Closing the Curtains

About

Closing the Curtains is a multi-panel exploitable comic series featuring an overweight man who closes his curtains to prevent being distracted from his computer. The character is often depicted as an anti-social example of the neckbeard stereotype.

Origin

On November 27th, 2005, Something Awful user CrumFUNist submitted a thread titled “Lego_Robot sucks ass,”^[9] which criticized forum user Lego_Robot (webcomic artist Bob Averill) for creating poor MSPaint comics and trolling the forums. Over the next two years, the thread gained over 1,500 responses. In May 2007, Averill posted a comic titled “This one’s not funny” on the website Lego Robot Comics (now named PlasticBrickAutomaton),^[1] which depicts an overweight Something Awful user mocking Lego_Robot in a discussion thread before closing his window when distracted by two women playing volleyball outside (shown below).^[11]

Spread

In September 2007, Averill was banned from the Something Awful Forums.^[8] On November 15th, a cropped version of the original comic featuring the final three panels was uploaded to the “kuvia” folder on the domain MBnet^[3] (shown below, left). On December 31st, 2010, Redditor byxekaka submitted a post titled “This is how I will celebrate New Years” featuring an edited version of the comic with fireworks exploding outside of the window (shown below, right). Prior to being archived, the post garnered upwards of 2,100 votes (91% upvoted) and 480 comments on the /r/pics^[12] subreddit.

In May, Redditor notthatjesus submitted a photoshopped comic titled “I was three hours into surfing Reddit and I noticed there was a solar eclipse going on” to /r/funny,^[13] receiving more than 1,400 votes (91% upvoted) before it was archived (shown below, left). On December 19th, 2012, Redditor FazeKross posted a comic with a mushroom cloud exploding outside of the window titled “What I’ll be doing December 21st,” in reference to a Mayan calendar doomsday prediction (shown below, right). Prior to being archived, the post gained upwards of 2,700 votes (94% upvoted) and 200 comments on /r/funny.^[15] In December 2014, Redditor TwistedFisters reposted the fireworks comic with the title “How I imagine most of Reddit will celebrate new year’s eve” to /r/funny,^[14] where it garnered over 3,900 votes (89% upvoted) and 560 comments in two months.