Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke The comic opens with someone asking "Can video games be art?" Another character redirects: "Let me ask you a different question. Can video games be zinkvoodnik?" When the first person ask

## The Joke A media company discovers that outrage drives more engagement than any other emotion. They optimize for outrage. Their audience becomes permanently angry. The company celebrates record en

## The Joke One character calmly tells another: "You really shouldn't make straw man arguments." The second character immediately responds: "Oh? Well then I guess we should just NOT have arguments at

## The Joke A priest is performing the Eucharist, the Christian sacrament in which bread (a communion wafer) is consecrated and declared to be the body of Christ. As the priest holds up the wafer and

## The Joke A woman in lingerie tells her partner to "come at me like a T-Rex." The man, now shirtless, asks "So... specifically?" trying to figure out what she means. The woman clarifies with an une

## The Joke The comic contrasts the domestication of dogs with the domestication of cats. In the top panel, labeled "The Domestication of the Dog," an ancient human warmly invites a wolf out of the f

## The Joke Two people are having a conversation about AI. One asks, "Are you familiar with the concept of an AI winter?" The other replies with an explanation: "The idea that from time to time, arti

## The Joke A man confronts Father Time, the personification of the passage of time, accusing him of terrible crimes: "You've killed so many people! You've ruined so many places that mattered to me."

## The Joke A child asks their father a simple question: "Dad, why do gifts come in wrapping paper?" Instead of giving the obvious answer (it is festive and fun), the father delivers an unexpectedly

## The Joke A woman excitedly declares that now she is an adult with her own place, she can do all the things her parents told her not to do. She proceeds to try each forbidden activity, and every si

## The Joke A time traveler in futuristic armor arrives and explains to a medieval-era person that in the future, they have developed time travel and use it to "manage historical unpleasantness." The

## The Joke A person opens their computer to find a threatening message: "We placed a virus on your computer. We accessed your camera. We know what you have masturbated to." The person reacts with sh

## The Joke A woman tells a robot "Robots can't love." The robot responds that it has been tested and can simulate human affection so precisely that humans cannot tell the difference. The woman count

## The Joke A religious figure (resembling a priest or pastor) declares that "God did not intend for man to lay as one with other men." When challenged with "How do you think you know?" he responds t

## The Joke The comic is titled "Why Framing Is Important" and presents two panels side by side, each describing the same factual situation but with completely different emotional impact. In the "Upl

## The Joke Two people discuss how the internet has "gotten so mean." One suggests it is a structural problem. The other reminisces that it used to be possible to express yourself online, have people

## The Joke A martial arts master instructs his student that to win in combat, "you must let go of your conscious self." The student asks "Why, master?" The master then provides a neuroscience-accura

## The Joke A father is telling his child a bedtime story, setting up the classic werewolf premise: "You know the stories where the moon rises and werewolves uncontrollably turn into big hairy monste

## The Joke A couple is in bed together, and the woman enthusiastically tells the man: "Wow, really? You... you mean it?" He confirms: "Yes, my love." She then explains the significance: "Every time

## The Joke The comic is titled "Ways to Tell Your Kids No Without Saying 'No'" and presents four increasingly absurd alternative methods. The first panel, "Wailing," shows a parent simply screaming

## The Joke A woman with glasses sees a bearded man wearing socks with sandals and remarks: "Wow! I didn't know they made chastity belts for feet." The man is confused and asks: "For feet? Chastity..

## The Joke A woman asks God: "Dear God, may I ask the most fundamental things in physics?" and God replies asking what "fundamental" means to her. She clarifies: "Like, the fundamental constants --

## The Joke An elderly, bespectacled man who looks like a philosopher is browsing the internet and encounters a CAPTCHA prompt: "Are you a robot?" with a text box that says "Type answer here." Instea

## The Joke A woman asks Jesus: "Dear Jesus, what is the true spirit of Christmas?" Jesus responds: "Songs. Commercialism." Taken aback, she pushes back: "What about family? And baby you in the mange

## The Joke Two people are lying in bed having a late-night conversation about immortality. One observes that "mathematical ideas aren't considered 'just about any sequence you can think of' -- nobod

