2013-09-07
Explanation
This comic features a person with spiral-shaped glasses making an increasingly absurd argument about vegetarianism and meat consumption. They begin by stating they have decided to become a vegetarian and "can'''t eat these meatballs." They then launch into an elaborate logical chain: beef comes from Black Angus cattle, which have specific genetic traits. These cattle exist in abundance only because of human culture'''s demand for meat consumption. Therefore, the moment people stop eating them, they will lose their evolutionary raison d'''etre, and no member of any species will ever again know what it was to be a Black Angus cow. The speaker'''s conclusion: "Meat is murder. Vegetarianism is GENOCIDE."
The joke is a reductio ad absurdum -- taking a real philosophical thread and stretching it to a ludicrous conclusion. There is a genuine philosophical observation buried in here: domesticated animal breeds exist because humans bred them for consumption, so ending meat consumption would indeed lead to the decline of those specific breeds. But calling this "genocide" is an intentional overstatement that parodies how people can use seemingly logical reasoning to arrive at completely ridiculous conclusions. The spiral glasses on the speaker are a visual cue that this person is slightly unhinged.
The woman listening responds to the proclamation with: "You just said it'''s not making two different claims." And another person at the table says, "I don'''t negotiate with monsters." The votey panel caps it off with someone shouting "Soy is bovigenocide!" -- a portmanteau of "bovine" and "genocide" -- which takes the already absurd argument to its most extreme and silly formulation.