2012-06-05
Explanation
In this comic, a person uses a time machine to see what future humans will look like, reasoning that since "only the fittest reproduce," evolution should produce "musclebound supergeniuses" after thousands of years. The punchline, set 10,000 years later, reveals that humans are "basically the same, except 95% of us have a condom-breaking mechanism on our penises."
The joke is a pointed satire of common misconceptions about how natural selection actually works. Popular understanding of evolution often assumes it drives species toward some ideal of perfection -- stronger, smarter, faster. In reality, natural selection only favors traits that lead to greater reproductive success, which is not the same thing as being "the fittest" in a general sense. The comic takes this to its logical and absurd extreme: the most evolutionarily successful trait in a world with contraception wouldn't be intelligence or strength, but the ability to defeat birth control. It's a clever commentary on how evolution is blind to human values and only "cares" about which genes get passed on, regardless of whether those traits are ones we'd consider admirable or desirable.