xkcd.WTF!?

Explanation ➲

Thanks to the portability of the modern computer, the availability of the Internet, and the advent of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, someone could conceivably use their laptop to catch up on the lives of everyone they care about from the comfort of their own bed; indeed, they could do it under the covers if they want to.

This is rather different than the pre-computer days in which catching up with friends required a great deal more effort, and even since the introduction of computers and connectivity to various forms of social media, for quite a while the computer monitor could not easily be closer than beside the bed, even if you could drag the keyboard beneath the covers. Hence, laptops are weird.

(In the years since this comic was published, tablets/smartphones have become even more widespread, and laptops are probably now less likely to be found used under the covers if only because they are often not the easiest device to use there any more. Or indeed in just about any other location.)

The title text refers to the South Park episode "Gnomes", in which a race of tiny gnomes steal people's underpants. Their business plan is finally explained as:

Phase 1: Collect underpants

Phase 2: ?

Phase 3: Profit

This became an Internet meme, used in situations where a person's or group's claimed planned course(s) of action held little clear relevance to their stated or inferred objective of "profit", and so was given a penultimate stage left as an entirely ambiguous unknown. As such, although the list bears superficial similarity to a list ending in "Profit," using this punchline with a clearly revealed second-stage would not be particularly effective or funny, yet Randall suggests that he was strongly tempted to include this, thanks to the memetic resonance.