2013-09-14
Explanation
This comic features a conversation between a woman and a small alien creature (a recurring SMBC character) lying on a grassy hill. The woman asks the alien, "Do you ever wonder if it'''s all just meaningless?" The alien asks what "meaningless" means. When she tries to explain, saying "It'''s like... you don'''t have..." the alien interrupts excitedly: "Is it a good word? What does it do?" The woman explains that it is sort of like a word to refer to the idea that "you aren'''t important to the universe." The alien is puzzled, noting that humans have a word specifically to describe the idea that reality is full of things that "weren'''t focused on them individually." It calls this concept "megalomania." The woman retorts, "Well, you don'''t have to be a jerk about it."
The joke is a clever philosophical inversion. Humans typically see "meaninglessness" as a profound and distressing existential concept -- the worry that we do not matter in the grand cosmic scheme. But the alien reframes this entirely: having a special word for the simple fact that the universe was not designed around you is, from the alien'''s perspective, an extraordinary act of narcissism. The very concept of "meaninglessness" presupposes that we expected to be meaningful in the first place, which the alien finds hilariously self-centered. The comic neatly satirizes existential angst by exposing the hidden egoism embedded in it.
The votey panel adds a final gag: the woman asks the alien, "So, do you lie on the grass philosophizing 24/7?" and the alien sadly replies, "I'''m glued to this hill." This undercuts the alien'''s lofty philosophical wisdom with a mundane and slightly pathetic revelation -- it was never choosing to contemplate the cosmos; it is simply stuck there.