Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Bastardry

2021-02-12 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
Bastardry
Votey panel for Bastardry
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

The Joke

A man stands at what appears to be a podium or behind a screen, passionately declaring: "For too long only world leaders have been able to cast their bastardry around the globe! I say everyone should be able to make everyone else angry ALL THE TIME!" The caption below reads: "What if social media was planned?"

The comic reimagines the creation of social media not as a technological innovation meant to connect people, but as a deliberate conspiracy to democratize the ability to anger and antagonize others on a global scale. Previously, only world leaders had the power to cause widespread irritation through policy decisions and international disputes. Social media, in this reading, was designed specifically to extend that power to every individual.

The Humor

The joke works because it takes the very real and widely-observed phenomenon of social media making everyone angrier and reframes it as an intentional design goal rather than an unfortunate side effect. The humor lies in the absurdity of someone pitching this as a populist cause -- using the language of democratic empowerment and equality ("everyone should be able to") to advocate for something universally unpleasant. It is a sharp satirical observation about how social media has effectively accomplished exactly what this fictional pitch describes, making the "conspiracy theory" feel uncomfortably plausible.

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