Top all-time · #90
Matthew Inman
Personal blog · theoatmeal.comculturedesign
Matthew Inman's personal blog at theoatmeal.com covers culture and design. Since 2009, 379 different Hacker News readers have linked it 455 times, most often “Why working at home is both awesome and horrible”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 0 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link The Oatmeal's comic strips as a shared reference for web design, apostrophes, product culture and online behaviour. Commenters cite specific comics as a short way to make a point, such as the 'exposure' or 'design hell' cartoons.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /comics/design_hell29 people · 29 mentions · first linked 2009-12-04
- /comics/game_of_thrones20 people · 20 mentions · first linked 2012-02-21
- Why working at home is both awesome and horrible18 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2010-08-26
- /comics/tesla15 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2012-08-16
- /comics/exposure12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2019-04-29
- /comics/design_hell10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-01-13
- You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you9 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2018-12-28
- /comics/reaching_people9 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2019-04-02
- /comics/mantis_shrimp9 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2019-11-17
- /comics/cats_actually_kill8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2014-10-28
What Hacker News says?
> There is almost a meme of online platform service providers not understanding their users and their workflows, and rolling out new revisions that hamper or outright remove functionality that those users rely on. True, but there's also a meme of people screaming bloody murder over a redesign for a day, and then being fine with it, e.g. [0]. Some complaints are worth investigating and some are just who-moved-my-chee…
Comment linking /pl/state_web_winter/facebook_layout
on “Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible”Submitted Things Worth Knowing About Coffee as a story · 120 points
HN discussionThis is the first time I've seen "do it for the exposure" in the wild ( http://theoatmeal.com/comics/exposure ). And you even called the other person disingenuous (albeit in jest). I'm impressed.
Comment linking /comics/exposure
on “Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour”Submitted Photo of $211,223.04 in cash The Oatmeal raised for charity as a story · 118 points
HN discussion> "SIGN IN TO GET A SNEAK PEAK." https://theoatmeal.com/comics/sneak_peek
Comment linking /comics/sneak_peek
on “Veo”Submitted A cartoonist's review of AI art, by Matthew Inman as a story · 68 points
HN discussionI've heard folks argue about these claims for a long time, and I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt as I've heard most of these as accurate. So, I wanted to see what some AI assistance could come up with. You may or may not like the results, depending on whether you think AI could never assist on something like, and if you agree it could, whether the results are meaningful to overcome the backfire effect.[0…
Comment linking /comics/believe_clean
on “Teen on Musk's DOGE team graduated from 'The Com'”Submitted I believe printers were sent from hell to make us miserable as a story · 22 points
HN discussionLag is absolutely infuriating on a web browser. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/no_internet
Comment linking /comics/no_internet
on “I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit”Submitted You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you as a story · 13 points
HN discussionhttp://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things
Comment linking /comics/making_things
on “Facebook acquires Oculus VR”Submitted You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you as a story · 12 points
HN discussionPeople need to eat and pay rent. Can’t survive on just goodwill. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/exposure
Comment linking /comics/exposure
on “Cloudflare acquires Deno”Submitted Why working at home is both awesome and horrible as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI remember reading this a few years back a feeling a little guilty while having such a good laugh: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps
Comment linking /blog/apps
on “Elon Musk Deletes Own, SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages After #deletefacebook”Submitted On November 26th, a mole will land on Mars as a story · 9 points
HN discussionObligatory The Oatmeal: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website
Comment linking /comics/restaurant_website
on ““We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020””Submitted I wrote a comic about AI art as a story · 7 points
HN discussionBy providing valuable, interesting content, maybe? http://theoatmeal.com/comics/facebook_likes
Comment linking /comics/facebook_likes
on “Google Web Designer”Submitted Things I learned from wearing an Apple Watch for a couple of weeks – The Oatmeal as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> murderous relationship between cats and local bird populations. That line instantly made me recall this comic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill
Comment linking /comics/cats_actually_kill
on “Cat-proofing a cat feeding machine”Submitted You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSomewhat relevant and got some attention on HN recently: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill
Comment linking /comics/cats_actually_kill
on “Cat-proofing a cat feeding machine”- cj · 2009-11-05
Submitted If Myspace and Facebook Merged... as a story · 2 points
HN discussion But HN seems to be the exception, rather than the norm. Whether that's because of good moderation, or demographic, or something else, I'm not sure. It's certainly easier to get the 'road rage' mentality when writing, than when conversing in person. As well as losing information, communicating through text makes it more difficult to relate to other people as people. It can lead to people behaving in terrible ways tha…
Comment linking /pl/minor_differences/cutting_off
on “Reddit's website uses DRM for fingerprinting”Submitted The Oatmeal: Eight Marvelous and Melancholy things I've learned about creativity as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIt looks like the guy is a graduate from Stanford's business school... and is the co-founder of Pricenomics. What the heck. I used to make that mistake - or what I assume was the mistake, which now seems to have been corrected. Many guides to using apostrophes [1,2,3,4] say they can be used for contractions (the dog's outside) and to indicate possession (the dog's ball) - Why shouldn't something possessed by "it" us…
Comment linking /comics/apostrophe
on “Diamonds Are Bullshit”Submitted 17 things worth knowing about your cat as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> I think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to. also, may be due to backfire effect? Oatmeal did a brilliant job explaining it [0] [0] - http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
Comment linking /comics/believe
on “Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo”> > The owners won't get money from people who pirated content once they make their content available again. > 1. Their own fault Owners have made a bad commercial move but it doesn't force people to pirate their content. Nothing does. There are no pressure from SG1 owners to pirate their content, no incentives. On the contrary they will use digital rights laws to protect their assets. It's entirely their rights to…
Comment linking /comics/game_of_thrones
on “EU withheld a study that shows piracy doesn't hurt sales (2017)”
