2012-12-25
Explanation
This comic, titled "The Relationship-Grammar Test," shows a man presenting a woman with a card that reads "YOUR FAT." The punchline is in the instructions below: an offended person is "too bad at grammar to date," while a non-offended person "will thank you for the gift of bacon."
The humor hinges on the grammatical ambiguity of "YOUR FAT." If read as the common error "your" in place of "you're" (i.e., "you're fat"), it's an insult about someone's weight. But if read correctly as the possessive "your" modifying the noun "fat" (i.e., "here is your fat/bacon"), it's simply someone handing over a gift of rendered animal fat or bacon. The comic proposes this as a relationship compatibility test: a person who gets offended has revealed that they automatically read it as the grammatical mistake "you're fat," meaning they themselves don't distinguish between "your" and "you're" -- making them too grammar-impaired to date. A person who reads it correctly as "your fat" (possessive) would simply accept the gift. It's a nerdy, grammar-focused joke that plays on the your/you're confusion that is one of the most common and most mocked errors in English.