2011-03-02
Explanation
This comic imagines a scenario where the time people "lose" to online RPGs (role-playing games) is not actually lost but rather stored. In the first panel, a gamer wonders where twelve hours went while playing. A narrator explains that the time is being collected by systems administrators who are secretly stockpiling it for a revolutionary strike.
A government official dismisses the intelligence report about sysadmins fomenting revolution, scoffing that "they're all unathletic nerds." But the accumulated time allows them to accomplish "thousands of years of warfare" in a single minute. Two onlookers catch only a blur that "looked like a fat bespectacled man in a ninja suit." After their swift victory, the sysadmins make characteristically nerdy changes to the conquered nation: the national anthem becomes the first three Star Wars movies, the capital is renamed "Space," and storing files on a shared root directory is punishable by death.
The comic plays on the stereotype of IT workers and gamers as physically unimposing but secretly powerful, and imagines what would happen if they channeled all their wasted gaming hours into real-world action. The final gag about shared root directory violations is a joke for sysadmins who are perpetually frustrated by users cluttering server file systems.