The internet is no longer lacking pictures of women playing electric guitar in the shower

October 10, 2007 3:56 PM

A month ago Randall Munroe of XKCD drew a comic lamenting the internet's lack of pictures of women playing electric guitar in the shower. He registered wetriffs.com and soon the submissions started pouring in. The gallery is now up. [nsfw]
posted by Kattullus (85 comments total)

Three of those are quite clearly not electric guitars. I demand a refund!
posted by afx237vi at 4:01 PM on October 10, 2007

Some of these women are men.
posted by tepidmonkey at 4:03 PM on October 10, 2007 [4 favorites]

A faint whiff of "readers' wives" - god, that dates me - but on the whole, very sweet!
posted by Jody Tresidder at 4:03 PM on October 10, 2007

afx237vi, I have arranged for you to receive a full refund. Enjoy.
posted by grouse at 4:03 PM on October 10, 2007

The first one is definitely the winner.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:04 PM on October 10, 2007

I'd be willing to forgo my refund if someone introduces me to Darcey.
posted by afx237vi at 4:06 PM on October 10, 2007

Funny you should put this up because just today I was thinking that today's xkcd is one of the funniest things I've ever seen and lamenting that I knew no one geeky enough to share it with.
posted by The Bellman at 4:20 PM on October 10, 2007 [4 favorites]

The first one makes me think of the VJ Kennedy.
posted by klangklangston at 4:24 PM on October 10, 2007

I'm pretty sure this is what the Internet was invented for.
posted by adamrice at 4:27 PM on October 10, 2007 [7 favorites]

#11 looks like Alanis Morissette.
posted by cardboard at 4:29 PM on October 10, 2007

if there are no bass players, there's gotta be something definitely wrong with them.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:31 PM on October 10, 2007

I was thinking that today's xkcd is one of the funniest things I've ever seen

I don't get it.
posted by Justinian at 4:32 PM on October 10, 2007

You should be glad, Justinian. It's an in incredibly geeky databse joke.
posted by The Bellman at 4:36 PM on October 10, 2007

A faint whiff of "readers' wives"

Sadly lacking the 'six inch strip of insulation tape, strategically stuck across their eyes'.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:47 PM on October 10, 2007

Today my life is complete. Thank you, internets, thank you.
posted by lekvar at 4:53 PM on October 10, 2007

maybe Justinian doesn't get it because it doesn't make sense. the kid was named with a database command as ( presumably) his middle name. when the school went to enter his name into their database, his middle name was parsed as a database command, and caused the system to erase the table containing the details of the students.

however, it wouldn't work like that.

the SQL would look something like this:

INSERT INTO students (fname, mname)
VALUES ('Robert');', 'DROP TABLE Students')

which would either parse 'DROP TABLE Students' as the value of the mname field or else - more likely - just result in an SQL error from mistaking the ') as the end of the list of values, with the remainder of the command being parsed as gibberish.

so, yeh, stupid joke. doesn't make sense to the lay reader, doesn't make technical sense to a techie*.

*admittedly, not a DB person. feel free to shoot me down
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:53 PM on October 10, 2007

(actually, too many close parentheses. it wouldn't process, would it? - immediate sql error, yeh?)
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:55 PM on October 10, 2007

I suspect this picture has been altered somehow:

Ha!

And, yes, flawed execution or not it's hard not to like Little Bobby Tables.
posted by cortex at 4:58 PM on October 10, 2007 [2 favorites]

(actually, i did find it pretty funny. just couldn't resist getting all geeky like 'duh, malformed sql' in a thread about naked chicks playing guitar in the shower...)
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:04 PM on October 10, 2007

I would give anything to have that sort of power.

If I registered "chickswithbondcliffwrittenontheirnakedthighswithasharpie.com I bet no one but my mom would submit a photo.

