chem
Explanation
The Joke
A person tells a chemist that they love something about chemists: with a single word the chemist has never heard before, they can get the chemist to visualize a complex lattice of carbon atoms in the shape of a human butt. The chemist asks "How?" and the person says "Buckybuttocks." The chemist, unable to resist the mental image, exclaims "Son of a bitch!"
The Humor
The joke plays on the real chemistry term "buckyballs" (buckminsterfullerene), which refers to spherical molecules made of carbon atoms arranged in a lattice structure (C60). Chemists are trained to instantly visualize molecular structures when they hear chemical terminology, so when presented with the portmanteau "buckybuttocks," a chemist can't help but mentally construct what that molecule would look like — a carbon lattice shaped like a human rear end. The chemist's frustration comes from the fact that their own expertise has been weaponized against them; their deep knowledge makes them uniquely vulnerable to this particular form of mental trolling.
Broader Context
SMBC frequently mines humor from the gap between the dignity of scientific expertise and the juvenile uses to which it can be put. This comic fits into a long tradition of Weinersmith jokes about how deep domain knowledge creates unexpected vulnerabilities — the more you know, the more precisely you can be messed with. The joke also touches on the fascinating property of language to force visualization, a theme Weinersmith returns to often in comics about the relationship between words and thought.