xkcd.WTF!?

Explanation ➲

This comic shows how qualifiers, which are usually used when the person speaking is concerned about offending their conversational partner, may also be used to delay saying something when a person is nervous or loses their train of thought momentarily. Again, this is a comic related to social interactions and especially displaying that Cueball/Randall has problems coping with simple social norms.

In this comic, Cueball is talking with White Hat. Cueball has lost his original train of thought during a conversation, so he keeps using qualifiers until he comes up with something to say. Here he has used more than a dozen common qualifiers, including "OK", "so", "listen", "like", and "but". The title text says that after 20 minutes he says "hi", a reversal of expectations and a comedic play on how there was a huge buildup to something insignificant. He simply couldn't think of something new to say, and "hi" was the best he could come up with. White Hat presumably kept listening, although normal people would stop Cueball well before this.^{[citation needed]}

While this scenario has probably happened to many people some time in their life, it is highly unlikely that one would keep on for such an extensive amount of time. It is also highly unlikely that the listener would have such patience to keep listening to this endless stream of qualifiers, although it actually fits in White Hat's unusual mentality.