Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

2011-02-25

2011-02-25 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
2011-02-25
Votey panel for 2011-02-25
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This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic follows a man whose internet connection fails while he is masturbating. He decides to use his imagination instead, "like people used to." In his fantasy, he encounters a woman who is upset that he has abandoned all his other fantasy characters -- a cheerleader, a barista, and Princess Zelda -- who have apparently left because he stopped visiting them. He wakes up distressed, relieved it was "just a dream," and immediately goes back to his computer for his "daily routine" of watching pornography.

The comic satirizes modern dependence on internet pornography by imagining a person's own imagination as an abandoned, guilt-ridden landscape. The personified fantasy characters act like neglected friends, adding an absurd emotional dimension to what is essentially a joke about how the internet has replaced human imagination. The final panel's punchline -- showing "remarkably specific porn" on his screen -- drives home the idea that online content has made personal fantasy obsolete, even during a brief outage.

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