xkcd.WTF!?

Explanation ➲

Megan points out an uncanny resemblance between someone's dad and Steve Jobs. However, she is uncertain that Steve's last name is Jobs, so she refers to Jobs as "the Pixar guy", asking Cueball if Jobs is the correct name. Jobs is mainly known for (hence the comic's title) being the co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. In 1986 (between his periods leading Apple) he funded the spinoff of Pixar Animation Studios as an independent company, serving as its chairman. While this was a significant business achievement, it wasn't especially famous among the general public and was far less well-known than Jobs' role with Apple.

Frequently, when people can't remember a celebrity's name, they will point out other works they are known for in hopes someone else will recognize them from that and remind them of the name. The comic, for its demographic of nerds, is joking about how it can come across to have lived a life separate from popular culture (or even simply from a different era of popular culture), where one learns things for different reasons than most people do. For instance, most people know Leonard Nimoy for his role at Spock in the TV show Star Trek; however, someone who does not watch Star Trek might instead associate him with his role as Master Xehanort in the Kingdom Hearts video game series.

Cueball points out that Megan tends to take this to an extreme, avoiding the "main" association and instead going with a much more obscure one. To demonstrate how weird her associations are, Cueball asks her, "Who is John Lennon?" Lennon was a founding member of The Beatles, which is one of the most famous bands of all time.^{[citation needed]} Megan recognizes Lennon as a musical artist but cannot remember the name of The Beatles. Bizarrely she does remember the name of Lennon's bandmate Ringo Starr. Even stranger, Megan still fails to associate Ringo with The Beatles, but rather remembers him as Mr. Conductor from the first season of the 1989 children's television show Shining Time Station. Starr was never particularly well-known for his acting career, and even among his acting roles Shining Time Station was a minor and obscure example.

Hoping to show that she really does know Lennon and that her associations aren't weird, she points out that she remembers John doing a song with David Bowie. But she cannot remember the name of the song ("Fame") or even Bowie's name, recognizing him instead for his acting role in Labyrinth. When Cueball states Bowie's name and adds, presumably sarcastically, that he thinks he is famous for "other stuff", she also remembers Zoolander which is a less prominent film in which Bowie had a cameo. Bowie is primarily famous for his famous musical career (such as his smash hits "Space Oddity" or "Let's Dance").

Sensing Cueball's annoyance, but failing to understand it, she attempts to excuse herself for not remembering Zoolander to begin with, because it came out a long time ago, during the Presidency of George W. Bush. Zoolander was indeed released in 2001. Apparently unable, again, to remember the president's name, she identifies him as "Jenna Bush's dad". Jenna Bush is a minor TV personality and is far less well-known than her father.

While the kind of associations people make, like Megan in this comic, are often prone to the Mandela effect, Megan's information about all the celebrities is, in fact, correct. Still, apparently, they are never what those people are best known for. The oddness of having such obscure knowledge about celebrities and popular culture, but apparently missing far more common knowledge, is frustrating to Cueball, but there's nothing he can point to that she's wrong about.

There may also be some overlap with the Streisand effect, named after a woman widely known for owning an overly lavish mansion on the coast of a large mid-North American state north of Mexico.

In the title text, Megan stacks her unusual references and takes them to extremes. She refers to "Keira Knightly" [sic -- her surname is spelled Knightley], who is probably best known for her roles in the Pirates of the Caribbean films and the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film, by referencing her small role in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (as Sabé, who funnily enough is a handmaiden and decoy for Queen Padmé Amidala, the main character played by Natalie Portman). "Star Wars" is one of the most famous film franchises in history, but Megan seems not to know the name of the series, or the film, referring to it as the "first movie" (it was the first in the plotline, but the fourth one made) in "that series by The Land Before Time producer". (George Lucas is famous as the creator of Star Wars but was also one of the executive producers of the 1988 animated film The Land Before Time.)

In addition to George Lucas, she identifies another actor in the Star Wars series, Samuel L. Jackson, by his roles in Jurassic Park (an extremely successful film, but one in which Jackson had a relatively small role) and the PBS children's series Ghostwriter (in which Jackson appeared in only a few episodes). In addition, Megan mentions that the Star Wars series had "script work by Billie Lourd's mom", referring to Carrie Fisher. Fisher came to fame playing the major role of Princess Leia Organa in the original "Star Wars" film and reprising her role in multiple sequels, but she also contributed uncredited script-doctoring work to the franchise.

Ghostwriter was previously featured in 130: Julia Stiles, which described a scene from the show as "the best thing ever to appear on TV".