2012-12-06
Explanation
This comic presents a graph with "Happiness" on the y-axis and "Time Spent Thinking About the Future or the Past" on the x-axis. The red curve shows that happiness initially rises as you spend a little time reflecting on the future or past, reaches a peak, and then plummets as you spend more and more time dwelling on things other than the present moment.
The joke plays on the well-known mindfulness advice that living in the present moment leads to greater happiness, while excessive rumination about the past (regret, nostalgia) or anxiety about the future leads to unhappiness. However, the graph also shows that spending zero time thinking about the future or past is not optimal either -- some small amount of reflection is beneficial and increases happiness. The humor is in presenting this common-sense psychological insight as a precise mathematical curve, giving it the veneer of rigorous scientific analysis.
The votey extends the joke with a deliberately confusing graph that has multiple unlabeled curves and axes, with only "Age" labeled on one axis. The chaotic, overlapping lines with arrows pointing in various directions parody the tendency to over-complicate simple insights with increasingly elaborate and incomprehensible charts.