2012-10-15
Explanation
This comic is titled "SMBC Presents: Film Geek Goes to a Fortune Teller." A person visits a fortune teller with a crystal ball, who delivers an ominous prediction: "I foresee you becoming so obsessed with experiencing media in just the right way that it will poison your ability to enjoy it." In the next panel, the film geek is clutching his head in distress and screaming, "SPOILERS! SPOILERS!"
The joke works on two levels. First, the fortune teller'''s prophecy is itself a kind of spoiler -- she is telling the film geek what will happen in his future, which is the very thing he dreads. Second, the comic satirizes the modern obsession with avoiding spoilers, suggesting that the desire to experience every piece of media in a perfectly unspoiled state has become so extreme that it actually diminishes people'''s ability to enjoy anything. The film geek'''s reaction -- screaming about spoilers even when receiving a genuine mystical prophecy about his own life -- shows how the anti-spoiler mentality has become an irrational reflex that overrides all other concerns.
The votey panel adds a final layer: the fortune teller says "You can prevent it," and the film geek responds "SPOILERS!" -- demonstrating that he is so deep in his spoiler-phobia that he cannot even accept helpful advice about his own future without treating it as unwanted information. He is trapped in a paradox where the very warning that could save him is rejected as a spoiler.