.
It's like you travel to a beautiful place which is not popular. Once it starts becoming a major tourist attraction, it will be ruined for good in 20 years.
there was still angst then, it just was more targeted in single directions, not like now where the angst is aimlessly directed at society, sponsored by squarespace
Sounds like a cologne.
Angst, by Squarespace
If you had to encapsulate the vibe, it would be "people just post shit to see if other people are as weird as they are."
It was a whole era, folks. And I don't mean "does anyone else" Reddit crap that is absurdly naive. This was way more before and way more naive than that. You didn't have any expectation that you were normal (even if you were weird). You just did it to gauge how fucking weird you were.
All the big social media platforms were around when this started. The dominance wasn't in full swing yet but it only took a few years for vbulletin and everything else to dwindle.
It still is; it's just different
The gore sites are a prevailing memory from early days. (I was first online in the mid-90s.)
Rotten rings a bell there.
God I miss ye olde FYAD
www.mnftiu.cc legendary
Garfield Minus Garfield is good, but Lasagna Cat is on another level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh9oLs67Cw
There's a great YouTube documentary that ties all the Garfield subculture together, and it's absolutely worth your time: What The Internet Did To Garfield
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O2C5R3FOWdE
Guy's monologue after the initial opener reminds me of the Log Lady from Twin Peaks. The content and delivery, both.
May I present you Garfeld, the musical? https://youtube.com/watch?v=x4-lNQHxSfI
It is surprisingly good.
I regularly have this on in the background while working. The music is good and I can tune in and out of it without losing focus
I'm not the only one sometimes does this... Now where could my pipe be?
Also Garfield Gameboy'd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDqUDt3K5Mk
Can't believe those first videos are 17 years old...I remember them...man
They posted the original series all at once 17 years ago, and the second series all at once 8 years ago. Maybe they're due to come back...
And in the second series there's a video of Garfield and Odie making a home video. They created YouTube channels for the in-video characters with actual character relevant content, including that home video, 5 years before the second series was posted. Absolutely amazing work, hats off!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3NLa4ebX4E
I'm sorry Jon
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N8RDNd92sK0
Since I'm too lazy to do this myself, I'm putting it out there for the world to make for me.
I want to see Rogan Minus Rogan and Lex Minus Lex podcasts where all the host's speaking parts are cut out and you only hear the guest's replies.
Thanks in advance.
You might enjoy Charlie Rose interviews Charlie Rose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFE2CCfAP1o
And then, The Charlie Rose Paradox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqW9sexNdZg
Paul Rudd Interviews Paul Rudd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLcY0XeVY4
Alok Kanojia vs Kok Alonojia (aka Dr.K interviews himself)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXG2h3RWTPE&pp=ygUGI2RrYWl0
Jordan Peterson vs Peter Jordanson
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buD2RM0xChM Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juts9IlrixQ
There was at least one podcast featuring both Rogan and Lex. This would result in an hours-long podcast of pure silence.
Now that sounds like the kind of show where both of them finally have something good to contribute!
Jamie would still pop in once in a while. I like Jamie.
Angry John Cage noises
I think Lex also has recycled some questions / topics across several guests. I'd enjoy a virtual panel supercut where we see only all the guests' responses to the same prompt.
Lex minus lex would be really great
Tim Ferriss minus Tim has long been a dream of mine
After discovering Dwarkesh, Lex and Rogan have struck me as tragic waste. At worst a laundromat for psychopathic distortions, and at best a lazy unguided exhibition of the guest’s choosing.
What about Rogan vs Lex where it's just them shooting probing questions back and forth and exchanging vaguely related anecdotes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6Iyg9fznvM
The timings are a bit off, but here's one attempt at it:
https://qlymwesmrj.s3.amazonaws.com/temp/joe_without_joe.mp3
I want to see Lex replaced with Rogan and Rogan replaced with Lex
Well that's easy since they talk to a lot of the same people.
Rogan minus guest.
“Huhuhuhuhh.” “Wow.” “You wrote that?” “Who?” “Where is that from? What show is that from?”
Very interesting listening material I am sure
In this same vein, Hot Ones minus Sean might be pretty entertaining as well.
Hot Ones Minus Sauce. Sean driving a guest to madness through sheer conversation.
I love how this turns the comic into psychological horror.
Super Eyepatch Wolf actually did a really interesting analysis about how Garfield entered the horror genera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2C5R3FOWdE. I click on the video randomly out of curiosity, but I got really sucked in.
