Sheeple
Sheeple
[A thought bubble is shared between the five occupants of a subway car (four Cueballs and one Ponytail).] All: Look at these people. Glassy-eyed automatons going about their daily lives, never stopping to look around and think! I'm the only conscious human in a world of sheep.

The people in this comic think of each other as sheep, who blindly follow direction without thinking for themselves. The word " sheeple " from the title has been used before in xkcd in the phrase " Wake up Sheeple !" In this comic, each person on the train considers themselves to be the only individual mind and everyone around them as "sheep". Ironically, the reader can see that although each of them thinks about how individual they are, they are all collectively thinking exactly the same thing, meaning that they are all sheeple. The comic can also be taken as a warning to not assume that you have more consciousness than someone else, since for all you know they could think the same about you.
Ayn Rand was a Russian-born American novelist and activist whose most famous books include, Atlas Shrugged , Anthem , and The Fountainhead . She developed a philosophy known as Objectivism , which promotes individual fulfillment (or so-called "rational self-interest") at the expense of collective goals and undertakings. Sheeple coordinates with Ayn Rand's novel, Anthem , set in the distant future in which the word "I" has been abolished and the evils of the communal values have created a new dark age.
A possible further irony can be found in the title text. Rand enthusiasts would seek individualism and independence from social pressures; however, a convention could be interpreted as a social collective of people who have similar interests in a subject. These ideas could arguably be construed to be opposites of each other. However, similar interests does not mean lack of individualism: this can be seen in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged", which features a society of like-minded people centered around the concepts of individualism and neoliberalism .
[A thought bubble is shared between the five occupants of a subway car (four Cueballs and one Ponytail).] All: Look at these people. Glassy-eyed automatons going about their daily lives, never stopping to look around and think! I'm the only conscious human in a world of sheep.