Email is in profile, ladies.
posted by bondcliff at 5:06 PM on October 10, 2007

Wow, I finally looked at the link. Some of those chicks are cute.
posted by Justinian at 5:06 PM on October 10, 2007

You missed the "--" at the end, which in at least some DBs (I'm thinking Sybase, maybe others) is a comment indicator, so the rest of the line would be ignored.

I haven't looked at the hot chicks yet.
posted by DU at 5:19 PM on October 10, 2007 [6 favorites]

The attack looks valid to me. Where does the extra ' come from in your example, and why do you assume that's his middlename and not just his entire name (ie, it doesn't do first name last name, and just adds name, for whatever reason). you can't say it won't work without knowing theoretical DB structure.
posted by JZig at 5:24 PM on October 10, 2007

and as DU said, the -- is important.
posted by JZig at 5:25 PM on October 10, 2007

well, yes, it would be important to know the DB structure, and also how the fields in the presentation layer are validated before being passed to the stored procedure. it's a pretty basic validation for name fields to accept only alpha characters, plus hyphens & apostrophes, so the semicolon & close bracket shouldn't make it through to the stored procedure.

as for the commenting, if the procedure is expecting n values, and the comment cuts these short, would it not fail anyway?
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:37 PM on October 10, 2007

I'm still waiting for instructions on how to invade a small country from XKCD. I'm sure Mr. Munroe has figured out by now how much control he has over basically all the nerds on the internet. It's only a matter of time before he decides to use this power for something bigger than silly pictures on rollercoasters and in showers.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 5:41 PM on October 10, 2007

-- should replace . as the thing that we do.
posted by davejay at 5:42 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

Randall Monroe for President of The Internet.
posted by chlorus at 5:45 PM on October 10, 2007 [3 favorites]

See also.

[There were co-ordinates and a date in a comic once...]
posted by ambilevous at 5:52 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

Where does the extra ' come from in your example?

if the value entered into the field in the client/presentation layer is Robert');, then the stored procedure would put 's on either side of that value, no? this is assuming that schools don't use raw DB commands to enter data, but have some sort of client interface, which i think is a perfectly reasonable assumption.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:54 PM on October 10, 2007

I was assuming it was raw SQL, Ubu and I didn't think too much about it before I laughed. I'm still not quite enough of a SQL geek to know if it would work, but that doesn't make it less funny . . . to me, anyway.
posted by The Bellman at 6:08 PM on October 10, 2007

You know, I always knew Metafilter was a geeky crowd -- but so far we have eight (8!) comments about a possibly malformed SQL statement and the proper syntax to execute this attack...

...in a thread about naked chicks in showers with guitars.

Kudos to those who sent pictures though, that requires cohones of unfathomable size.
posted by spiderskull at 6:26 PM on October 10, 2007 [6 favorites]

I laid out the validity of the attack but I have to post it here

Because trying to post it here gives

Error Executing Database Query. Executing the SQL statement is not allowed.
The error occurred on line 66.


...

Tada!
posted by xorry at 6:37 PM on October 10, 2007

You can't use [pre]?
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:38 PM on October 10, 2007

And if Randall "xkcd" Monroe jumped off a bridge, would you follow him?

Stupid question. MeFi would lose half its membership and Digg and Reddit would be totally deserted. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing... HEY RANDALL!!! JUMP!!!
posted by wendell at 6:54 PM on October 10, 2007

You know, I always knew Metafilter was a geeky crowd -- but so far we have eight (8!) comments about a possibly malformed SQL statement and the proper syntax to execute this attack...

...in a thread about naked chicks in showers with guitars.

Just sublimating here, coz I can't check out the nekkid guitar shower chicks at work. As Freud theorised, the whole of human civilisation & creative activity is essentially the result of channeling the desires of the id into other pursuits...
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:59 PM on October 10, 2007

Ubu, the whole point of SQL injection is to take advantage of programs that don't sanitize/validate/escape their input.

