2014-04-21
Explanation
The Joke
The comic is a single panel showing two cavemen-like figures. One asks, "Hey, are you happy today?" The other replies, "Of course. I'm happy all the time. Just like everyone else. Why do you ask?" The caption below reads: "Before pants."
The Humor
The joke suggests that humanity was universally happy before the invention of pants -- implying that the development of clothing (and by extension, civilization, social norms, and modernity) is the root cause of human unhappiness. The caveman's response is notable because he is genuinely confused by the question; in his world, being happy all the time is so normal that asking about it seems bizarre.
The humor works as a playful riff on the "noble savage" or primitivist idea that humans were happier in a simpler state of nature, taken to an absurd extreme by pinpointing pants specifically as the turning point. It also pokes fun at the modern condition where unhappiness is so common that we constantly ask each other "are you okay?" -- something that would have been incomprehensible to our hypothetical always-happy ancestors.