Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

ants

2017-06-13 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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ants
Votey panel for ants
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Explanation

The Joke

The comic begins with a man excitedly talking about ants: "Ants are super cool! They have little elaborate trails! If you disrupt the trails, the ants get totally confused!" Another person then asks him to hand over his phone. When the man asks why, the person explains: "Because without it, you would not be able to find your way home, or tell me your wife's name or your location." The man pauses and admits: "I'm pretty sure this is Canada."

The joke draws a parallel between ants and modern humans. The man marvels at how ants are helplessly dependent on their pheromone trails, finding it amusing that disrupting the trails causes total confusion. But when his own "trail" -- his smartphone, which stores his maps, contacts, and location awareness -- is threatened with removal, he reveals that he is just as helplessly dependent on his technology as ants are on their chemical signals.

The Humor

The comedy works through a sudden reversal of perspective. The man begins from a position of smug superiority, looking down on ants for their reliance on simple trails. The punchline deflates this superiority by showing that humans are equally dependent on their own external systems -- we have simply replaced pheromone trails with GPS and contact lists. His uncertain guess that he is "pretty sure this is Canada" is the final proof that without his phone, he is no more capable of navigating than a confused ant. It is a humbling commentary on how much of our apparent intelligence is actually outsourced to our devices.

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