2013-03-04
Explanation
This comic plays on the disconnect between what people mean by "wild" and "risky" in different contexts. A woman tells her partner she wants to be with someone more interesting -- someone who "does something wild and lets the chips fall where they may." In the next panel, a man responds that he plans to never take any action toward fulfilling any of his hopes and dreams, and asks "What could possibly be riskier than that?"
The punchline lands when the woman clarifies she was thinking of something more like hang-gliding, and the man responds, "I guess you're not much of a daredevil." The humor comes from the man redefining "risk" in an existential rather than physical sense. From a purely rational standpoint, he has a point: gambling your entire life's potential by doing nothing with it is arguably a bigger risk than any extreme sport. But of course, when people say they want someone "wild" and "risky," they mean motorcycles and skydiving, not philosophical paralysis dressed up as bravado.
The comic satirizes both sides: the romanticization of superficial "risk-taking" as a personality trait, and the tendency of over-thinkers to intellectualize their inaction into something that sounds courageous. It's a classic SMBC move of taking a common social script and following it to an absurd but logically defensible conclusion.