2013-02-23
Explanation
This single-panel comic depicts two cavemen standing in front of a cave. One holds up a stick and declares "This bad stick," while the other suggests "What if we say it good stick?" Below the panel, a caption reads: "Historical fun fact: Marketing is just over 140,000 years old."
The joke distills the entire concept of marketing down to its most fundamental essence: calling something bad "good." By placing this exchange between two prehistoric humans with the most primitive possible language, the comic suggests that the impulse to misrepresent products is as old as humanity itself -- perhaps even a defining characteristic of our species. The fake "historical fun fact" format parodies the kind of trivia you might see in an educational sidebar, lending an air of false authority to the absurd claim. The figure of 140,000 years roughly corresponds to estimates for the emergence of anatomically modern humans, implying that marketing (i.e., lying about the quality of your goods) was essentially one of the first things humans invented. It is a concise, cynical commentary on advertising and salesmanship.