2014-04-23
Explanation
The Joke
The comic is a graph with "Level of Agreement" on the x-axis and "Odds of Fighting Someone Online" on the y-axis. The curve is U-shaped: it is high on the far left (labeled "Disagree on fundamental nature of reality"), drops to a minimum in the middle, and then rises steeply on the far right (labeled "Disagree exclusively on appropriate way to say things").
The Humor
The joke captures a well-observed truth about online arguments. People who fundamentally disagree about reality (e.g., completely different worldviews) do fight online, but the most intense and vicious fights happen between people who actually agree on almost everything and only differ on minor points of phrasing, tone, or terminology.
This is a widely recognized phenomenon in online discourse, sometimes called "the narcissism of small differences" (a term from Freud). People who share 99% of the same views will fight most bitterly over the remaining 1%, especially when it comes to how to say things rather than what to say. The graph humorously quantifies this dynamic, showing that near-total agreement is actually the most combustible situation online.
References
The concept depicted is related to Freud's "narcissism of small differences" (from his 1917 essay), which describes the tendency for communities with small differences to engage in more intense conflict than those with large differences. It also reflects Sayre's law, which states that "in any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."