care-2
Explanation
This comic explores the tension between genuine human connection and smartphone addiction. A person asks their partner, "Well, are you gonna talk to me about your day or just flick your phone all morning?" The partner, looking at their phone, responds, "How can I care about your life?"
The phone-user then delivers an increasingly poetic and philosophical monologue about what their phone represents: "I'm in the decade where I discover that I am inescapably an animal, and then almost immediately have to assess how much longer I'll be alive in this society of animals." They describe how a text message is "just some characters on a screen" but "each emoji, each sideways look, each picture of a hallway is filled with wonder." They describe the phone experience as seeing "universes -- different universes -- in the future" and contrast it with their partner, who seems "more strange and distant."
The monologue escalates to absurd passion: "Your body has lost the ability to conduct a single electron of the lightning that courses to me with every cat video!" culminating in the partner shouting, "Sorry, what? Were you saying I was looking at my phone? THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE?" and the phone-user replying, "I hate you!"
The joke is an ironic reversal. The phone-addicted partner, when challenged about their inattention, delivers an eloquent defense of phone-scrolling as a profound experience -- but in doing so, they perfectly demonstrate the very problem being complained about: they are so absorbed in their own inner world (about their phone) that they completely fail to connect with the person right in front of them. The passion they show for defending phone use is itself proof they don't care about their partner's day.