2012-12-18
Explanation
This comic shows a woman passionately declaring that "everyone thinks they're born special, but nobody is" and that you achieve specialness through "hard work, thought, and struggle." The man then asks about a news story about a baby born with a "gigantic telepathic superbrain." The next panel shows this baby on TV, sitting in a diaper while writing complex mathematical equations on a chalkboard. The woman's response: "I hate that baby so much."
The humor lies in the immediate, absurd counterexample to a motivational platitude. The woman's statement -- that nobody is born special and greatness must be earned -- is a common inspirational message about the value of hard work and perseverance. But the comic imagines the one scenario that would completely undermine it: a baby literally born with superhuman intelligence that makes effort irrelevant. The woman's visceral hatred of the baby reveals that her motivational philosophy was perhaps less about noble principles and more about coping with the possibility that some people really are just innately gifted. The comic pokes fun at how motivational speeches often rely on ignoring inconvenient counterexamples, and how fragile our comforting narratives about meritocracy can be when confronted with genuine exceptions.