Girl: Robot ninja! Pirate doctor laser monkey! Narwhal zombie badger hobo bacon kitty captain penguin raptor jesus!
Scientist (to guy): We'd been seeing this brain damage for years, but only recently did our linguists identify the pattern behind it.
Scientist: The patients fixate on animals and types of people whose names are trochees (two syllables, with the accent on the first).
The malfunction causes a rush of dopamine whenever these trocheese are heard or spoken.
[[Chart shows "internet" and "brain," with arrows marked "trochees" traveling both ways between them. An arrow marked "dopamine" loops from the brain back to the brain.]]
The warning signs appear in childhood:
[[Child sits in front of TV.]]
Child: Yeah! Mighty teenage morphin' ninja power mutant turtle rangers!
Social reinforcement focuses the fixation on a few dozen words.
Guy (off-panel): Is there a cure?
[[Girl is reclining under a big machine pointed at her face.]]
Scientist: We're about to try a radical trocheeotomy.
Guy: Rip out her vocal chords? I'm in favor.
Scientist: No, we're modifying her vocabulary* to erase the words she's fixated on.
*Digitoneurolinguistic hacking! It's totally real! Ask Neal Stephenson.
Scientist: Either the gap will be filled by normal words, or she'll just generate a new set of trochees.
Scientist: Here goes.
[[She pulls the lever on a large panel.]]
<<kachunk bzzzZZZZZZ>>
[[Girl is waking up.]]
Girl: ... GzZhRmPh ...
Girl ... banjo turtle!
Girl: Jetpack ferret pizza lawyer! Dentist hamster wombat plumber turkey jester hindu cowboy hooker bobcat scrapple!
Scientist (off-panel): Sigh.
Scientist: Time for plan B.
Scientist: Someone get a brick.
{{Title text: If you Huffman-coded all the 'random' things everyone on the internet has said over the years, you'd wind up with, like, 30 or 40 bytes *tops*.}}
Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).
We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves. The algorithm is banned in China. The algorithm is from Jersey. The algorithm constantly finds Jesus. This is not the algorithm. This is close.