Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

## The Joke The comic shows a figure in ancient Greek attire, depicted with dramatic intensity, declaring: "The strong do what they can, and the weak endure what they must." This is one of the most f

## The Joke A parent mentions that her daughter was playing a video game, and another parent immediately jumps in with "You let her play a video game? That is not real parenting!" She then lists all

## The Joke A person at a dinner table announces: "I am a sado-vegan. I only eat plants that have been proven to actively signal other plants when being killed." This inverts the entire premise of ve

## The Joke A person asks the classic existential question: "Do you ever worry the world would be better off if you never existed?" Another character immediately reframes it: "Let us make that questi

## The Joke A person tells someone: "Hey sweetie, I just want you to know you are loved." The recipient immediately starts poking holes in this feel-good statement. "I mean, not by everyone. Most peo

## The Joke A man announces that he has a fetish for people not being aroused by his fetish. He tells this to a couple, and the woman immediately responds, "That's not a real fetish," showing clear d

## The Joke The comic reimagines the Biblical story of God creating Eve from Adam's rib. God explains to Adam that he used a rib bone to create woman, which is why women are made of "magical bone" an

## The Joke A scientist (Dr. Cohen) is shown in dramatic red lighting, staring with a deeply concerned expression. His speech bubble reads: "My God. They're conscious... They can plan and act autonom

## The Joke Two parents are sitting together at what appears to be a social gathering, and the woman proudly says, "I'm so happy we've raised two perfectly good kids together." In the next panel, she

## The Joke The comic opens with a classic Arthurian scene: a wizard (resembling Merlin) stands before two swords embedded in stones. He tells a knight that pulling one sword will make him king, whil

## The Joke A man and a woman are talking, and one proposes the classic romantic backup plan: "If we're both 30 and not married, let's make a pact. We'll marry each other." Instead of a sweet or sent

## The Joke A man tells a pastor that he is starting to question his faith. He says, "I just don't believe Jesus turned into three monkeys in a robe and beard, then returned to life." The pastor resp

## The Joke A NASA mission control scene shows someone announcing that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has locked on to the Apollo 17 landing site. They explain that now they can see where the last

## The Joke The comic features a supervillain-style character who calls himself "Zoonosis." He announces his villainous credentials: "They call me Zoonosis. I have filled my house with thousands of c

## The Joke The comic is set in a biblical or ancient marketplace. A bearded man (resembling Jesus) tells someone: "Sorry, kids. I had to close down the family fish market. There's a man selling fish

## The Joke A couple is at what appears to be a carnival or arcade. The man explains that they had "pretty good" sex, during which he won ten tickets. Tickets can be redeemed at the ticket counter fo

## The Joke A boss walks up to an employee named Dave and delivers the classic workplace cliche: "Hey, Dave. Workin' hard or hardly workin'?" Dave responds honestly: "Ha! That's tough to say, Boss. T

## The Joke A man tells his partner he does not want to have sex tonight. When she asks why, he explains that he created a machine intelligence that "solved sex." The outcome of any erotic encounter

## The Joke A father discovers that one of his children ate his wife'''s entire batch of cookies but does not know which child did it. Rather than simply punishing both, he announces he is putting th

## The Joke The comic'''s header asks: "What if programmers''' bibles were actually bibles written by programmers?" It then shows an open Bible with the text: "And lo, Paul did proclaim that Christia

## The Joke A bearded ancient Greek man (Zeno) stands shirtless next to a woman and explains: "In order for sex to happen, you have to complete half of sex. Then, half of the remainder. Then half of

## The Joke The comic presents a two-axis chart titled "History Books: A Guide." The vertical axis represents book length (short to long) and the horizontal axis represents the time period covered (s

## The Joke A girl explains that her father was a powerful mutant (a Cyclops-type figure who could shoot powerful lasers from his eyes), but her mother was a regular human, so she only got "a little

## The Joke A young man asks a wise elder ("Grandpa") how he will know if a girl is "the one." The grandfather launches into an elaborate, epic prophecy: she will arrive on a winter'''s night when th

## The Joke The comic is titled "Death of an Economist." A man lies dying and recounts his final moments in economic jargon: he had a sip of methanol which made him pleasantly inebriated, so he displ