Think: $sql = "INSERT INTO Students VALUES($age, '$name')";

That's simple, straightforward, and easily exploitable. Add little Bobby Tables and you end up with this query:

INSERT INTO Students VALUES(10, 'Robert'); DROP TABLE Students; --');

Hello!
posted by Khalad at 7:01 PM on October 10, 2007

Wait, this is from the same guy who brought us this? I bet this guy is the same one who spends hours crying about he's, "boo hoo, such a nice guy, why can't I get girls to like me..." when, in reality, he's either boring, a dick, or both.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:49 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

We have good-looking naked chicks with guitars running out of hot water because we can't quite figure out if a joke in an online comic is actually properly formed SQL?

I don't think the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, they hate us for our shivering and fed-up naked chicks.
posted by maxwelton at 7:56 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

tepidmonkey: Some of these women are men.

Yes, and that's another point in favor of Munroe and his readers.
posted by grimmelm at 7:57 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

ThePinkSuperhero,

Actually, Randall is a very interesting guy and is not at all the whiny type of person you describe. Likewise, his romantic life quite healthy.
posted by mulligan at 8:09 PM on October 10, 2007 [3 favorites]

I would do this but I need one of these.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 8:10 PM on October 10, 2007

Randall is a very interesting guy

Well obviously, or he wouldn't have been able to attract such a following. Just seems strange to take a stand against an issue, and then run full-force the opposite direction...
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:16 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

ThePinkSuperHero - looks to me like it's pretty equal, gender-wise. And I could be wrong, but I don't think he actively solicited submissions.

On the sql discussion - a friend of mine recently got asked to cease and desist using ;xDROP DATABASEx; or similar in his sig. Apparently it had caused problems.

Amusingly, on preview, I just got a database error. Nice. Remove x for actual sql.
posted by ysabet at 8:39 PM on October 10, 2007

There's a continuum in comics that goes from well drawn/horribly written (Prince Valiant?) through well-drawn/well-written (Calvin and Hobbes, a few others) to horribly drawn/well-written (XKCD).

Before XKCD came along, Dilbert and/or Far Side had that spot. But once you hit "stick figure" there is really nowhere else to go.

This means something, but I'm not sure what.
posted by emjaybee at 8:45 PM on October 10, 2007

Wait, this is from the same guy who brought us this? I bet this guy is the same one who spends hours crying about he's, "boo hoo, such a nice guy, why can't I get girls to like me..." when, in reality, he's either boring, a dick, or both.

I agree with the sentiment -- I don't believe in the "nice guys finish last" self-pity party. But I'm not sure where you're drawing this conclusion about Mr. Monroe here.

Just seems strange to take a stand against an issue, and then run full-force the opposite direction...

I don't think porn, strippers, naked women in the shower with guitars, etc. are intrinsically misogynistic -- sure, there's a ton of degrading, misogynistic examples of the first two, but one doesn't necessitate the other. Also, he's put pictures of both women and men on the site.
posted by spiderskull at 9:24 PM on October 10, 2007

But I'm not sure where you're drawing this conclusion about Mr. Monroe here.

I suppose it didn't make much sense. I was just bummed. I loved this cartoon a lot; I thought about it for days after. Look, a big name in the internet community is taking a stand against harassing women in internet forums! Discouraging stuff like "joking" requests for naked pictures! And now, just, what, a week later, he's created a site on the premise of "Hey, look, I jokingly asked some women on the internet to give me naked pictures, AND THEY DID!" Pretty disappointing.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:39 PM on October 10, 2007 [2 favorites]

TPS - who said he created the site? i might have missed something, but i thought somebody else set it up, inspired by the cartoon...?
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:56 PM on October 10, 2007

(heh - you *do* realise that the stick figure in the cartoon isn't actually registering wetriffs.com, right?)
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:56 PM on October 10, 2007

oh, shit. it's in the FPP.

*hides on the other side of the interwebs*
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:57 PM on October 10, 2007

"Also, he's put pictures of both women and men on the site."