## The Joke The comic opens with a dramatic scene: people are huddled in what appears to be a crisis, with someone shouting "Goddammit, where is the magic hat!?" referring to a hat that "gives life t

## The Joke A man cheerfully announces to two people at what appears to be a holiday gathering: "I made snow angels outside!" One of the others looks out the window and says "Where? I don't see anyth

## The Joke The comic presents two panels labeled "True Thing" and "False Thing." In the first panel, a man reading a book acknowledges a genuine truth: "If I tell the truth about everything, I will

## The Joke A woman asks an economist whether economics has "enlightened" him. He enthusiastically says "Absolutely!" and explains that he used to think he needed to be rich to be happy. The intervie

## The Joke A woman excitedly meets another woman's twins and asks if they have been given "cute" names, "butterfly" names, or names from books. The mother -- revealed to be a mathematician -- respon

## The Joke A man confidently declares that "evolution is impossible" because "the 2nd law of thermodynamics says chaos always increases over time," and therefore you cannot go from rocks to consciou

## The Joke A child excitedly tells a parent "We built a snowman!" The parent, in an attempt to be gender-conscious, asks "Don't you know that's a snow MAN and not a snow WOMAN?" The child then fires

## The Joke A small red robot asks a larger blue robot: "Do you think machines are capable of suffering?" The blue robot says "Nope." The red robot follows up: "What do you do when you start to suffe

## The Joke A wild-eyed professor threatens someone: "If you object to my conjecture, I'll put you inside this coil of wires that'll create electrical body currents in your body until you VAPORIZE!"

## The Joke A woman holding a document with a downward-trending graph tells a man: "Sorry, you've used up all of your shithead permits for this fiscal quarter. You have to either stop being a shithea

## The Joke This long-form comic follows a conversation about modern media consumption and its effects. It begins with someone describing how "early social media felt so optimistic" -- platforms that

## The Joke The comic is titled "Know Your Minerals" and presents a four-panel educational-style guide comparing different types of gold-like substances. The panels show: "Gold" (a noble metal that i

## The Joke In a future where artificial intelligence has surpassed humans at most tasks, a person walks into a "Human Temp Agency" asking what jobs remain for humans now that AI has taken over. The

## The Joke Two people are stargazing when one shares the fact that "the first men on the moon pooped there." The other hadn't thought about it but acknowledges it makes sense -- "it would be weird i

## The Joke A man stands triumphantly before what appears to be a high-security vault or nuclear facility, laughing that "thanks to quantum cryptography, nobody will ever find out what the nuclear la

## The Joke A woman who appears to be a rocket scientist is standing at a chalkboard, explaining her strategy for running a marathon using the same principles as multi-stage rocketry. Her plan: once

## The Joke A couple is lying in bed discussing ethics, specifically the classic "would you go back in time to kill baby Hitler?" thought experiment. One partner raises the complication that ethical

## The Joke The comic is a meditation on humanity's relationship with the absurd, presented through a series of escalating scenarios. It begins with a character stating that "we believe in the absurd

## The Joke The comic poses the question: "What if Bruce Wayne never invented Batman?" In this alternate reality, Bruce Wayne still experienced the trauma of his parents being murdered, but instead o

## The Joke A character explains the fundamental problem with neural networks: "they work, but you don't always know why." She then reveals she has discovered a "simple solution" -- instead of trying

## The Joke A person arrives on Mars via teleportation and is greeted with "Welcome to Mars!" They react with excitement -- "Wow! That was fast!" -- only to be told that the teleporter works by scann

## The Joke The comic presents "A Theorem" written in the style of a formal mathematical proof, but applied to math jokes. The proof proceeds in two parts. First, it proves that the set of math jokes

## The Joke A professor stands before a chalkboard with two statements written on it. The first reads "(Number of people required to have a conspiracy) = 2," establishing the minimum threshold for a

## The Joke A robotic or cybernetic character boasts about their upgraded cognitive capabilities, explaining that while a normal human can only second-guess their decisions, this character's enhanced

## The Joke Two characters, apparently entertainment industry executives, discuss their strategy for making content. One explains the plan: "We'll just keep churning out movies that appeal to their s