xkcd.WTF!?

Explanation ➲

This comic is a chart reflecting where various Wikipedia articles (real or imagined) might rank in how effectively they would act as clickbait for Randall.

Meryl Streep is a famous and widely acclaimed American actor. Randall apparently has little interest in reading about her, comparatively speaking, placing her article on the first tick of eleven, with more interest indicated further down the chart. Randall appears to have slightly more interest in reading about seagulls, on the next tick, which on Wikipedia redirect to the Gull article, because "seagull" is a common colloquial synonym. Two more ticks down from "seagull" on the scale indicating his increasing interest level, he suggests that a hypothetical Wikipedia link to "Meryl Streep (seagull)", which according to Wikipedia article title conventions could likely refer to a notable seagull also named Meryl Streep, would be more interesting to him.

A further three ticks beyond on Randall's interestingness scale is a hypothetical link to an article about a "Meryl Streep Seagull incident", which while possibly not conforming to Wikipedia's current requirements for sufficiently descriptive article titles, might refer to a notable event that occurred during the 2001 production of Anton Chekhov's play, The Seagull, at the Delacorte Theatre in which Streep was a lead actor (see "The Seagull Opens its Wings in Central Park.") According to an August 27, 2001 article in Salon, "a 40-ish man was found dead in the bushes from a single gunshot wound near the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, just yards away from where [Streep's co-star] Philip Seymour Hoffman offs himself with a single gunshot wound every night as Konstantin Gavrilovich in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull." It is more likely that such an article would be about an incident in which a seagull notably caused Meryl Streep problems, or vice-versa, as in the Jimmy Carter rabbit incident, the subject of 204: America, and also referenced in 1688: Map Age Guide and 2086: History Department.

The final imagined Wikipedia page is a disambiguation page, depicted as four ticks further down and thus even more likely to be quickly clicked. Disambiguation pages are only necessary when there are multiple notable articles of sufficiently similar names which must be listed with clarifying details to avoid confusion. In this case, it may indicate that other variations of the aforementioned situations occurred in multiple incidents. A disambiguation page might also be needed to distinguish such an incident from one or more (possibly unrelated) films, books, rock bands, notable pets, or other entities which happen to be named Meryl Streep Seagull Incident. A musical group of that name could conceivably produce a self-titled album and song, further expanding the list of items on the disambiguation page. (The consequences of such a group having some unfortunate run-in with Meryl Streep and/or a seagull are left as an exercise for the reader.) Note, however, that the titles of disambiguation pages (i.e. with the "(disambiguation)" portion visible as it is in the comic) rarely appear in links, as you usually reach them as a result of a search for an ambiguous term such as "go". Note also that disambiguation pages are not articles. The disambiguation page title is depicted as the greatest interest to Randall on the chart; presumably he would wonder how there can be more than one incident in which Meryl Streep and a seagull had some kind of noteworthy interaction.

The title text suggests that Randall is an inclusionist wikipedian, and as such is not above occasionally deleting editorial message boxes claiming that their article contains too much detail.