Can I just say that, irrespective of whether or not the rest of the chix+axes content is bad/good, I REALLY HATE this false equivalence of objectification.
posted by klangklangston at 10:14 PM on October 10, 2007

So hot...
posted by Large Marge at 10:15 PM on October 10, 2007

Well obviously, or he wouldn't have been able to attract such a following. Just seems strange to take a stand against an issue, and then run full-force the opposite direction...

I see no contradiction between supporting the creation of light showers-and-guitars-porn as the manifestation of a joke and objecting to the sort of "Tits or GTFO" asshats that populate (for example) 4chan.
posted by sparkletone at 10:26 PM on October 10, 2007

I first experienced "tits or gtfo" on #mefi, not 4chan, probably under several thick layers of smothering irony shellac, making the xkcd comic all the more poignant for me. Irony doesn't help. Just as in cases of white people using "nigger," pretending you're an "asshole misogynist" on the internet almost never plays right. So irony or no, this spin-off site rates a *clunk* in terms of comedy (as is often the case for illustrations of things that are humorous as fancy) and a *meh* in sexy. Memey? *zong.*
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:47 PM on October 10, 2007

I dunno, suddenly I'm thinking I broke my funny bone on something in here.

I'm pretty much of two minds on this. Encountering the space in which submissions are requested of required a creative act of exploration, finding wetriffs.com, for one thing.

On the other hand, the description "I drew this comic a month ago, lamenting the lack of guitar-in-the-shower pictures on the internet, and I put up this site for people to create and submit them." is disingenuous.

On the other other hand, fulfilling rule #34 is sort of an unassailably funny enterprise, whether the porn is funny, sexy or neither.

On the other other other hand, I have some spooge from this guy who pays me to blog about my four hands and what I'm touching with them.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:59 PM on October 10, 2007

Funny you should put this up because just today I was thinking that today's xkcd is one of the funniest things I've ever seen and lamenting that I knew no one geeky enough to share it with.

I just showed this to my buddy today and we had a good, long laugh. But I used to be his tech lead at a web host, and it was my job to train people about things like SQL Injection. So we're hopeless.
posted by TungstenChef at 11:10 PM on October 10, 2007

Reminds of the chess on roller coaster reader submissions inspired by another strip just a few months ago. Got to hand it to the guy, he delivers some magnetic conceptual stuff.

As for hypocrisy, well, I think the criticism in that comic was more directed at techie community trends of systematically alienating specific females with unwanted personally directed sexual comments. This would be different than speaking to or commenting on females as a group in a sexual manner. I'm sure people could have a long debate whether this distinction matters, but you'll note that, while the comic does suggest that women are being addressed, he does not address women specifically on his submission page, and posts pictures of both genders. This especially goes against PinkSuperhero's criticism.
posted by dgaicun at 11:11 PM on October 10, 2007

Oh, oops: chess on roller coasters.
posted by dgaicun at 11:12 PM on October 10, 2007

"Hey, look, I jokingly asked some women on the internet to give me naked pictures

But he didn't do that. Read the submission site again:

"I drew this comic a month ago, lamenting the lack of guitar-in-the-shower pictures on the internet, and I put up this site for people to create and submit them... if you're okay with looking at scantily-clad/naked people rocking out, go ahead to the gallery."

This communicates that he was having more silly participatory fun with his whole general audience, not that he was actually trying to snag some jollies.
posted by dgaicun at 11:26 PM on October 10, 2007

Can I just say that, irrespective of whether or not the rest of the chix+axes content is bad/good, I REALLY HATE this false equivalence of objectification.

klangklangston - you're right about that statement being ridiculous. I just reread it and I completely see what you're saying.

I guess my point here is that 1) he didn't solicit any pictures, they were voluteered presumably by the people who are in the pictures, and 2) I don't actually see anything misogynistic here.

Discouraging stuff like "joking" requests for naked pictures!

...although that is a good argument.

