Webcomic / User Friendly

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User Friendly

Similar to Ctrl+Alt+Del and PvP, it has become a bit infamous for its creator, who is very outspoken on several topics about both webcomics and the computer industry. Much of it comes from perceived laziness, since the strip very often does cop out when it comes to fresh content. This came to a head in 2009 when it was found that Illiad had plagiarized several MetaFilter users by using their comments as punchlines for the strip, for which he apologized and modified the offending strips to credit the original sources.

O'Reilly Media and Manning Publications have published compilations of the strip in dead-tree form. For various reasons, from late 2009 most of the strips were reruns, and at the end of February 2022, the site closed down entirely but the strips were preserved in the Internet Archive.

This webcomic provides examples of:

• Acquainted in Real Life: At one point AJ plays an online game and gets mugged repeatedly by a female player character called "Lady Shady". He talks to her a bit but often ends up just getting mugged. Later he sees Miranda at the water jug and asks her how things have been, and she cheerfully tells him about this new game she's playing and how she'd stripped some twerp of all his possessions "courtesy of The Lady Shady".
• Affectionate Parody: Gentler than most — it chides nerddom and programmers now and then when they become too obsessive or Slashdot is in uproar over something trivial.
• Alcohol-Induced Bisexuality: Played for Laughs when AJ goes on a bender after blowing his chances with Miranda for the umpteenth time. After singing his woes for most of the strip, he turns to a homeless man and asks "What's your name, baby?" On the other hand, AJ is so drunk he might not have known the person he was addressing was male.
• Anthropomorphic Vice: A giant talking cola occasionally shows up, possibly just as a hallucination, and seeks to corrupt someone. Caffeine is after all a stock geek vice, especially in the form of cola. It's later shown he's definitely not a hallucination, and will appear as (and provide) a giant supply of a person's most preferred vice.
• April Fools' Day: An infamous prank involved teasing that an unnamed big company, implied to be Microsoft given the strip's staunch anti-MS, pro-Linux stance, had been threatening the site before temporarily pulling it down entirely, leading to outcry among Linux communities before it was revealed as a joke... which itself led to more outcry as people had seriously thought the site was being threatened. A more detailed story can be found here. Some future April 1st strips would make reference to this incident in some fashion, primarily thru Self-Deprecation.
• Art Evolution: Visible early on, but averted through most of the strip run. The art style stabilized in the first 6-8 months, and hardly changed after that, remaining rather rough. Many comics re-using character art adds to this effect.
• Author Avatar: Illiad's paper-bag-over-head character, though he rarely interacts with the day-to-day plotlines.
• Benevolent Boss: The Chief, though he's a little more world-weary and underhanded than others.
• Bring My Brown Pants: AJ, for good reason.
• Casanova Wannabe: Stef, so very much He has a thing for butter, llamas and Miranda. In that order.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The later story lines feature Sid getting cancer and A.J. joining the army and being sent to Afghanistan.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Cobb, Stef's colleague from Sales. Much nicer and smarter guy, despite his inability to say "ethical". Hasn't been seen since 1998.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: After Pitr leaks shower photos of her to the internet via the Hubble telescope, Miranda gets her revenge by tying him up and deleting random clusters from his code library backup discs, one for each email address he spammed.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Several of the main cast, and with Cthulhu himself even! He still maintains his malevolence.
• Does This Make Me Look Fat?: Miranda asking this makes A.J. think how useful and lifesaving save/restore-option would be in real life.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Kuan. See Speak of the Devil, below.
• Due to the Dead: Certain celebrities beloved by the author have received memorial Sunday strips. Chuck Jones, E. Gary Gygax, Mary Travers... Major Tear Jerker territory.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The bottom of the forum page had a request for good behaviour that ended with "and if you're really bad, we'll call your Mom. We're not kidding, we've done it before." This was a reference to a Real Life event in which the moderators had so much trouble with a persistent troll that they contacted the troll's ISP, who gave them the account holder's 'phone number. The 'phone was answered by the troll's mother, and he never bothered them again.
• Geek: Nerds and geeks, meet A.J. He is now your leader. So stereotypically nerdy, he inspired the creation of Sex Tips for Geeks.
• Inhuman Resources: The Smiling Man.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Or in this case, Dust Puppy.
• Karma Houdini: Several examples. Some of the most severe ones include:
  • Pitr sexually harassed Miranda (passing off shower photos as space pics). While Miranda did get payback directly, he never faced any legal repercussions and still works at Columbia Internet.
  • Sid murdered an intern by proxy. Though he likely faced no repercussions due to the fact there'd be no way to prove what he did without suffering the same fate of being eaten by Hastur.
  • The entire missile silo arc involves a chain of these. First, Pitr somehow manages to get his hands on a nuclear missile to load in the silo. The Chief ends up using the missile to extort a total of over $270 million out of several organizations, including the United Nations. The money is accidentally routed to the techs' spending account, where they promptly spend it on millions of Lego sets. Erwin then steals all the parts to make himself a fully functional Battlemech for a body, which he then uses to trap Stef in a dumpster and shoot him so many times the dumpster achieves orbit. Nobody involved in this (other than Stef) sees any consequences from this.
• Lzherusskie: Pitr, because the book he read said evil geniuses are supposed to have a stereotypically villainous accent.
• Misery Builds Character: Sid claims that obsessive addiction to NetHack is a good thing because it helps build character.
• Monkeys on a Typewriter: Referenced in this strip.
• Must Have Caffeine: Manifests in many forms, including a Kool-Aid Man parody that haunts Greg with bizarre "you need caffeine" strawman arguments.
• Parodies for Dummies: How Pitr started on the path of evil genius-hood.
• Serial Escalation: Stef's suckitude at Quake. So much suckitude that he dies on the intro screen to Quake III Arena. He is nicknamed "Lava Boy" because he always falls into the lava in games. Even in games such as Neverwinter Nights in which it is impossible to do so.
• Speak of the Devil: Hastur. Yes, Hastur. Yes, that — oh no you don't! Too late. I was in the next room.
• Team Pet: Dust Puppy, an innocent, adorable ball of fluff with feet and big eyes who happens to be a God at Quake.
• Very Special Episode:
  • A Very Special Week reminding us about Remembrance Day and how it's not just about World War I and II's dead any more. In this and the next five strips, no-one's laughing, least of all Sid. Another story line deals with getting cancer. A later story has A.J. joining the army, and being sent to Afghanistan where he is wounded in action.
  • Much earlier, following the September 11th attacks, the techs pulled out of their remote office in an old missile silo. "After the last few days, living in a missile silo just isn't cool anymore."