Profile Creation Flowchart
Profile Creation Flowchart
[A flowchart is shown.]
Have Friends? → No → Link to your LiveJournal Have Friends? → Yes, and want to alienate everyone else → Inside jokes! Have Friends? → Yes → Have Boyfriend/ Girlfriend? → No → Angsty about it? → Yes → Link to your LiveJournal No → Yes you are → Angsty about it? Yes → A profile tribute is the greatest possible expression of love.

AIM (short for AOL Instant Messenger, now defunct) offered its users profile pages to share info about themselves or their friends. Randall notes that these pages fall into one of three categories:
Both AIM and LiveJournal were known for their teenage user base, as shown by the title text's fictional AIM screen name.
The title text seems to reference the kind of behavior someone with a tribute page would display, but is actually an example of an inside joke, for cartoonists.  The text comes from Natalie Dee Comic 956, from January 8, 2006 , a few months before this XKCD comic was published on April 26 of the same year.
[A flowchart is shown.]
Have Friends? → No → Link to your LiveJournal Have Friends? → Yes, and want to alienate everyone else → Inside jokes! Have Friends? → Yes → Have Boyfriend/ Girlfriend? → No → Angsty about it? → Yes → Link to your LiveJournal No → Yes you are → Angsty about it? Yes → A profile tribute is the greatest possible expression of love.
