xkcd.WTF!?

Explanation ➲

The comics shows Randall as a presenter at the highly prestigious TED conference, a symposium about technology, entertainment and design. The illustrious list of former presenters includes amongst others Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Larry Page, Richard Dawkins and Gordon Brown. The conference is regarded as a forum for digerati. Every talk has a length of at most 20 minutes and is supposed to be as captivating as possible.

Randall's presentation, however, reduces the purpose of the conference to absurdity: The topic he wishes to point out to his listeners, is that of how to put an emoticon at the end of a parenthetical statement. One possibility that is shown is "Linux (or BSD :)", which looks mismatched because the emoji does not close the opening parenthesis. The other one, "Linux (or BSD :))" has a closing parenthesis, but makes the emoticon look double-chinned.

This question is of little practical consequence, although it received a lot of attention after publication of the comic. In the last panel, the TED conference is another item to add to his list of conferences from which he has been banned. On the list are other conferences from all sorts of fields, including every American furry convention.

The title text about Randall's ban from the IAU conference is a reference to the popular maternal insults called "Yo mama" jokes. A common representative of the genre runs "Yo mama so fat, scientists have declared her the 10th planet." Those kind of jokes are a recurring theme on xkcd.

It can be inferred from 629: Skins, that Randall was banned from North American furry conventions due to being a "Skin", which is a furry whose fursona prefers going around disguised as a human. Depending on Randall's behavior, such an action could generate a lot of drama and, presumably, lead to convention bans.

Getting banned from attending a conference is a recurring theme on xkcd, and even in real life, Randall sometimes has bad ideas for conference topics, such as presumably not speaking for the entire conference. This was so far the sixth of eight comics to directly mention conference bans. The first to do so was 153: Cryptography.

The PyCon organizers made a response to this comic - see below under PyCon response.

Conferences where Randall is banned from

Here is a list of the conferences from which Randall has been banned according to this comic.

Conference	Description	Website
Siggraph	Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques	http://www.siggraph.org
Eurocrypt	Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques	http://www.iacr.org/meetings/eurocrypt/
Defcon	DEF CON® Hacking Conference	https://www.defcon.org/
Pycon	Python Conference	http://www.pycon.org/
International Astronomical Union	The IAU's mission is to promote and safeguard the science of astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation	https://www.iau.org/science/meetings/
Canadian Paleontology Conference	The main goal of the CPC and its predecessors has been to provide a relatively small, informal forum for presentation and discussion of current paleontological research	http://www.gacpaleodivision.com/pd-meetings.html
Every American Furry Convention	There are many Furry Conventions in America (see the Wikipedia page for more details), but to be banned from all of them would probably require action by the Furry Convention Leadership Roundtable, the coordinating body for furry conventions.	http://fclr.info/
American Baking Society (American Bakers Association)	ABA represents the interests of bakers before the U.S. Congress, federal agencies, and international regulatory authorities	http://www.americanbakers.org/meetings/
Asian Dolphin-Training Conference	International Marine Animal Trainers' Association	https://www.imata.org/
TED	Technology, Entertainment, Design.	https://ted.com