babies-are-weird
Explanation
The Joke
A woman observes that babies are weird: they cry like the world is ending, then immediately become happy when given what they want, as if nothing happened. Her companion asks what she would do differently. He says he would also feel good upon getting what he wanted, but would pretend to still be sad so as not to appear shallow. He would change his emotional state slowly so people would not think he was faking, and then act stoical in future social interactions to compensate for the vulnerability he showed.
The woman responds: "You shouldn't have told me that. I won't take your future outbursts seriously." He immediately breaks into a loud "WAAAAAH!" — proving her point by reverting to baby-like behavior himself.
The Humor
The comic works by inverting the initial observation. The woman starts by noting that babies' emotional behavior is weird, but her companion's detailed description of how adults "should" handle emotions reveals that adult emotional management is actually far weirder and more dysfunctional. Adults perform elaborate emotional theater — hiding feelings, strategically modulating displays of emotion, overcompensating with stoicism — all to manage social perception. By contrast, babies are simply honest.
The final panel, where the man cries like a baby after being told his emotional performances will no longer be taken seriously, suggests that underneath all the adult social strategizing, we are still essentially babies — just with more elaborate coping mechanisms. The joke ultimately asks: who is really the weird one?