2014-03-20
Explanation
The Joke
The comic follows a sequence about education and gaming. In the first panel, someone declares they are going to "gaming all day, gonna use all my money" while another person says "Not! Education is the greatest investment. How about summer..."
The next panels show a progression: the person is told to study, with someone saying "Good. Nice and easy. Put '''em up. The refs bad and Harvard gets hurt." This appears to be about gaming being treated like tutoring or education. A panel shows "Gaming tutoring" and what looks like a serious academic setting.
The comic then shows someone saying "Real answers! This looks hard" and another responding "No, it'''s not, go go go." The final panels show a scene where someone has apparently died or collapsed while "filling out his student loan application," with onlookers reacting in shock.
The Humor
The comic satirizes the absurd cost of higher education in America by drawing a parallel between gaming and education. It suggests that the competitive, high-stakes nature of college admissions and student loans has made education feel less like a path to enlightenment and more like a brutal, high-stakes game where people can figuratively (or in this comic, literally) die trying.
The punchline -- someone dying while filling out a student loan application -- is dark humor that exaggerates the very real stress and financial burden that student debt places on young people. The comic suggests that the education system has become so expensive and cutthroat that it'''s essentially as dangerous as the violent video games that parents often worry about.
References
- Student loan crisis: The comic references the growing crisis of student loan debt in the United States, where total student debt has exceeded trillion and continues to be a major financial burden on graduates.