2014-03-28
Explanation
The Joke
The comic depicts a man trying to explain romance to a woman in purely evolutionary and game-theory terms. He describes love as a strategy: you run yourself through a series of increasingly embarrassing situations to demonstrate commitment, you use "foreward winking" (a play on "forward thinking" or signaling), and the whole process is about making yourself attractive to the opposite sex while maintaining your social status. He is essentially reducing the entire romantic experience to cold, calculated self-interest.
When the woman asks him to clarify, he says: "So I guess what I am saying is, do you want me to do you things in exchange for self-interest from both parties?" She agrees to this unromantic proposition, and they go see a movie together.
In the final panel, they are watching a movie, and a character on screen proclaims something dramatic. The caption reads: "THE GREATEST ROMANCE."
The Humor
The humor lies in the absurd contrast between the man's hyper-rational, evolutionary-psychology framing of romance and the fact that, despite stripping away all the poetry and sentiment, the end result is exactly the same as any normal date -- they go to a movie together. The punchline "THE GREATEST ROMANCE" is ironic, since the setup was the least romantic courtship imaginable.
The comic satirizes the tendency of certain intellectuals (particularly those drawn to evolutionary psychology or economics) to reduce human emotions and social behavior to dry, utilitarian calculations, while missing the point that the "irrational" framing of romance is part of what makes it enjoyable. Despite all the over-analysis, the couple ends up doing exactly what any normal couple would do.