2013-06-19
Explanation
This comic is a multi-panel exploration of time machine paradoxes. A woman wearing glasses (the stereotypical SMBC scientist/nerd character) discusses time travel with another person. She proposes the idea of a time machine that does not make sense: "Step in the machine, press a button, go to a different time." She then explores various objections: the problem of what happens to you in other times, the issue of two versions of you existing simultaneously, and questions about aging.
The conversation escalates in complexity as the characters consider nested time machines -- "What if the outer machine creates its own internal time while it'''s traveling?" and then placing a person in each of two nested time machines, with one going back in time and the other going forward. The other character declares each escalating scenario "stupid," but the woman persists. The final panel shows them both bewildered, with the man exclaiming, "Dammit! They always have an explosion because it'''s easier. I hit the really weird stuff."
The joke is a commentary on how science fiction typically handles time travel. Most movies and TV shows avoid the genuinely strange philosophical and physical paradoxes of time travel by simply adding explosions, drama, or hand-waving. This comic gleefully dives into the conceptual rabbit hole that popular sci-fi avoids, showing how quickly time travel scenarios become deeply confusing and paradoxical when you actually think them through rigorously. The votey shows the text "Turtleneck and glasses: not worn in real life since 1973" -- a joke about how the bespectacled, turtleneck-wearing intellectual is a character archetype that exists primarily in fiction and comics rather than in actual modern life.