2015-02-13
Explanation
The Joke
A cultist arrives to collect a young woman as a virgin sacrifice for the demons. The woman protests: "I'm not a virgin!" The cultist is skeptical, noting she spends 18 hours a day arguing about anime online. She responds: "Okay, take me to the demons." The demon then begins to psychically devour her, but recoils in horror at her browser history, exclaiming "Oh my God! Your browser history is worse than the Necronomicon!" In the final panel, someone suggests they should reconsider "virgin" as a category, while another asks "What is she doing with that cucumber?"
The Humor
The comic plays on the trope of virgin sacrifice in horror and fantasy settings, then subverts it in multiple ways. First, the stereotypical marker of virginity used by the cultist -- spending all day arguing about anime online -- is a joke about the "nerd virgin" stereotype. But the woman's ready acceptance of being taken to demons rather than continue defending her sexual history is already funny. The bigger punchline is that when the demon attempts to devour her soul, it is the demon who is horrified by what it finds in her browser history. The joke inverts the expected power dynamic: the supposedly innocent sacrifice turns out to be more disturbing than the forces of evil themselves. The final line questioning the "virgin" category adds another layer, suggesting that whatever is in her browser history defies conventional classification.
References
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire (book of dark magic) created by horror author H.P. Lovecraft, appearing in many of his Cthulhu Mythos stories. It is considered one of the most dangerous and evil texts in horror fiction, making the comparison to a browser history particularly absurd. Virgin sacrifice is a common trope in mythology, folklore, and horror fiction.