There's a thin line between "LOL you're a woman lemme see you naked" and what I think his main message here was -- namely, "let's mix things that are traditionally cool in an absurd way -- guitars are cool, naked women are cool, and so are showers." Basically, the difference I see is in the empowerment one way or the other. I think, for example, that a woman who sets up a webcam at her house and rakes in tons of money off of it, and maintains her ownership and control of it, is empowering her. This is essentially how I see this wetriffs site, except that it's fans of the website. What's more is
posted by spiderskull at 11:44 PM on October 10, 2007

pretending you're an "asshole misogynist" on the internet almost never plays right.

I still think this is based on the assumption that naked women on the internet is always and consistently anti-feminist -- it's not. A lot of it is, and stems from women-as-objects thinking, but not all of it. This is the exception.
posted by spiderskull at 11:46 PM on October 10, 2007

On a side note, I'm in one of those chesscoaster pictures!
posted by spiderskull at 11:47 PM on October 10, 2007

This is old news I guess, but it's pretty cool too. I'd read the murmurings about it happening, but didn't see the pics until I poked around xkcd today.
posted by juv3nal at 12:22 AM on October 11, 2007

Forty years from now, when I look back on how I spent my twenties, this - THIS is going to be the definitive Metafilter thread I hearken to.

It has everything - stick figures, naked wet chicks with guitars. Stick figures CONTROLLING naked wet chicks with guitars. A half page of dissected SQL. Feminists. It's so meta it almost looks like 1999 folded in half and then in half again. With this thread, my personal interest in Metafilter has achieved its zenith. I will never again feel this uncomfortably cool.
posted by annathea at 1:12 AM on October 11, 2007 [7 favorites]

UbuRoivas: "it's a pretty basic validation for name fields to accept only alpha characters, plus hyphens & apostrophes, so the semicolon & close bracket shouldn't make it through to the stored procedure."

You need to scroll more to the right. The last line in that comic is: "And I hope you've learned to sanitize your database inputs". I.E. the school did not do that even most basic validation. (I still don't know if what he wrote would parse, I just know that "basic validation would eradicate that" as a counterargument is nixed by the comic itself).
posted by Bugbread at 3:20 AM on October 11, 2007

if there are no bass players, there's gotta be something definitely wrong with them.

The pictures, or the bass players?
posted by tommasz at 6:25 AM on October 11, 2007

If an internet dude demands that you show him your tits (lol) you simply demand that he show you his first.
posted by louche mustachio at 7:01 AM on October 11, 2007

"Also, he's put pictures of both women and men on the site."

Can I just say that, irrespective of whether or not the rest of the chix+axes content is bad/good, I REALLY HATE this false equivalence of objectification.

Exactly!

There's a thin line between "LOL you're a woman lemme see you naked" and what I think his main message here was -- namely, "let's mix things that are traditionally cool in an absurd way -- guitars are cool, naked women are cool, and so are showers."

Oh, come on. And people read Playboy for the articles, too, right?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:29 AM on October 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

"Oh, come on. And people read Playboy for the articles, too, right?"

Well, yeah, actually. People also read Hustler for the articles (the chicks are skanky).
posted by klangklangston at 7:55 AM on October 11, 2007

I'd just like to note that I woke up this morning and saw on the internet that Doris Lessing had won The Nobel Prize for Literature and thought: "Oh, that's so awesome! Lessing rocks! And I can make a totally kick-ass FPP about it." And then cold reality slapped me in the face. "Wait... no... I can't make a kick-ass FPP about Doris Lessing because yesterday evening I posted a link to a site with pictures of naked people playing the guitar in the shower." Ah, sweet Irony, her cuts are like ice.

