2014-05-16
Explanation
The Joke
A father tells his son, "Son, it's time I gave you 'the geek talk.'" The son says he already knows. The father explains that "the geek talk" is "a maneuver in which you spend the entire sexual encounter talking." The son asks, "And women like that?" The father responds, "Even if they love it or agree, they'll say it's annoying or bizarre. But they love it." In the final panel, the mother asks the father, "Did you give Billy the birth control talk?" and the father replies, "Pretty much."
The Humor
The comic sets up the expectation of a "sex talk" — the classic awkward father-son conversation about the birds and the bees — but replaces it with "the geek talk," which the father defines as talking nonstop during sex. The father presents this terrible sexual behavior as desirable advice, insisting women secretly love it even when they say they hate it. The final panel reveals the mother asked the father to give the "birth control talk," and the father says "Pretty much" — implying that his advice is so terrible that it functions as effective birth control. If the son follows his father's advice and talks incessantly during sex, he is unlikely to have many sexual encounters, thereby achieving contraception through sheer social repulsion. The joke works as both a commentary on bad parental advice and a self-deprecating nerd joke.