2011-05-17
Explanation
This comic presents a graph titled "You are living in a brief golden age." The y-axis is labeled "Fun of hand-based games" and the x-axis shows a timeline of discoveries: "Discovery of Rock," "Discovery of Paper," "Discovery of Scissors," and "Discovery of Mind Reading." The graph shows that the fun of hand-based games was essentially zero until all three items (rock, paper, scissors) had been discovered, at which point there is a brief spike of high fun -- the "golden age" -- which then crashes back to zero once mind reading is discovered, since mind reading would make Rock Paper Scissors trivially solvable.
The humor lies in treating Rock Paper Scissors as if it were a naturally evolving phenomenon that required specific historical discoveries, rather than an invented game. The comic imagines a timeline where rocks, paper, and scissors were discovered at different points in history, and the game could only exist once all three were available. The absurdity is compounded by the idea that mind reading is an inevitable future discovery on the same timeline, which would render the game completely pointless since your opponent would always know what you were going to throw.
The votey bonus panel reads: "Before you email me: No, masturbation doesn'''t count. It'''s not a game. It'''s a sport." This is a preemptive response to readers who might point out that there are other fun "hand-based games," with Weiner deflecting the objection through crude humor and a deliberately absurd categorical distinction.