2010-12-18
Explanation
This comic uses real scientific facts to set up a joke about male insecurity regarding anatomy. It begins by stating several true facts: there is roughly one atom of hydrogen per cubic meter of space in the universe, a hydrogen atom has a mass of roughly 1.66 x 10^-27 kilograms, and the average person has a mass of roughly 80 kilograms. The text then says, "Which leads us to the human condition."
The punchline shows a man proudly boasting to a woman that "It would take ten million billion cubic meters of space to equal the mass of my penis!" -- as though this were an impressive statistic. The woman dryly responds, "So... about average then," and the man sheepishly confirms, "Only slightly below average, yes." The humor lies in the man attempting to make his anatomy sound impressive by expressing its mass in terms of an astronomically large volume of nearly empty space, when in reality the calculation simply confirms he is average or below average. It satirizes the tendency to use big numbers and scientific language to make mundane things sound more impressive than they are.