2014-02-15
Explanation
The Joke
A woman explains that "kids, moms, and dads really love each other" but describes it as being "in a way largely centered around a triangular cycle between loneliness, sex, and guilt, in which each is in turn mistaken for love, only to have its true nature revealed over and over and over." A child asks, "Is adulthood just terrible?" The woman responds: "Imagine childhood, but with no reason to believe anything will change next year." The child screams in horror.
The Humor
The comedy comes from the brutally cynical deconstruction of adult romantic relationships. Rather than offering a comforting or sanitized explanation to a child, the woman delivers a devastatingly bleak analysis of adult love as a repetitive cycle of confusion between loneliness, sex, and guilt. The punchline deepens the darkness further: adulthood is not merely terrible on its own terms, but it is childhood's misery minus the hope that things will eventually improve. The child's horrified screaming serves as a cathartic stand-in for the audience's own recognition of this uncomfortable truth. The humor is quintessential SMBC -- taking an earnest question and answering it with philosophical pessimism delivered in a matter-of-fact tone.