2012-02-12
Explanation
This comic, published on February 12 (just before Valentine's Day 2012), presents a deliberately tasteless Valentine's Day card. The card reads "We're Tou(rette's) of a Kind!" -- a pun combining "two of a kind" with Tourette's syndrome. Inside the card, a character attempts the classic romantic poem format "Roses are red, violets are..." but the verse devolves into a string of repeated expletives, mimicking the coprolalia symptom (involuntary swearing) popularly associated with Tourette's syndrome.
The humor is intentionally crude and plays on the common (though medically inaccurate) stereotype that Tourette's syndrome primarily manifests as uncontrollable swearing. In reality, coprolalia affects only a minority of people with Tourette's. The comic is characteristic of SMBC's willingness to mine uncomfortable territory for laughs, presenting something that would be wildly inappropriate as an actual Valentine's Day card.