2015-01-12
Explanation
The Joke
The comic presents a series of scenarios in which everyday services become absurdly adversarial and difficult once "all this stuff people are afraid of" about the internet actually becomes legal. Each panel shows a different real-world interaction twisted into a nightmare:
- A mortgage company representative says they can insure your house "except civilization-ending earthquakes" and demands unreasonable insurance premiums.
- An entertainment provider tells a customer that since they are a "captive audience," the customer has to prove ownership to access their own content: "You already have to prove it to me, and me, and me."
- A grocery store worker says they can look at the customer''s corn, claim it as their own, raise the price, and then sell it back -- "Yes, yes. Cool, fine, whatever."
- A video service representative warns that anything added to your private files may be "publicly released" with "thousands of cameras" involved.
The final panel shows people protesting, and someone shrugs it off: "It''s cool, brah. I have nothing to hide."
The Humor
The comic uses an analogy to make the point that if real-world businesses operated the way the internet does -- with invasive terms of service, hidden fees, data harvesting, and erosion of ownership rights -- people would be outraged. But because these practices happen online and feel abstract, people accept them with the dismissive "I have nothing to hide" defense.
Each panel maps a common internet grievance onto a physical-world equivalent: DRM and content licensing become a shopkeeper confiscating your groceries; surveillance becomes literal cameras in your home; predatory pricing becomes a mortgage scam. The final "nothing to hide" punchline targets the most common dismissal of privacy concerns, showing how absurd it sounds when applied to tangible, in-person violations of the same rights people casually surrender online.