## The Joke A death row inmate is asked what he wants for his last meal. The next panel is titled "The Executioner" and shows the executioner sitting across from the prisoner at a table with food, lo

## The Joke An alien is explaining to a human that their planet and star share a special bond and constellation. The alien says their world is on opposite ends of what humans call Ursa Major (the Gre

## The Joke A young boy tells a girl at school: "You'''re pretty and smart and I wanna marry someone who'''s pretty and smart so we can have babies who are pretty and smart." The girl immediately yel

## The Joke Scientists finally solve the hard problem of consciousness — and the answer is either deeply unsatisfying or deeply disturbing (or both). The specific punchline varies, but the structure

## The Joke A woman begins by reading from a study: "Dear God, according to recent research, people who believe in a higher power tend to be happier." She then asks how anyone knows it is not because

## The Joke A man knocks on someone'''s door and says he is not sure if the other person remembers him, but they went to high school together. He says he wanted to apologize for being a jerk -- he wa

## The Joke A girl tells her grandmother that everyone at school saw her underwear and she will never live it down. The grandmother reassures her with seemingly standard advice: take care of yourself

## The Joke A man tells a woman he is thinking of going in for a penile enhancement surgery. She responds with typical body-positivity advice: "You'''re a perfectly fine body! Why not just accept you

## The Joke A math teacher tells the class they are learning about the "pretty-much-null set." A student asks what is in it, and the teacher says there is a 4 in there, but it is "a crappy one." The

## The Joke The comic is titled "Bad Use of a Time Machine #161803: Making a Pun at the Most Offensive Moment Possible." A time traveler appears in a time machine next to Julius Caesar, who is lying

## The Joke This is a long-form comic that satirizes the social security system and intergenerational politics. It begins with a woman complaining about having to pay into Social Security, calling it

## The Joke The comic plays on the popular myth that "you lose 90% of your body heat through your head." In the first panel, one person tells another this supposed fact, and the listener is surprised

## The Joke A man explains to a woman why she is attracted to him. He says that a woman who is willing to break lots of social rules — one who is willing to behave "badly" — is also more likely to br

## The Joke The comic retells the story of the Garden of Eden with a modern media twist. Eve tells Adam that the snake show is on, and Adam is not sure he wants to watch it. The snake (the serpent fr

## The Joke A woman at her computer is apparently selling used panties online. A buyer asks what they would use them for, and the seller responds: "A drive belt for a threshing machine." In the final

## The Joke A woman advocates the ethical position that people should only eat meat they have personally killed. Her companion points out practical problems — hunted meat costs more time and money th

## The Joke A mother is reading a bedtime story to her child. The story ends: "And so, the little boy was eaten by wild dogs due to an error pertaining to excessive false positives." The caption belo

## The Joke The comic presents a proposal for a new space agency that is explicitly designed to appeal to misanthropic motivations rather than noble ones. The presenter argues that NASA is "not hatef

## The Joke A person (Sally) smugly states that "a watched pot never boils." Another person corrects her, explaining that a covered pot can reach 350 degrees Celsius, that their vision cannot prevent

## The Joke Two abstract, donut-shaped beings float in a void discussing the nature of nothingness. One asks why there is nothing and not something. The other asks what "nothing" means to the first o

## The Joke The comic presents a graph titled "Why Humanity Is Doomed." The X-axis is "Time" and the Y-axis is "Machine Intelligence." The curve shows that as machine intelligence increases over time

## The Joke The comic explores the famous "trolley problem" as applied to self-driving cars. Each car holds five people, and each must choose between hitting a man or swerving off a cliff, killing it

## The Joke A parent is reading Aesop's fable "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" to their child, but instead of taking away the intended moral lesson, the parent offers a brutally logical critique: if th

## The Joke A woman tells a man that what's "really attractive" in movies and novels isn't physical appearance -- it's having a caring, engaged partner who helps you achieve your dreams. The man resp

## The Joke A child tells their parent "Mom, I can't sleep," and the parent begins counting sheep -- but immediately spirals into catastrophic anxiety scenarios. "I can't! The nuclear apocalypse kill