2011-06-27
Explanation
This comic presents a single-panel scene set in Hell, where a devil greets a newly arrived human soul. The devil says "Welcome to the afterlife, human!" but then immediately follows up with a resigned observation: "There is no torture so horrible that a human won'''t eventually fetishize it." The caption below the panel reads, "This is why I don'''t believe in Hell."
The joke operates on two levels. First, it plays on the well-known observation that virtually every form of pain, degradation, or extreme experience has been adopted as a source of pleasure by some subset of humanity. The devil, whose entire purpose is to punish the damned, finds himself in an existential crisis because his tools of torment are rendered ineffective by the boundless capacity of humans to derive enjoyment from suffering. It is a comic subversion of the concept of eternal damnation: if humans can find a way to enjoy anything, then Hell as a punishment becomes logically incoherent.
The votey (bonus panel) extends the joke perfectly. The frustrated devil declares, "Fine, I'''m sending you to Heaven!" and the human screams "NOOOOOO!" This adds another layer: the human has become so perversely attached to the idea of Hell that the real punishment would be taking it away. It also implies this particular person might genuinely prefer the torments of Hell, confirming the devil'''s complaint. The whole comic is a sharp bit of philosophical humor about human psychology and the paradoxes of punishment.