Maybe the Jan 27 entry, but the Nov 03 entry reads much the same if Garfield is present or not. What I mean is, the strips that focus on Jon talking to Garfield always had this element.
Remember, Jon is already talking to a cat who he assumes can't understand him & knows can't talk back. He might as well be talking into the abyss. Only we can read Garfield's inner monologue. Jon's actions are sometimes presupposed by Garfield's whims. This premise is already the basis of some horror or otherwise unsetting fiction.
If Garfield is there or not, if we focus on Jon as the main character of the strip, we might have to do some introspection, whether it's about expecting to have a conversation with cat as if he were your son, that our lives are as boring as his, etc. These are scary thoughts! Garfield's presence serves as a humorous distraction and allows us to forget these thoughts and laugh at Jon, even if briefly. In the same way, Freddy Krueger delivers funny one liners to break up the dread of realizing we're in some sort of living nightmare like people of Elm Street...
Thanks that was wild
Also good:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GarfieldMinusJon/
And if you want to get weird:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AlzheimersGroup/top/?t=year
Full list:
https://www.reddit.com/r/garfieldminusgarfield/comments/gxl2...
> Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.
Did not think I would be relating to Jon on a Thursday morning.
Its also pretty interesting given that the original title for the comic that would become Garfield was simply "Jon"
There was a small YouTube documentary about finding the old comics in libraries and scanning them in. I the description of the video there is links to scans of all the ones they were able to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxiwjaUSYJM
Google Docs PDF mirrored at https://gwern.net/doc/anime/2020-hoover-theevolutionofjimdav...
I was about to bash before I read this. Now I feel depressed.
You'll feel worse if you use tcsh
It could be worse: csh
♩ Don't cry, I am just a fish
Try zsh instead!
Oh my!
grml!
Now it makes me wonder what would happen if you did something like removing all the superheroes from a movie.
or took soem movies and made all the villains super-attractive and the heroes ugly and dressed in black.
One of my favorite additions by subtraction:
https://youtu.be/jKS3MGriZcs?si=RRlSVL0jwi5sDl3f
Removing the laugh track from the big bang theory
This is the first thing that came to mind for me as well. Have always loved how mean everyone seems without the canned laughter to tell us "hey, this is funny!"
I've never really enjoyed this show but I found myself liking this clean version much more.
It feels slower and more natural. It also helps because I wouldn't have laughed at any of those spots with it without laugh track.
You won't find me defending The Big Bang Theory, but it's worth noting a lot of actually funny television would have this kind of dead energy if you removed the laugh track, because it's both written for that environment and paced and acted for the audience reaction breaks.
True, the awkward long pauses between each beat are there specifically for the laugh track and if they had gone without the track they wouldn't include the pauses either.
I don't think this came about by randomly deciding to take a character out of a strip. The creators of G-G recognized that Jon is a depressing character who has these one way discussions with Garfield. Garfield's inner monologue (that Jon is not aware of) provides all the humor, mostly at Jon's expense. Take the humor out of the comic, and you're left with the depression. It goes straight from a comedy to a tragedy.
This is what's interesting about G-G. The tragedy was always there. We kinda knew the tragedy was always there, but we'd rather laugh at Jon with Garfield than commiserate with Jon.
Taking superheroes out of a random movie would lead to silliness, yes, but nothing poignant.
I’m reminded of Star Wars minus Williams, which removes John Williams amazing soundtrack from an amazing movie! The absurdity is top notch!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9WVDvVd0E
Love GMG, glad to see it at number one here. It's really quite amazing how much funnier and yet more profound it is without Garfield. If you like this, you might also enjoy Nietzsche Family Circus: https://www.nietzschefamilycircus.com/
I used to have one stuck to the door of my doom room. No one laughed. :(
I'd like to submit Time is a Flat Circus as well
https://www.tumblr.com/timeisaflatcircus
This is amazing. One of the better dark-naive mashups I've ever seen. It seems to hit 3/4 for me. I Definitely would've laughed
The derivative I also like, and don't see it here is the markov chain garfield - from back when markov chains were the bee's knees in text generation. The generator is fed by existing garfield comic text, and the generated text is superimposed to a template of existing comics. It might take a few refreshes, but I always manage to amuse myself with the absurdity that it spits out.
https://joshmillard.com/garkov/
I'll join your derivatives thread with the garfield randomizers. here's one: https://www.bgreco.net/garfield/
and an example I just made with the 'hold' feature: https://www.bgreco.net/garfield/?panel0=1984840901&panel1=19...
Your example is great! Thanks for sharing.
