Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

2013-01-11

2013-01-11 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
2013-01-11
Votey panel for 2013-01-11
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

In the first panel, a woman at a bar suggestively tells a man, "Hey there. How about we go to the restroom, lock the door, and I blow your mind." The scene then cuts to "Soon..." where they are indeed in the restroom, and the woman is writing on a board or reciting Euler's identity: e^(i*pi) = -1. The man reacts with a conflicted "Whoooaaa. But... dammit. But... whoooaaaa."

The humor comes from the bait-and-switch between the sexual innuendo of "blow your mind" and the literal, intellectual meaning. The woman's proposition is phrased to sound like a sexual come-on, but she delivers on it in the most nerdy way possible -- by showing him Euler's identity, widely considered one of the most beautiful equations in mathematics because it elegantly connects five fundamental mathematical constants (e, i, pi, 1, and 0) in a single equation. The man's reaction -- simultaneously awed by the math and frustrated that it was not what he expected -- captures the conflict between intellectual appreciation and disappointed expectations. It is a classic SMBC joke that celebrates math nerdiness while playing on the gap between suggestive language and geeky reality.

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