Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

brainstorm

2017-03-19 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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brainstorm
Votey panel for brainstorm
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 woman is in what appears to be an office or meeting, rattling off a bizarre list of phrases: "My eyes are filled with worms," "Down with representative government," "Blood my God so much blood," "Clowns! Clowns! Clowns!" and "Hitler was right." Her coworkers stare at her in horror. She looks puzzled and asks why they are all looking at her weird.

The final panel, labeled "Earlier," reveals the context: a woman at a desk says, "Okay ladies, today's advice column brainstorm: Things not to say in bed." The joke is that the first woman was simply participating in a brainstorming session for an advice column about inappropriate things to say during sex, but without that context, her outbursts sound like the ravings of a dangerously unhinged person.

The Humor

The humor comes from the dramatic mismatch between context and perception. The comic deliberately withholds the context until the end, so the reader -- like the horrified coworkers -- initially assumes this woman is genuinely disturbing. The reveal reframes everything: she was just enthusiastically doing her job. The specific phrases chosen are funny because they escalate in wrongness, from merely disturbing ("my eyes are filled with worms") to politically alarming ("down with representative government") to outright horrifying ("Hitler was right"), making the brainstorming session itself absurdly thorough. The coworkers' reaction also implies that even WITH context, her suggestions might be a bit too enthusiastic.

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