Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic features a character meant to represent mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, famous for his work on fractals and self-similar recursive structures. He delivers a pickup line that is itself recursive: "Hey baby, this pickup line is recursive. The 'hey' is short for 'hey baby, this pickup line is recursive.' The '"hey"' is short for '"hey baby, this pickup line is recursive.' The..."

The joke operates on multiple levels. First, it's a nerd humor gag about using mathematical concepts in romantic contexts, which is inherently absurd. Second, the pickup line itself is a genuine example of recursion -- each element of the phrase contains within it the entire phrase, which in turn contains the entire phrase again, mirroring the self-similar structure of fractals that Mandelbrot studied. The caption "Benoit Mandelbrot: Master of seduction" adds an extra layer of irony, since this kind of pickup line would almost certainly not work as seduction but is a perfect demonstration of the mathematical concept for which Mandelbrot was known.