I laughed until I cried. Thank you.
What's missed from the popular take on GMG is that it's not always depressing. Sometimes Jon finds joy in mundane things that Garfield isn't there to damper.
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/27763465
Way, *way* darker than I imagined.
I think the most surprising thing about it is that it's good. Not just good as a curiosity, but actually good, in ways and to a degree that would be pretty hard to replicate if you set out to create it from scratch, without existing Garfield strips to lean on.
did you follow the "20 darkest" link?
I did! And it started to make me wonder whether the same shenanigans could be applied to make any interesting Calvin minus Hobbes strips ... but my guess is it wouldn't turn out quite so dark
https://screenrant.com/15-dark-garfield-minus-strips-jon-dep...
Heck, after reading that thing, I'M trying not to jump.
I always liked Realfield better.
https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/7zfbr3/realfield/
I found this years ago, during the "Stumbleupon" era of the Internet (does anyone remember this time sink?). I'm so glad it's still alive!
I think (worry?) that stumbleupon rearranged my brain much like drugs or alcohol rearrange the brain of an addict. Once you’ve been there, you can’t go back to being able to have “just one” beer or, in my case, “just one click” on a link aggregator. I think the novelty-seeking part of my brain was always there, but SU helped pathologize it. I found some cool stuff, but I kind of wish it had never existed.
HN has a gentle enough design that I can enjoy it without it sucking me in, but I make a conscious choice to avoid Reddit, twitter, et al.
Eh, if you hadn't found Stumbleupon then you would have experienced the same effect from one of the zillion other competitors in the attention economy.
You're right that this kind of novelty-seeking content has a profound impact on the brain. It's really interesting to see finally see longitudinal research, plus research on screens/novelty on child development (search for $thing + "psychosocial development").
One of the most encouraging thing I've taken away is that neutral pathways are still quite plastic well into adulthood.
For example, here's an experiment to try if you wake up and scroll in bed. After you do your morning routine, jot down a mood score (-1 feeling crummy, 0 meh neutral, +1 feeling good). You can do this for a week or two if you want to collect control data. Then, force yourself to get out of bed without looking at your phone (buy an alarm if you have too). You should see changes in your mood log within a week. Sleep regulates/replenishes dopamine levels, and scrolling through a dopamine wonderland first thing in the AM can result in dopamine dysregulation for the rest of the day. Try it!
It's so strange that StumbleUpon died but TikTok thrives today.
TikTok's algorithm is based entirely on when you click the Like button and when you linger on a video, exactly like StumbleUpon's algorithm. StumbleUpon even had a video product, StumbleVideo, that was basically just TikTok.
But, in 2018, when StumbleUpon shut down and sold their assets to Mix, the prevailing wisdom was that people didn't want to use StumbleUpon because they wanted to use Reddit and Facebook, to follow curated feeds of links, instead of random links that other people like.
If that wisdom were true, TikTok should have failed too, because TikTok just gives you "random stuff that similar people like," just like StumbleUpon.
I guess it just goes to show that there's no accounting for the rise and fall of social media apps/networks.
TikTok was mobile device centric, and the people that glommed onto it quickest were young mobile users. StumbleUpon was just a website that the "olds" used. Maybe I'm wrong, but did SU have a mobile app? If so, they did a very bad job of getting it into the hands of those that TikTok did.
StumbleVideo was exactly like TikTok, including focusing on mobile. The only material difference is that StumbleVideo's videos were landscape instead of portrait, and they had a "Stumble" button instead of swiping.
(Maybe it's the swiping gesture? Maybe the gesture is more comfortable in portrait?? But it's hard to see why that would make or break a video app like this…)
I used SumbleUpon but not their video service, but some differentiating factors is TikTok specializes specifically short form video content in an environment where creators are rewarded and incentivized to make addictive content.
I loved Stumbleupon. It was a fun way to just explore the internet and truly find many gems I otherwise would have never noticed.
Pretty interesting timeline of events in their Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon
yes, I wasted hours of my life using it until one day I landed on some site called Reddit
Kagi has brought it back (kind of): https://kagi.com/smallweb has a random button (Next Post in the top left corner)
You should check out Marginalia Search as well! https://marginalia-search.com/
Setting it to the new tab page is a neat idea, I will follow your lead
I love small web!
Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Everything2, del.icio.us, Digg
FWIW Digg is in the process of reinventing itself which ... is hopeful? We'll see!
https://reboot.digg.com/
I’m ready to be hurt again. I gave my email address. It would have to be better than the current version of Reddit.
