Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

2013-12-31

2013-12-31 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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2013-12-31
Votey panel for 2013-12-31
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Explanation

The Joke

Two aliens are presenting their findings about humans. They announce that their zoologists have discovered that humans are attracted to silk undergarments. To "accelerate copulation," they have replaced 50% of Earth's air with silk. One alien cheers "Hooray!" while the other exclaims in disgust "EGAHH!" as a naked human woman appears between them. In the final panel, one alien notes that humans seem to believe this is their "mating call."

The Humor

The comedy comes from the aliens' comically flawed understanding of human sexuality and attraction. They correctly identify that humans find silk undergarments attractive, but they misunderstand the mechanism entirely -- leaping from "humans like silk underwear" to "let's replace half the atmosphere with silk." This is a classic alien-misinterpretation joke where extraterrestrials take a cultural observation and apply it with absurd literalism. The additional layer of humor comes from the aliens' horrified reactions to a naked human, suggesting they find us as strange and unappealing as we might find them. The final panel adds another joke: the aliens misinterpret the humans' disgusted screams as a mating call, compounding their hilariously wrong understanding of human behavior.

View History (1) Original Comic