2013-07-14
Explanation
In this comic, a man who has just been dumped by Sally launches into an increasingly extreme nihilistic philosophical rant. He begins by noting that Sally has declared their love to be dead, but then spirals into solipsism and radical skepticism, arguing that if there are just physical processes then there is no observer, and if there is no observer there are no physical processes. He goes further, dismissing fields, forces, and atoms as mere "scarecrows" and "hope packed into nothing in the vain wish that it'll take shape." He reaches peak nihilism by declaring himself "not even nothing" but rather "the shadow of nothing, the absence of absence."
Then Sally walks in, and he immediately snaps out of it with a casual "Oh. Hi Sally." In the final panel, he reverses course entirely: "Maybe protons DO exist." The joke is that his entire elaborate philosophical crisis was not a genuine intellectual position but simply an emotional reaction to being dumped. The moment the relationship appears to be back on, the entire edifice of nihilistic philosophy collapses and physical reality is restored.
The votey shows a note reading "Dear Zach, I am offended by your red-head tokenism. Sincerely, Internet," which is a self-aware joke by cartoonist Zach Weinersmith about his frequent use of a red-haired female character in his comics. The comic satirizes how people sometimes dress up emotional reactions in intellectual or philosophical language, using the frameworks of physics and philosophy of mind to mask what is really just heartbreak.