There's a lot of fans of The Oatmeal, and usually he does a lot of quality work, that for the most part is well received. One of his latest comics though, has gotten people all fired up, and I was wondering what people here thought of it.
Here's the whole comic, http://theoatmeal.com/comics/keyboard, and I've linked the images below
For those of you wondering, he made a joke about "raping the f5 key" when things aren't loading properly. It's mostly harmless, and sort of like typing, I'm gonna kill you! Not really serious, not really hilarious.
The problem was that he drew the image like this:
Understandably people were upset over it, to which he responded by removing the panel and putting this up:
The final panel to this comic has been removed.
I've made jokes about genocide, war, third world starvation, death, killing the elderly, sodomy, and infanticide, but apparently saying "Every time the internet does not perform as expected, I rape the shit out of my F5 key" was too offensive for many people.
Ever since Daniel Tosh made an ass out of himself by making a shitty, unfunny rape joke onstage, now anytime a comedian says the word rape everyone jumps out of their seats in protest.
I don't want to eternally have to keep reading complaints about the final panel to this comic, so I've removed it. Apparently calling my F5 key a rape victim is on the naughty word list by too many people. Nevermind the fact that I actually put my money where my mouth is and donated $1,000 of my own money to a battered women's group earlier this year, what appears to be more important to most people is that I strictly adhere to G-rated vocabulary.
To all those who complained: thank you for censoring me. It worked.
You can go back to reading The Family Circus now.
Which, of course, had even more people angry.
He eventually took that defense down, and put up the basic one.
So what's your take Escapist? Do you think the joke is funny? Do you think people were right to criticize him? Are any rape jokes funny? If you were offended, what offended you, the inherent nature of the joke, the image, or the explanation?