I signed up a while back and got an invite today so things are happening. It'll be interesting to see what a Digg looks like on today's internet. Things are much less innocent these days.
I was unaware this had happened so I'm kind of hopeful it could be something good.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/05/kevin-rose-and-alexis-ohan...
I think that being posted a few weeks ago on HN was what lead me to go chuck in my email. Exciting to see where it goes!
I so fondly remember StumbleUpin, but I’m trying to recall what was so amazing about it. Was it just something of a novelty at the time or the autocuration of the decentralized web would still be relevant?
it seems like a few social media sites took over from the random delight of finding someone’s little weblog or side project.
I hear they’re trying to buy it back and restart with their uber gains
It wasn't completely random or completely (in the current social media sense) algorithmic: There was a settings page where you could pick among dozens of broad topics you were actually interested in and it would only give you results people categorized under it.
When Garfield Minus Garfield was being published regularly, I was a regular. I couldn't get enough of its dark, sardonic undermining of the comic aesthetic.
There's a site called cloudhiker that kinda does the same thing. The idea is the same but there was something special about early days Stumbleupon. Idk if we'll ever recapture that.
Loved stumbleupon! I think when I realized that I was no longer stumbling upon anything interesting was the leading indicator of the long downhill trend of interesting content on the web.
Same, and I had completely forgotten it existed. It feels even more prescient now than a decade+ ago
Also check out the square root of minus Garfield: https://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/
I definitely recommend this one, it has greater longevity due to the wider number of schticks the author is able to engage in over the different comics.
E.g. here's a quirky image effect: https://www.mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=13
https://www.reddit.com/r/garfieldminusgarfield/
This is where this belongs.
Clicking on the image on this post leads to a wild NSFW 404 page. Not sure I was expecting to get an extremely sus, probably illegal, asian porn site. Wth
https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/19400379301/i-made-a-...
Just did the same thing at the office. Nice!
This makes me contemplate how different people’s experiences will alter their perception of this project. Having never read Garfield, the man in these comics comes off as unhinged. But, I imagine, if I was familiar with the source material, I might mentally insert the missing parts and compare this with that in my head.
As someone who has casually read Garfield from time to time, I'd describe Jon (the man in the comic) as a lovable loser. A lot of the jokes in the comics are at his expense.
Massive Garfield fan growing up.
Garfield minus Garfield is still just as eerie and depressing despite knowing the "source material". I love it.
If you want another Garfield related internet horror binge, I'm sorry Jon on Reddit has some great comics https://www.reddit.com/r/imsorryjon/
Came here to say this. Excellent content there if it’s your sort of thing.
This is hilarious. Reminds me of this old pete holmes Garfield sketch (looks like the original got taken down).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayjz18d8Kpo
The concept would be more interesting and realistic if they removed only Garfield's thought bubbles (after all, Jon can't hear Garfield's thoughts anyway) but still left Garfield in the comic.
That was a thing! Boingboing had an article about it, but it looks like the original tumblr is no longer around.
https://boingboing.net/2014/03/09/garfield-without-garfields...
I agree! I've always wanted this, since seeing Garfield minus Garfield back in the day.
Yeah I never liked this one. There's that one other that replaces Garfield with a slightly realistic cat (without thought bubble of course) and I prefer that.
That sounds like Realfield
https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/7zfbr3/realfield/
The somethingawful forums started this with garfield in the comic before "Garfield minus Garfield" was a thing. I agree that the original gag is much better.
May I recommend a follow up fun Garfield themed thing: /r/imsorryjon (research its history, it's kinda fun)
And if you like "garfield minus garfield" then perhaps I can also introduce you to Chief O'Brien at Work https://chiefobrienatwork.com/
I am always fascinated how people get ideas as creative as this.
I didn't know I needed this, but now that you shared it—I NEEDED IT!
Garfield Minus Garfield has the same bleak sense of desolation as Goya's "The Dog". Just wonderful.
My favorite type of humor is the absurd non-sequitur. The more incongruous the better. Like when out of no where someone asks, "If you could trade your shadow for a parrot, would you do it?" Or, "What's your opinion on invisible bicycles?"
So to me, G-G is absolute gold.
I find the dating on this website confusing. It says Jan 27 AND Nov 03, and when I click previous comic, in order it goes: Feb 04 / Jun 14, May 31, Oct 13, Aug 02, Jan 08.....I'm so confused.
A. Why are there 2 comics per day? B. Why are the dates seemingly random?
Could it be date of the original / date the edited version was posted?
