Today's XKCD really hit me in a lot of ways. Not all of them good.

I clipped away the parts of the comic that set up the context because, frankly, those parts of the dialoge hide the mean-spiritedness that this comic is built on.
"You have no sense of perspective and are probably autistic."
Who says that kind of thing? Lots of people, I say. Who deserves to have that sort of thing said to them? Few, I says. Yes, obsession is a kind of indicator for a very specific autism-spectrum disorder, but making a throw away punchline out of a certain group of people who are suffering from a specific malady is just not nice. Replace "autistic" in that comic with any other group of people, and you'll see what I mean.

This sort of punchline is nothing more than the same kind of smarmy, self-congratulatory bullying that the so-called geeks, nerds and millennial hipsters who make up XKCD's core audience would claim to be above. The geeks must remain ever vigilant that they're not the next generation of high-school bullies. Making mean at the expense of another's passion is not our way. So stop it, already. There's enough of that bullshit on the Gawker network already.

I'm not saying its wrong to have a sense of humor about things. I'm really not. I diminish whole groups of people into easily categorized pigeonholes all the time. And it's not right. All I ask is that when you diminish a group of people's humanity with a broad stroke, be sure you're doing it deliberately.