I think this is the first time I've had a MetaFilter post hangover. And some of my FPPs have been real clunkers too.
posted by Kattullus at 7:58 AM on October 11, 2007

I'm just happy that the 'rockingist' photo features, in addition to an attractive, bespectacled, apparently geeky woman, a guitar that is the same model as mine. There's a reason Ibanez beats Yamaha out by miles, and this competition is proof of that. Playing it in the shower, though, can be quite an electrifying experience. [1]

As for whether the nudity here is hypocritical or not, well, it's interesting reading arguments both for and against it. I didn't see it as being hypocritical myself, mostly for the fact that while the pictures were meant to be titillating, they were self-depracatingly so. There's some humour element somewhere in there, although I can easily see why anybody would miss it.
--
_{[1]- I can't believe nobody said that so far!}
posted by the cydonian at 9:29 AM on October 11, 2007

As for self-deprecation, I think the internet and "Rule #34" have changed my notion of the possible transformation of visual sexuality into anything else. As far as I'm concerned, funny, meta, absurd, self-deprecating, self-distributed images of women or their feet or... ANYTHING... are well and good, but if they can, in some conceivable universe, elicit an arousal response, they are being cum to by somebody, somewhere. I'm (more than) okay with all this, but a lot of people don't seem to get that public spaces and their denizens are out of their control. My estimate is 47 USian twelve year old dudes have (as of this writing) tossed the sauce to the shot with the CU of the pretty, dark nipples.

You can't self-deprecate while jacking it. Disavowal's for afterward. I don't think there's an absolute difference to be determined between the wink of erotic humor and the secret handshake of erotic deviance. It's a matter of what your gonads can tolerate... I mean srsly Dinosaur Porn?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:59 AM on October 11, 2007

I see an enormous difference between

1. harassment of a particular person by directing "show me your tits" emails/PMs/forum posts at her, and

2. making a website for people who have sent you pictures on their own initiative because they were amused by a joke (directed at no one in particular) in your comic strip.

I see no hypocrisy in crusading against #1 while doing #2. On the other hand, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who finds them both depressing examples of the way women get reduced to a set of tits.
posted by straight at 11:57 AM on October 11, 2007

Please tell me none of these pictures include real Gibsons or Fenders being treated this way. Because I'd like to check out this site after work, but that would make me cry.
posted by InfidelZombie at 12:10 PM on October 11, 2007

No, no, no! You fools have it all wrong. This was his plan all along!

Step 1: Create a successful webcomic.
Step 2: Subtly insert personal perverse yet non-existent-on-internet fetish.
Step 3: Masturbate!
posted by graventy at 12:58 PM on October 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is every single shade of awesome.

That is all.
posted by slimepuppy at 1:39 PM on October 11, 2007

making a website for people who have sent you pictures on their own initiative because they were amused by a joke (directed at no one in particular) in your comic strip.

Yes, am I wrong or did he never even ask for photos, period? If so I think we can safely pack away even the moral uncertainty around the edges.

'False equivalence' can only be invoked so far before it brings us around full circle to the Islamic fundamentalist ideation of feminism: the burqas are necessary to protect the women from the licentiousness of men.
posted by dgaicun at 4:48 PM on October 11, 2007

I think I'll register beanthoughts.com. You can all surf over and check out my Ernie Kovacs retrospective.
posted by RussHy at 5:38 PM on October 11, 2007

And some of my FPPs have been real clunkers too.

And some of them have been mentioned in the London Review of Books, so away with your false modesty!

On the other hand, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who finds them both depressing examples of the way women get reduced to a set of tits.

Channeling jonmc, appreciating the beauty of the female form & respecting women as people, for their personalities, qualities & achievements etc are not mutually exclusive.
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:54 PM on October 11, 2007

InfidelZombie: I only saw one Ibanez and loads and loads of Yamaha's in there. No Fenders or Gibsons were ever harmed in the making of this gallery. I think.
posted by the cydonian at 7:23 PM on October 11, 2007

I channeled your mommc.
posted by cortex at 10:45 PM on October 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

There is still no gay male midget porn on the Internet.
posted by deusdiabolus at 10:15 AM on October 15, 2007

Uh... Not so, though I am not going to find it again. Last time I stumbled across it, it was one of those goatse alternatives.
posted by klangklangston at 4:01 PM on October 15, 2007

gay male midget porn

faggot little people porn, if you please.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 5:39 PM on October 15, 2007

True to porn.
posted by cortex at 7:45 PM on October 15, 2007