Is this done with a GAN or manual?
Pretty sure it's being done the hard way. The site's been running since 2008, so it'd be one of the earliest examples of a GAN in the wild if so!
The earliest ones are from 2008.
So, at least for the vast majority of these: manual.
I liked Gramfel more : https://www.boredpanda.com/garfield-comics-gramfel-cycle-nel...
This is great to see on the front page! I include it as part of the newsletter I run on the best/nostalgic side of the internet so it’s cool to see it resonating with people here for that reason.
I used to have a small bookmark collection of "anti-comics", and this was on the list. Others included Dinosaur Comics, Partially Clips, and Pokey the Penguin.
A similar take on "Peanuts" where the last frame of each strip is removed.
https://3eanuts.com/
This is a combination of entertaining and engaging.
There's also a bot account on mastodon replacing garfield word bubbles with song lyrics. sometimes it's pretty substantial.
I'm impressed with how easy it is to recreate this effect using AI tools. I made this on my iPhone in the photos app by circling Garfield a few times: https://i.imgur.com/YVOZlj8.jpeg based on https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/2025/04/10
The physical act of removing the Garfield figure from the frames is the least interesting part.
(It probably also isn't particularly difficult in many cases, considering the monochrome backgrounds.)
Try Jesus without Jesus and see.
This is clever. Now can we stop the whole USA without the constitution exercise?
Am I the only one wishing I could see the original afterwards, for comparison?
Funny I was just thinking about this yesterday! Now it's on the top of HN.
They should have removed the human instead. Garfield only Garfield.
Browsing through those has shown me how terrible that comic is
I love Garfield. This is incredible. Thanks for posting this!
Where has this been all my life?
This is a special kind of sad, poetic Zen.
This is brilliant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield_Minus_Garfield
Calvin and Hobbes, minus Hobbes: https://calvinminushobbes.tumblr.com/
Call child protective services.
I mean this one is just reality. I’m not sure Garfield is a figment of Jon’s imagination
Edit: if you want to ruin your day, check out this C&H fan art https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/6vwll2/is_...
> I mean this one is just reality. I’m not sure Garfield is a figment of Jon’s imagination
It's not reality. Hobbes it's not unambiguously stated to be a figment of Calvin's imagination either.
That's a fine interpretation but it's not canonical. Watterson wanted the ambiguity, as Wikipedia mentions (sorry, I don't have the interview with the direct quote where Watterson states this):
> "[Watteron] gave an example of this in discussing his opposition to a Hobbes plush toy: that if the essence of Hobbes' nature in the strip is that it remain unresolved whether he is a real tiger or a stuffed toy, then creating a real stuffed toy would only destroy the magic."
Garfield is certainly (meant to be) real, but I've never seen a strip that confirms that Jon can actually hear Garfield's thoughts. I think that's why Garfield minus Garfield works so well.
This is better than the original.
(2008)
kind of spooky and sad
This is really old
Old but gold.
Obligatory tangent of Friends without the laugh track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgKgXehYnnw
Similarly creep and unsettling.
MASH is available without the laugh track.
Really changes the tone, though in that case it doesn't ruin it, just makes it different.
I feel like removing it removes some noise, but doesn't affect the tone. Story is, the MASH showrunners didn't want a laugh track, but the network insisted, so they used the lowest-fidelity one they could get away with.
Thankfully it was broadcast in the UK without the laugh track.
Obviously it still wasn't as darkly observant as the movie, but it did have a edge.
Alan Alda has mentioned in interviews that he prefers it that way.
They filmed in front of a live audience in a theater and those are real people laughing. It's unsettling because the actors pause between lines until the laughter stops.
Reflexive dismissals of shows with laugh tracks are lazy.
To each their own! When I watch Ross ask how to beat up a woman in the street with eyes bugging out of his head there's a pretty big difference between a laugh track and no laugh track. Just like Garfield comics hit very different when you realize that John is actually talking to himself.
I don't "reflexively dismiss" all shows with a laugh track. Some of Friends is genuinely hilarious. But a lot of it is only funny, to me, when surrounded by others laughing.
I wonder how such a rare article was discovered.
I wonder why this is on HN and not Reddit.
This is great, seriously. This is hilarious. Super dark. The theme music changes hugely when Garfield is not there. Getting wind swept Scottish Hebrides vibes and Hans Zimmer soundscapes lol.
excellent blast from the past
Now where could my pipe be?
[dead]
[flagged]
[obligatory "garfield where is my pipe" joke here]