I was a daily reader of CAD at the time and I thought the reaction was disproportionate, but none of my partners have ever had a miscarriage during the time I was with them, as far as I know. (I cannot have a miscarriage myself.) There were some reactions that just seemed “mean”, but some people that had experienced a miscarriage (or a partner’s miscarriage) felt attacked/wronged by the comic for various reasons. I personally thought it was creative, tho it was not the tone I was expecting.

I think we mostly still don’t really know what makes things “go viral”, so I’m really not sure why it did, though I think most of the “meme-abilty” has to do with how “recognizable” the minimalist takes make it. Ex: :.|:;

I was never a huge reader of that comic, so I’m not sure. I just like the meme because of it’s obscurity/subtlety. That it can literally be reproduced with hieroglyphics, etc… Just somehow feels like it’s one of the handful of things that will definitely survive into the distant future when people are trying to figure out wtf we were doing. But I didn’t know about it for a long, long time, so I’m not really an expert.