Substitutions
Substitutions
[Caption above the panel:] Substitutions that make reading the news more fun:
[A table of words/sentences on the left that changes into those on the left. Between each set of words, there is a gray arrow pointing from the right.]
Witnesses ➜ These dudes I know Allegedly ➜ Kinda probably New study ➜ Tumblr post Rebuild ➜ Avenge Space ➜ Spaaace Google Glass ➜ Virtual Boy Smartphone ➜ Pokédex Electric ➜ Atomic Senator ➜ Elf-lord Car ➜ Cat Election ➜ Eating contest Congressional leaders ➜ River spirits Homeland security ➜ Homestar Runner Could not be reached for comment ➜ Is guilty and everyone knows it

This is the first comic in the Substitution series where Randall has suggested substitutions that will make reading the news more fun. But there have been several comics using substitutions both before and after these ones.
The series as of 2016:
Randall is playing off of the fact that many readers of modern news articles quickly become bored with the legal and political jargon. He suggests that substituting certain words for others can make reading the article more interesting, albeit less accurate. Although since Randall doesn't think very highly of the news, he's probably suggesting this chart wouldn't make them less accurate at all. (See for instance 558: 1000 Times and 932: CIA .)
For example, a sentence that reads
Witnesses reported that the suspect allegedly escaped unharmed.
would be changed to
These dudes I know reported that the suspect kinda probably escaped unharmed.
This substitution does not change the meaning much, and the original sentence does not lose much of its accuracy. However, for substitutions later in the comic, a sentence may be changed as follows:
A new study finds that senators and other congressional leaders are increasingly likely to view election results on their smartphone.
into
A Tumblr post finds that elf-lords and other river spirits are increasingly likely to view eating contest results on their Pokédex.
Which is less meaningful, but more interesting.
The final substitution returns from the realm of the ridiculous to replacing "could not be reached for comment" with "is guilty and everyone knows it." If a journalist writes a story about an accused suspect but is unable to contact them or receives no response from them, they will write that the person "could not be reached for comment." Randall's whimsical assumption that silence implies guilt is so common that juries are instructed that they should not infer guilt if the defendant fails to testify, particularly in nations that have a right against self-incrimination.
Chrome and Firefox extensions are available for applying the substitutions on webpages.
'Spaaace' could be a reference to the Space Core from Portal 2 , or to the way The Muppet Show presented Pigs in Spaaace .
The Virtual Boy is a table-top video game console made by Nintendo released in 1995 and discontinued about the same year. It achieved true-3D graphics through the use of a large visor containing a pair of LED screens, though it considered having done so incredibly poorly, while also lacking any form of ergonomic comfort and sporting several critical design flaws. As a result, it is commonly mocked as one of Nintendo's biggest failures (sometimes by Nintendo itself).
The Pokédex is a device in the Pokémon world that records the data of captured Pokémon.
Homestar Runner is the title character of a Flash-animated web cartoon series, known for being an idiot.
It seems generally that Randall is no fan of Google Glass, which was also shown earlier in 1251: Anti-Glass and later in 1304: Glass Trolling . Thus explaining why Google Glass has such a ridiculous substitution as Virtual Boy . Google Glass has become a recurring theme in xkcd.
In the title text Elon Musk is mentioned. He is (amongst other things) the CEO of Tesla Motors , which produces electric cars. In the title text the sentence "Electric cars" was replaced by "atomic cats" according to the chart of the comic.
News reports about new studies ( Tumblr posts) are further lampooned in 1295: New Study , a comic posted two weeks later.
[Caption above the panel:] Substitutions that make reading the news more fun:
[A table of words/sentences on the left that changes into those on the left. Between each set of words, there is a gray arrow pointing from the right.]
Witnesses ➜ These dudes I know Allegedly ➜ Kinda probably New study ➜ Tumblr post Rebuild ➜ Avenge Space ➜ Spaaace Google Glass ➜ Virtual Boy Smartphone ➜ Pokédex Electric ➜ Atomic Senator ➜ Elf-lord Car ➜ Cat Election ➜ Eating contest Congressional leaders ➜ River spirits Homeland security ➜ Homestar Runner Could not be reached for comment ➜ Is guilty and everyone knows it
